Excelling at medocrity

I'm 3 races into my spring campaign and have rolled up two 17th and one 18th place finishes. It's funny how you can be really satisfied with some poor results and not with others. My first race was the 3 race in Dalton GA. It poured rain the night before but we only had a little rain and really wet roads. The finish was a 90 degree right turn and about 150 meters of straight to the finish. At 75 miles it was my longest race ever. I sat in all day and watched the sprint which was about all I planned to do. I was content with the race.


The next week was the Tornado Classic very close to my home. I did the 1/2/3 race which was 66 miles. I just wanted to hang with the 1/2's but ended up doing a lot of racing. I  had no teammates, but I mixed it up as best I could and finished with the pack as a good size break got up the road. I was pretty happy with how I raced.

Finally, this past Saturday was the Aaron Shaffer Memorial in Sparta. I did the Masters race and missed the selection on the climb. I'm way bigger than the average racer, but what was frustrating was that I missed the selection because of my positioning going into the climb. I had to work my way through the entire field and caught the lead group with about 3/4 of a mile to go, but had burned too many matches so when they went over the top I was gapped. I had a few teammates up the road and they certainly could have used me which is the part that irritates me. They still did well in the sprint, but the winner got up the road and I certainly could have tried to do something about that.

Next week is Boone-Roubaix which I have no expectations for. I don't mind the gravel climbs, but going downhill through that stuff makes me very nervous. After that it is a month on the TT bike as the state championship is at the end of May.