Things were looking good going into this one. We had good representation from the team with 8 riders, I was feeling good, new bike, what could go wrong... turns out a lot!
After a little delayed start we set off 'into' the tailwind, already shivering quickly go up to race speed and moving up towards the front, our team would be active today and making moves early.
Going around the first turn, into a strong crosswind from the right, almost the entire field went and stayed straddling the yellow line, it was all over the place! With yellow line rule, as usual, in effect, this would lead to the disqualification of about 3/4 of the entire field over the race! Although unbeknownst to anyone until the end because they weren't pulling riders due to DQ's.
Onto the hills, I was riding about 10th position and speeding up to go with an attack from a teammate, I see some surge on my right and someone falls into the guy next to me, who then falls, quite literally, onto me. The three of us go down and we have a silly mess of tangled handlebars. After we finally untangle bikes and we get up, I look around to get my waterbottle, still in the cage that got broken off and stick it in my pocket. Elbow is stiff and chain is off so by the time I'm going again, the pack is long gone. Race over, after only 10km.
On the brighter side, teamates Charlie and Adam (who drove all way up from NY) went on to take the 1-2 for the team, with the others doing fine work watching all attacks attempting to get away and bridge up from the peloton. And when the results come up turns out I got swept up in the DQ Blizzard too! Only 3 from our team actually placed in the official results, very odd day.
The next two weeks will be fun trying to sleep with some new road rash, but no major injuries and the bike is fine at least.
Next race is Springbank in about a week. Had a good result there in S3 last year, will go for the same this time around in S1/2.
Enjoy the sun today, possibly the nicest day we've had all year!
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