Well, the first race of superweek was Blue Island and both XXX and Burnham were well represented.
With Seegs, Tyler, Briney, Peter, Moran, and Myself we had a good core of strong riders with various strengths. Burnham had the whole crew. We talked about some tactics and knew that Burnham would be really gunning for this being alot of them are from the area.
As we started, Seegs did a long pull through the first or second lap. A crash happened on turn 3 and soon after Peter made a jump and a break happened. This was with 28 laps/miles to go. I was thinking it is a bit early to go but then when I looked up it seemed there were quite a few riders bridging up, 9 eventually. I then did the same which took a whole lap almost to catch on (that was total pain). Peter was aware of me coming up and was last in the bunch when I caught on so it helped for a breather. From then on it was good rotations and hard pulling for 27 or so laps.
With around 4 to go, we saw the pack in front of us. Never happened to me before like this and we started chatting that maybe we should chill to the finish rather than catch with the group. Then, someone in our break jumped to the pack. That was when chaos took over. With two laps to go, Peter and I started moving up to the front. There was Briney and Seegs in the fron the of action. On the last lap, Seegs was active up front and on the back stretch, I saw Briney jump like a rabbit, Burnham started chasing him, MOran came up on my right and called me out, I grabbed his wheel. I think Peter grabbed mine to go around the last corner. I literally gave it everything I had for a 5th place field sprint, 3rd overall while Peter took both the field and the overall.
Besides the fact that we took 2 out of 3, I was more proud of how we controlled the race and the finish. Everyone did an amazing job. I can only imagine the pain Briney and the others went through chasing down attacks while we were in the break. Great team effort guys. THe good news is there will be more of that considering this is the first race of Superweek.