Prime....what prime?

This morning was a slow morning. After meeting Bud for a lap of Wissa on Friday afternoon then doing the Rally in the Valley with some fellow members of the Guys team Saturday the body was not wanting to work very well....and today being my first road race of the year....great.

After looking for (begging for actually) a reason not to do the race (over sleeping wife, no... rain, no...earthquake, again no) I was told "let's go, we're leaving."

Thirty minutes later same said person is pinning on my race number and giving me the pep/be safe talk. After a little warm up with the team we head to the line for the start of the mens Cat 4 race. So what does someone who knows they're about to have their ass handed to them look like...

The race (20 laps, each lap being a mile) started out fast (again great...I knew I should have stayed in bed) but I just sat on to see how things were going to play out. On the seventh lap a pair of riders went off the front and were sitting about 100 meters out, like a carrot out in front of a donkey....or in my case a pair of gummy bears sitting out there.

Not sure why, or where it came from but I went out after them. Someone jumped on my wheel and I pulled the two of us up to my "gummies." After a lap one of the gummies was done, so it was down to the three of us coming across the start/finish with nothing but sounds of cowbells ringing....

....but in this case more cowbell was not a good thing.

For those of you that don't know they ring a bell at different points in a crit for "primes" (pronounced preem) ...prizes, money, small children, etc....but people also ring them just to keep the racers pumped up, it's one of the only things you can hear clearly when you're riding by at 30 mph.

So what happens when you don't know it's a prime lap...
...someone bridging out of the pack, pulls thru "wins" the prime then pulls off the course in the next turn....race over (WTF!) The three of us have no idea what the hell just happened (we never heard the bell for the prime lap) so we pull up and start looking around....end of breakaway.

After a few laps of sitting in a rider again goes off the front....no big deal, somebody else will bring him back in.....wrong.

After watching him sit 100 plus meters off the front for over a lap, then seeing he had teammates at the front of our group blocking I went "gummy" huntin again....this time alone. It took me nearly a lap to get his wheel...but I got it. Once he saw me on his wheel he gave in and I came around him....but I was cooked....a broken man.

He was not willing to work (and with a lap and a half to go) I sat up and let the field bring us back in.

So a lot of work for a pack finish....but in all a good race. I learned what I'm good at in a crit/road race...chasing down breaks and maybe even been apart of a small one...as long as it works together.