Home Court Advantage

Another large group showed for the thursday ride. For the climb up Mt. Elon I tried to stay glued to Karls wheel and all was going well until Marc W. attacked (impressive!), then I got spit out the back. I put up some big numbers on that climb and was pretty much tunnel vision lazered on the 1 inch of Karls wheel that I was focused on.

On to Airbase...holy crap what a bloodbath! First Jay put in an absolutely monster pull and since I was on his wheel sitting in the gutter (with a crosswind) we got a good gap on the group. Funny...he pulled off and me thinking the entire group was behind us--I just rolled past him and then immediately pulled off. He was probably thinking "wtf!!! at least take a 15 second pull!" I did go right back to the front once I realized this. Karl and "mystery Athens cat 1 or 2ish dude" bridged and we were absolutely killing it (well mostly Karl and Jay as usual). Much suffering was had and Karl saw 198bpm.

Coming up to the sprint I did a little cat and mouse and then Athens dude jumped...hard. My first thought was "damn he's fast!" then "oh shit...get his wheel". I called this home court advantage because even though it was probably at 200m, he went too early and I came around him at the end (I had my best 5 sec power of the season @1033w). Cool!

Coming down to the Shop Rd sprint Phillip as usual put in the killer leadout over the bridge then Matt finished it off by putting everyone in the gutter for me to get over the line first. It's amazing what a couple of 20 year olds will do for a 12-pack of PBR.

Update: I love epics of all sorts and have been on more than a few in my past (less now with a kid) ... here's a great one by Dave Harris. Inspiring for sure.