https://www.strava.com/activities/344810968

This was a much more civilized ride than that last road race I did where the attacks came early and often. Also a much bigger group with about 20 riders. Lots of nervous energy but no one was attacking.

First lap was fairly calm at ~180w. There was one period where things were going so easy that I just coasted (literally) to the front and when people filed in behind me I just kept the pace pedestrian at 150w. I was more than happy to keep things calm for then. I kept thinking that sooner or later someone would attack on the hills but it wasn't happening. We stayed as a group of about 15-20 for the first lap.

Second lap was more of the same at the start although the pace picked up slightly. Then about 10k into the second lap the eventual winner (from the expert category, I was racing sport) rocketed past everyone and things blew up! He and another guy got away and we ended up in two chase groups. I tried hard to get onto the back of the first group but gave up after a minute and sat up into the second group. We rode like that for about 10 minutes with the first group only about 20 seconds ahead of us. At that point I looked around the group I was in and realized there were 6 of us and the other 5 were all wearing the same team jersey - hmm, I can see how this is going to play out in the end and it's not going to be good for me!

The group ahead of us were all racing in the expert group (and thus doing 3 laps). The guys I was with had no interest in catching up and they would have worked together to get rid of me at the end I'm sure so I decided to be the hero and try to bridge up to the other group in the hopes that would break thinks up a bit. This resulted in a stretch of about 3 and a half minutes where I averaged 325w. Only shed one of the other riders in the process (better than none I guess) but we did catch up and they told me afterwards that I hurt them pretty bad in the process so I guess it was worthwhile. So now we were a group of 10-12 and I did my best to just sit in as much as possible to recover and get ready for the finish. After about 10-15 mins of riding, two of the expert guys broke off the front and we just let them go. Shortly after that was the last left hand turn (same sketchy one from the TT in the morning although everything was dry now) and things got a bit more heated. I got caught over on the white line when a couple of guys went out and I was boxed in and couldn't go with them.

By this point I was down to a group of 3 and while we were going up the last hill I could tell the two of them were tired and was pretty confident I could beat them on the descent and final sprint to the finish. Then, as we were about to crest the hill riding 3 wide with me on the inside, the guy on the outside surged a bit and when the other guy also stood up, he cramped and swerved over to me and I was forced off onto the unpaved shoulder. I steadied myself and got back onto the pavement but I knew right away I had a puncture and had to pull over. Kind of a shitty thing to happen but it happens. I walked for a bit since it wasn't far to the finish and then the two guys I was riding with came back to offer me a wheel so I could finish. A truck had also stopped offering me a ride and the two guys told me that the race officials said they would give me the same time as the others since it was inside of 1km. So I took one of their wheels and rode in while the guy rode in the truck. Second lap was ~225w. NP for the whole thing - 250w. Not sure on what my official time ended up being but Strava says 1:51:36 (not including my walk break) so that's about as official as it gets, right?

In the end, with the combined TT and Road race I ended up first in the overall for the Sport category. Pretty happy with how everything went up until the flat!

Maintain rubber to pavement at all times.

Walk my bike to the car and walk to get chips several times from the snack table.