"There's a story that my daddy tells..." Yeah, it's a country song and a reference that's probably not too familiar, but it's appropriate in this case so I'll let fly.
I'll say it up front, we thought this was a race we could win. Not just put up a good showing, but actually win, on purpose, with a plan. We didn't win, but we had the best XXX showing we've seen all season, and that's really something to be proud of.
As you likely know now, we deposited 23 XXXers in the middle of the Wisconsin State Road Race Championships, which meant that they had to create a whole 'nuther heat for the out of state folks. We made up a good portion of that, so we had a lot to live up to.
Following the "let's all start from the back" debacle at Baraboo (see gallery under heading "what not to do"), we integrated ourselves nicely at the start line and were well represented at the front of the pack. That's a lesson learned.
So we started well, how did we race, you ask? Very admirably:
* We had a number of guys in the mix early - Tim and Stuart took particularly admirable pulls, but there were many nice efforts when the bunch was together in the first lap. That established the tempo for the race and let people know that XXX was not just a presence in numbers, we'd thought about how to race too.
* We created the selection. After the hill started the separation, Pieter made it official with a strong pull in the middle of lap 2. What had been 35+ became 15, and XXX made it happen.
* We were by far the biggest part of the break, with 6 of 15, and ultimately 5 of the final 12. This was not an easy race, and to put that many riders in the front group made it clear that we had more than a couple with legs.
* We drove chase groups all around the course. Whether it was for 16th or 36th, I didn't hear stories of "so this dude caught me and wanted to work together until he dropped me." Instead, we did the catching, we did the working together, we did the dropping.
* We controlled the break. Even with our numbers, we still could have let other folks take the race to us, but we didn't. We dictated the pace, we set the tempo, and the other riders were left wondering which of us was strongest and where the decisive move would come from. We'll have to work out whether that meant we did too much work, but in the end, I'd rather dictate than be dictated to.
* We finished well. And that's not about the podium. That's about working harder than we thought we could, it's about putting together a plan to move up from where you are to where you want to be, and it's about finishing the race. We did that nicely, and we had a good time doing it.
* What's probably most telling though is that guys who didn't dare look at the Hillsboro or Baraboo results really want to know where they finished. That means they rode strong and passed more than they got passed, and they're justifiably proud of their performance. Right on!
* And yes, we put a lot of XXX red and black on the leaderboard. We had 5 of the top 11, 7 of the top 16, and 2 on the podium.
That's something to be proud of, all around.