The cat. 3 race was a great race for the team as far as turnout and results.  Chad, Peter, Nick, Mark, and myself all lined up.  We had joked about sprinting off the start line and discussed making the race hard by attacking early and often, but had decided we would wait until the field at least sorted itself out a little and we got part way through the first lap before we tried anything, and then Nick and I had planned to cover and counterattack moves to keep the pace up.  After all this was a 66 mile race and we didn’t want to go out to hard.   Things didn’t go exactly as planned as 1/2 a mile in Adam York, a friend from the MCG team and fellow mtb’er, decided to attack on the first little rise and I decided it would be a good excuse to stretch my legs and see how they felt.  The field assumed we would want to return and rode tempo while Adam and I decided to test them.  As the laps ticked by we kept taking strong pulls as our gap hovered around 2.5 minutes.  Going into the second to last lap we suddenly had another 2 minutes and knew we were staying away.  Expecting a slower race that I could sit in during, I had 2 bottles and no one for bottle handups, a very costly mistake as I started to battle cramps, although could roll through them without to much of a problem.  Going into the last lap I had a little bit of water that I had bummed off Adam, who was smart enough to have someone handing up bottles.  We cruised the last lap having decided to settle the race on the hills in the last kilometer and a half.  I rolled to the base of the last big hill in front rolled off latched onto Adam’s wheel and quickly stood up to attack and instantly cramped.  Realizing my situation Adam skipped a pedal stroke wished me luck and cruised to the win by 10 seconds.  It turns out that while I was enjoying myself on a nice cruise of the front the team was making a serious nuisance of themselves back in the field.  I had several riders talk about how they blanketed every attack and frustrated any group that tried to get something started.  They were the real reason Adam and I stayed away and I owe them big time for the result.  Near the end Nick latched onto the wheel of  Mac Brennan and the two of them rolled in ahead of the field with Nick taking 4th.  Of course as the field rolled in Peter ruled the roost taking the sprint ahead of the usual cast of characters, and Chad rolled in just out of the top 10 making some awesome facial expressions.  With 3 guys in the top 5 we had a great day, left with some “Money in dah bank”, and stopped at Quiznos on the way home.

GBK