I learned a couple of very important lessons last night in my second Greenbelt B race. One, I can attack the pack and get a separation. Two, the pack will not chase me. Three, I cannot hold a break that well on my own; explosive power but no sustainability. Four, the pack knows this and will not chase me. Dang.
As Dear Leader so aptly put it last night, “Respect for Kmax’s Attax Lacks on the Trax.” Or something along those lines. Rightfully so.
In hindsight I should have held my second, and maybe even first attack as well since I don’t think I ever registered enough of a threat to pick up the overall pace of the race as was my intended goal. Not that the pace was exactly slow; on the contrary it felt much faster then the previous B race I’d done. I would have been a much greater use to my teammates coming into the final lap or two where my efforts may have been able to be put to good use. Hindsight of course is 20/20.
The race was a bit of fun and a bit of a pain for the Union squad. We matched our record number of teammates in a single race with four of us in the B race with some ideas on how we wanted to operate and work together on some things. A bit selfishly and naively I wanted to ride an aggressive and offensive style of race for as long as I could with the goal of puking on the side of the road before the race was finished. I managed a small amount of ill-places aggressiveness in a couple of hard attacks but did not manage to do much damage with them.
In the mean time the other Union riders rode smartly and strongly with Mikhail covering a break away early and Chris taking a few solid pulls at the front of the pack including one on the final lap at a blistering pace to keep our other rider Joe in a strong position for the finish. In the end Joe ended up boxed in and unable to get out strongly for the final sprint though still finished with a very solid 11th.
As Dear Leader so aptly put it last night, “Respect for Kmax’s Attax Lacks on the Trax.” Or something along those lines. Rightfully so.
In hindsight I should have held my second, and maybe even first attack as well since I don’t think I ever registered enough of a threat to pick up the overall pace of the race as was my intended goal. Not that the pace was exactly slow; on the contrary it felt much faster then the previous B race I’d done. I would have been a much greater use to my teammates coming into the final lap or two where my efforts may have been able to be put to good use. Hindsight of course is 20/20.
The race was a bit of fun and a bit of a pain for the Union squad. We matched our record number of teammates in a single race with four of us in the B race with some ideas on how we wanted to operate and work together on some things. A bit selfishly and naively I wanted to ride an aggressive and offensive style of race for as long as I could with the goal of puking on the side of the road before the race was finished. I managed a small amount of ill-places aggressiveness in a couple of hard attacks but did not manage to do much damage with them.
In the mean time the other Union riders rode smartly and strongly with Mikhail covering a break away early and Chris taking a few solid pulls at the front of the pack including one on the final lap at a blistering pace to keep our other rider Joe in a strong position for the finish. In the end Joe ended up boxed in and unable to get out strongly for the final sprint though still finished with a very solid 11th.
While our results could have been a bit better and we each likely have plenty of bad things to say about our own respective performances out there last night, I think we’d all agree that riding together as a team was a fantastic experience. For the next two weeks at Greenbelt we’ll be looking to do more of the same with a strong group of riders in the B race and hopefully one of these days our strong work will come to fruition in that final push to the finish.
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