Kensington recap

Ah so the first road race of the year for me, and I can say I am happy and unhappy. As all of us cyclists know, one can not be completely fulfilled unless a "W" is in your bag. Going in I had mixed feelings, would the race be hard or would it be easy considering the hills and the extra distance to cover. I chose to stay conservative and see how things played out. First few laps went by without a hitch, a few small breaks, but nothing that would stick. On the 5th lap on "snot hill" I felt good, so I gave it a go and got a 10-15 second gap. Knowing that no one was on my wheel I figured what the hell, but this time I did not go all out or even near. I knew the field would bring me back, as I did not feel incredibly snappy. So I plugged away for 5-6 minutes until I felt the field right behind me. After that I realized each lap our field kept getting smaller and smaller. I thought to myself how the hell can all these guys get dropped and I have done very little work on my bike this year????? Then I remember that I have an incredible endurance background. Nothing else happened each continuous lap, more dropped riders, even guys who weigh very little and have beaten me all year until this point. Onto the last lap, I felt that I needed to have good position coming out of the turnaround to secure a good result. I shift down and hear a crazy noise which I would later find out was a chainring bolt falling into my chain and out an the ground. Forgot to tighten the chainring bolts down as I was told.....oops. Coming into the last 5k I realized there were 2 guys up the road. It was so hard to distinguish who was in our field and who we were catching that had been dropped from other groups. Then I look up and see a mass of cars at a standstill and hope to get through safely. During our meandering through the cars a few guys tried to pull a quick one and gain some ground before the last time up snot hill. Approaching snot hill much slower than I would have liked, I had to stand and really put the power to the pedals and for the first time in my life my legs felt like I was being electricuted by a tazer. I am not shitting you, it was awful, from my quads to my hip flexors. Must be some residual power I lost not racing last year. I stayed on the group and gave as much as I could to the finish, grinding past people while staying seated through the whole sprint. I came in 16th, but the sensations I got reminded me why I love this sport. I am also dissappointed I did not fair better, but did better than most. Onto the next weekend of races.

Note: None of the aforementioned details are excuses, they are what happened and to be honest I did not have what it took to win this race. The best rider won from our group and Kudos to him for sneaking away and staying away.