Walkerville 2008 Cat 4/5 35+ race

Apparently I did not live up to my blog name because I was not the first rider dropped in this race. First an acknowledgement. I must thank the weather gods for the extremely acceptable weather at this year's race. I have raced at Walkersville three out of the last four years and this year's weather was definitely the best, a little wind, sunshine, with a temp. around 60. Our friendly USCF rep. briefed us before the Cat 4/5 vet 35+ race as we were lined up outside Glade Elementary. Much to my dismay, he mentioned that if you were dropped and deemed a hazard to the race or may be passed by the women's cat 4 race or lapped by our pack that you would be pulled at the discretion of the race officials or the local sheriff's office who were providing the bookends on the rolling enclosure. I have been dropped every year at this race but never pulled so I was somewhat disappointed but decided my best approach would be to make sure I didn't get dropped. I was in the second row and felt I was in a good starting position to stay near the front. The neutral roll out to the course was very "piano" but I still managed to get pushed back by some folks who were trying to press forward. I tried to stay in the middle of the bunch and had no problem with that since I was hemmed in on both sides. Once the racing started nothing really changed and we just rolled down towards the river. I continued to slide back trying to work my way to the right so I could move up and not violate the yellow line. A guy to my right asked me when the race was going to start and I told him it had started about a mile ago. He said thanks and let me pass in front of him. As we climbed up from the river I shot up the shoulder trying to make up for all of the back sliding I had done. When we reached the turn/top I was probably somewhere between 15-25 place and happy. I was ready for the acceleration at the top and was rolling with the group (this was where I got dropped last time). We turned the second corner after the first mini-hill and I was still with the group but sliding back some. I was working hard to stay in the pack and made it to the big downhill where I started losing contact. After the right turn where we turned with the wind down over the bridge the pack accelerated and dropped quite a few folks, me included. As we stragglers made it to the end of the first lap I hooked up with Michael Evans from VCRC and we agreed to work together and try to pick up as many as we could. We waited for Peter Condron and thus had a little "grupetto" of three. As we climbed up from the river we caught Scott Schaeffer from Artemis who made us four. We struggled in the next lap to work together efficiently mainly because it seemed like some of us weren't used to riding in a paceline and would accelerate too hard on their pulls. It took about a half a lap but we finally got it together and rode steady. On the third lap I think fatigue started to be a factor because on one of the steeper mini-hills on the backside I accidentally dropped the other guys. I looked down and was only going 12 mph at the top so I decided to soft pedal thinking they would speed up and catch me relatively quickly. I soft pedalled to the big downhill and they still had not started to close the gap. At this point I decided to ride on my own for while to see if they would catch me. I made it around to the headwind part of the course where I finally sat up because they were going to catch me eventually if I didn't get a rest. We ended up sticking together for the rest of lap four. When we got to the finish line someone came out to tell us that our race was over. Not everyone was happy being pulled but it didn't matter to me. I had looked at my watch and saw that we completed the 4 laps, ~32 miles in ~1:36. The first year I did this race my race was shortened to 32 miles because of weather delays and I finished in ~1:55. The second time I did this race I completed all five laps but I noted my time when I completed lap 4 for comparison purposes and that time was ~1:45. Two years later and I've improved by ~9 minutes. Of course in the other two years I mostly rode by myself and this year I mostly was in a group but I still am happy with the improvement.