Season Opener

Shook the cobwebs out of the legs this weekend at Cal Aggie. We had a full field of 75 – huge for an early season opener. Race was boring for the first 10-15 minutes or so and slow. In typical masters fashion the attacks began and never let up. We rode very, very well as a team for our first race of the year with some new blood and covered the right people at the right times. Think it was about 4 to go an attack went with OV an EMC and one other + our own Specialized/Sierra mate John Fairbanks. CVC missed the break and had to chase allowing us to set up. With one to go a couple of us were in the front and some attacks went trying to catch and things strung out nicely. I followed Mr Pab figuring he would follow up for OV if the break failed. The break was brought in just before the last corner(except for one Mr. OV - fuck) I followed around the last corner and Pab pulled off about 300 out, maybe because he saw OV up the road and the race was over (?). It was a split second decision and a little far out, but I was already committed and we had things strung way out. Just drilled it as hard as the legs would go all the way to the finish and took second for my best finish in the masters so far and some points towards the 2 upgrade. John and Jason B. pulled a 6^th and 7^th to give us three top tens, so not bad for a little early season fling.

We also put together a good contingent for the P1/2/3 race and nothing too eventful happened – we had all put in a race already and were tired. With one to go I positioned pretty well up in the top 10 going into the last corner, but there was already a break of three (I think - things were getting blurry at that point). Came around the last corner still in good position for the field sprint and waited patiently. Well this time it was too long a pause and I got boxed in the gutter so I just sat up for ~ 20^th or so. Better to be safe.