Greenwood Road Race - Wisport

The racing season is starting to slow down a bit with only races primarily on the weekends. Once July is over, the racing is going to dramatically decrease. Not looking forward to the end of the year as I have been having a blast and finishing well consistently. Saturday was no different… a blast. Greenwood, WI was site of the 38 mile Greenwood Dairy Days Road Race which proved to be a sprinters stage. All the big guns in the sprinters classification came out and really drove the pace throughout the race. A breakaway shot ahead of the peloton very early in the race and never looked back. Two of the regions best time trialists got away and no matter how hard we worked to pull them back, they kept their distance. Wind played a slight factor in the reluctance of the peloton to chase because no one wanted to go to the front to work with the headwind. The race is primarily flat with a few rolling hills in the last 8 miles of the race. I had a rider that repeatedly would pass me on the left at the bottom of the hill to pull in front of me, and not being a good climber, went straight to the back again. This annoying move that was continued multiple times finally pushed the right button and I got a little hot under the collar. I charged around the rider on the next hill, moved to the front and preceded to continue pushing the pace to shell out some of the weaker riders. I worked hard to try to bring the time gap down between the peloton and the breakaway but only gained a little ground. Going into the last 2 miles which are all downhill the big guns came to the front and drove the pace over 35 mph for a 1.5 miles prior to the final corner. I was hurting and suffering to try to stay on and fell off into a smaller group about 20 meters off the group in front. I found a wheel, sat in, rested and then shot off like a canon going for the sprint. I was able to pass 4 riders before the line and came in a respectable 13^th place. Not bad for trying to keep up with the sprinters who were gunning for one another. Too bad this type of racing isn’t earlier in the year, would have been very beneficial because the pace of these races are much higher than that of the WCA events. More sprint intervals for me to become faster. Sprint intervals = pain…