Notes
Tonight was the third and final étape of the 2015 Tour du Canton. And once again, I really surprised myself with a strong performance. As with the last race, I settled in right away with the chase pack (chasing just the front two guys who don't really count) and let other guys set the pace. It was a smooth, fairly comfortable tempo that we maintained for the first 4k or so, as a few different people took the lead but no one ever broke away. Then at about 4k one guy started to slowly ratchet up the pace, but about four of us covered the move and stuck right on his shoulder. We maintained until about 5.5k, when I somehow ended up leading the group for the first time, and I brought the pace back down a bit - if they were going to make me lead, I was going to be comfortable about it. I could tell that at this point, everyone in that pack thought third place was still up for grabs. But then I noticed in the distance that at about 6.5k there was a bit of a hill, and I picked that spot to make my move. As we hit the hill I suddenly dropped the hammer and broke away, powering to the top and accelerating over it. From there, I made a long drive to the finish. I noticed that one guy tried to go with me and wasn't falling off the way I wanted, so I kept accelerating, and took advantage of the long and gradual downhill into the finish to run a very fast last mile and a half and keep the guy from catching me.
This was a really fun race, and I felt exceptionally good all the way through. This sort of dueling with the front pack is the kind of racing that I really missed from high school, and I loved getting back into that sort of strategy. And I was also surprised to find that this race felt so much shorter than the ones at Williams used to, yet it was longer and I was running faster! All in all a great series of races, that really got me excited about racing again. And - I ended up coming in second over all! Though the same person won all three races, there must have been a different guy in second for the last two! Not bad for the prize money.