Commuting and Womp

Again today I'm going to pick up the slack for Gewilli and ride to work. What the hey. Last night I got stuck at that hell hole until past my normal departure, thus failing to leave early for Wompatuck. I was so stressed, I just said f it, I'm going anyway. After the quickest kitting up ever, I got in the race with 16 laps to go. Not too bad. There were 54 riders, including a lot of the local good guys. I warmed up at the back for about twenty minutes and then went to the front with about 10 to go, and before long I found myself in "the move." Actually, it wasn't so much a move as a 15 rider streetfight, with a bunch of us off the front but not cooperating, just throwing attack after attack. I think everyone wanted the break to work, but nobody wanted it to be this big. About half of us were strong enough to hang with the jumps, but not to participate. Some went out the back and others bridged, and there were a few futile attempts by some to establish a paceline.

It was a lot of fun, but I was way beyond my comfort zone, and crossing into the chest pain zone. Not sure if Tommy Mannion got in there, but if he didn't, then I was probably the oldest. His son Gavin was there, along with Myerson and Marzot, and after a few laps Markie bridged up from the field to join Sammy Morse, Jonny Bold, and all the other high horsepower guys. As noted a few posts back, I don't have much jump to begin with, and with the damage from Sunday's run still evident, I was not having an easy time. Still though, this was good for me; at least I was getting my money's worth out of a short night. At five to go I thought I could hang, and we had one lap there when the pace went smooth, but all that meant was that the motors were taking a second to recover before launching the killer blow. At four to go Markie made a jump and everyone scampered to get on the train, I of course had just pulled off and then got chopped a bit at the top of the hill, and my will to live on in this fight whimpered to a close. The remaining eight or so maintained their 20 second gap until the end of the race, whereas I faded back to the groupetto and sat in for a few laps before making one last interval effort at 1.5 to go. I lasted about 3/4 lap at 45-50 kph, over 2 minutes, so I was quite pleased with that. It would have been nice to hang with the big boys but under the circumstances I'm just happy I got down there to make the effort instead of just rolling around home at 20 kph mumbling about how much my job sucks. Time to pack up the backpack and hit the road. Thanks for reading.