Win #1 - The monkey off my back

It was just 2 or 3 weeks ago I was bumming on not being able to close out a great opportunity for a win in the 3rd PICC race. That's been haunting me in the meantime.

Now it was my turn again to get some team support for an opportunity to win. This week I had a much larger field to compete against (i'm so so lucky haha) but my team had a Plan A and a Plan B I felt good about regardless of the field size.

Mid-race I launched a counter-attack and was joined by a Competitive Gear rider and we opened an awesome gap. I thought I had a chance to take it to the finish, but I wasn't that lucky. It was a good effort, but our pace slowed and the group got twitchy when Adam jumped up to our 2 man group. He did what I wanted him too, I just underestimated the scare motivation it would put into the main pack.

I started to doubt myself again. "Here we go again." "I just buried myself for no reason" etc. etc. etc.

Lucky for me I've got a strong group of guys around me. I was able to just sit in the rest of the race until the last lap. Adam, Tom, Barry, Andrew, Brian were all still there and even throwing some attacks off the front of the group. It gave me a chance to regroup and snap out of whatever mid-race funk I was dragging myself into.

On the final lap I was determined to hold a wheel and make this thing happen. Adam and Tom had just buried themselves to stretch the group and Competitive Gear ogranized a small leadout and I latched on. I was NOT letting this happen again.

We came out of the final turn and I was on third wheel. The pace picked up (great leadout by the CG rider) and all those 2nd places and 3rd places started pushing me harder and harder. I saw Craig from CG start to stand on his pedals and I did the same, he to the left, me to the right.

I dug in, I saw the line, and I got it! That was it! All the stress and anxiety that had been building up inside, poof!

I finished with a 1000 watt effort at a 206 bpm HR at the line. I couldn't have told you it felt like that at the time, I wasn't even thinking about it.

Thanks again to my team for burying themselves for me again!

Timbits OUT!

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