Out Like a Lion RR

Bike racing sometimes ain't pretty, it's a battle and you do what you need to do to win.

4 of the OSB team (minus Jay) lined up today along with at least 10+ Carolina Masters (CM) riders and all of their heavy hitters. We were outnumbered and outgunned so at the start line we talked strategy...the plan was to have at least one guy in the early break and to just sit on, work as little as possible and try to get as many of our guys up the road. Not the most diplomatic of plans but we didn't have many options.

This race always has a large field and it's short at 40 miles so it's always GO from the gun. The roads are narrow so you want to be up off the front as soon as possible.

Just after the short neutral section ended a CM guy attacks and gets a gap...I thought it was John P. so I knew I had to be up there so I went across as Robert and Karl worked to shut down the field. It turned out to be Kerry from CM who's known to be a strong sprinter and a good rider but not super dominant like some of their other guys. A strong Mob racing guy also came across so there were 3 of us.

I knew, knew, KNEW that Kerry was just the carrot and was just getting up the road till some of the other CM guys could come across. There was NO WAY that CM was going to let this be the break of the day...so I just sat on. I did no work at all. I didn't pull through once. Our Plan A. To say that the other two guys were pissed was an understatement, HaHa...I got pretty much dog cussed™ for about 3 laps! The Moto comes up...you've got 1:30 to the field. Then...3 chasers at 30" consisting of Charlie Brown, John Patterson and Ladd. Here we go...

Mob guy looks at me and I say "what did you expect was going to happen?" He then stopped yelling at me and now was trying to form some sort of alliance.

I also knew (x3) that once we were caught that the shit would hit the fan in a big way. I was actually pre-attacked before they even made contact and sort of caught Patterson off guard a bit when as he came flying by. We rolled around for 60 sec then Kerry attacks hard and I went to the front and closed it for LL. A flurry of hard ass attacks and Kerry and I were dropped from the break. Adios LL and good luck!

At this point I said to him that we should both work to stay ahead of the field and we did a couple laps trading pulls. Another CM guy ended up bridging up to us and I worked with these 2 to keep our lead over the main field. At one point we only had 30" with 2 laps to go. We rode hard and with great teamwork by Robert and Karl to control things in the field we maintained our lead.

With a couple miles to go the group was nowhere to be seen so I sat on and stopped working but was starting to cramp a bit. Coming into the finish one guy attacked hard and I tried to follow but that effort pretty much finished me off and I came in right after both of them for 7th. In retrospect I should have just picked the guy who I thought I could beat and just sat on him and let the other guy go.

LL went through his own little hell and finished 4th. After all was done we were content with the results as there wasn't much else we could have done today.