P/1/2/3

75 minutes

31 riders

2nd place

This was another race held on a closed auto-track, which meant 1.5 miles of sweeping turns and smooth pavement. It was pretty cold and definitely windy, but the sun was out and it was dry.

We just rolled around the first lap. There were a few probing attacks, but nothing too crazy. On the second lap it got a little more serious, and four guys got a couple of hundred yards on the field, and I decided to bridge to them. I could see they weren't organized or committed yet so my bridge attempt became an attack as I went right by them, hoping they would join me in a more serious effort. They didn't, the field caught them, and I sat out front alone about 5-10 seconds in front of the field.

It was pretty windy, so I'd either made a dumb move, or I was going to ensure I was in the break. Pretty soon Alex Bowden, from the development squad of Team Type 1 bridged up and we started working. After about a lap a group of four bridged, and ultimately two more made it up, making it eight, including local powerhouses Bryan McVey and Ryan Freund. Eventually we got working together, and built a solid gap.

About 45 minutes later it became time to race as we'd spent the whole day in the wind putting some solid time into the field, and with about 7 laps to go (3-4 minute laps), the attacks started coming from Freund and McVey. It still seemed like we were pretty far out, and it was windy, so I sat in and let everyone else cover the attacks. Then Andrew Lister from Dogfish Racing rolled away with about three laps left. At this point we were playing extreme cat and mouse--rolling at 10 mph and then covering attacks at 25 mph, and when Lister rolled off no one seemed inclined to chase.

He built a 10 second gap that didn't seem too scary and might be difficult to hold in the wind. Nonetheless we didn't seem to want to chase and he slowly put distance into us. On the last lap I realized he would stay away unless we chased together, but I didn't want to be the one to pull him back for everyone else's benefit. As we were rolling along waiting for the final attacks to come I looked over my shoulder and saw that I had about 20 meters on the others. It was completely unintentional, as they'd been positioning themselves to watch each other, but my inattention got me a little gap and I decided to go with it. I dug hard into the wind hoping they'd face the same collective action problem, and they did. I gained a lot of ground on Lister in front of me, but ultimately finished 100m behind him. I rolled across alone for second, happy to avoid the bunch sprint.

Good day on a great course.