out like a lion

after successfully completing the Boone-Roubaix road race last weekend and a collegiate crit in a parking lot whose pavement made the Forest of Arenberg roads look like bowling alley lanes, I felt the need for more gravel. linus and i took the Chapel Hill P-Ride as an 80 warm-up on saturday for the Derby O'Grove on sunday. since the derby has not been ordained by the gods at usacycling, i won't call it a race and i won't call matt (leading the group below) the promoter.

(photo credit, John Rees)

We had 3 riders along with Bitter Dose, Mock Orange had two guys, and there was an assortment of solo dudes. but the real force to deal with was the Triangle Velo guys--who ended up with 6 of the 7 in the break and two in the pack keeping things disorganized. true, we shouldn't have let things happen like that, but on the other hand, what could we do. i will say that that linus, jay, and i represented the BCC fairly honorably--working to try to pull back the break. as Cat-4s among Cat-2s, we were like the Skil-Shimano team that was invisible to television audiences once the big boys revved things up at Paris-Roubaix.

and here i go, leading an ill-fated chase:

(photo credit, John Rees)

while i tried to roar like the lion of flanders, my legs went out like lambs. with two laps to go i looked over at linus and said "bllllehhhhhhhhhhh". i was bonking and no longer had the motivation to ride. motivation was further dashed when jay said he had to bolt to meet his family for ice cream--i had secretly planned on begging him for a ride back to durham, but now i realized we still had to ride 20 miles back home. we watched the finish and saw Andrew from Bitter Dose nab second from the mob of Triangle guys.

all said, it wan't a bad day in the saddle.