Out Witted and Out Gunned in Benicia

For various reasons I showed up in Benicia to race in the 45+ race only. With only one race for the day I was ready to cause some damage. Or so I thought.

The first hiccup was that Don Langley of Morgan Stanley showed up. The problem is that he's strong enough to at least follow most all attacks and then he'll smoke you in the sprint. The second hiccup was that after only a few laps the group split and I found myself in the front group of about 12. You'd think that was good and it might have been except that I was outnumbered 4 to 1 by Morgan Stanley.

Next (and this is the outwitted part) Dan Smith took off with over half of our 45 minutes still to go. Solo. On a windy course. Everybody knows that isn't going to stick. Which is of course exactly what happened. With our small group everybody wanted to attack and bridge across (myself included), but there weren't enough of us to attack repeatedly which would bring Dan back. So, I'd go and get caught a half lap later. Then after a lap of going slow, somebody else would go and get caught. Then slow. Then attack. You get the idea. Morgan Stanley was in the catbird seat. They had a guy up the road and they were thinking. "Sure. Go ahead and chase him down, then Don will win the sprint." I made a number of attacks but none of them were strong enough to open up a gap. One or two guys would always get on and we'd get caught in a half of a lap. (The out gunned part.)

At around 5 to go Mac Thompson of Team Spine attacked. I decided to let him go. I'll show those MS riders by letting somebody else beat me! :-) Seriously, I had to gamble. Chasing Mac wasn't going to help my placing. I could only hope that somebody else would take charge. But that didn't happen. Finally, on the last lap Chris Black of Morgan Stanley attacked on the hill and once again we flinched as nobody wanted to kill themselves right before the sprint. So we sprinted for 4th and guess who won the field sprint. Don of course. I was able to salvage something by placing 5th behind Don.

All in all though it was a fun race. It was a good, new course and it's nice to do a race that is only 20 minutes from my house.

I miss Larry too!