Dead Dog Classic

2 weekends ago I did the Dead Dog Stage Race. I was really excited and my form seemed to be great as well. So I headed up to Laramie, Wy on Friday and spent most of the night with Jeremy and Andrei trying to get my bike set up. In preparation of the TT on Sunday, I had a full TT cockpit set up on my road bike with cables, shifters and all, so I could get the best result possible. When putting my road handlebars back on I frayed my rear derailer cable hence the 3 hours it took us to get it shifting properly. Anyway I was pretty amped the next morning. We had a good breakfast at the Chuckwagon restaurant. I was so nervous before the race that an older gentlemen sitting behind me in the booth at the restaurant said if I didn't' stop shaking, he was going to spill his coffee and food all over himself. That gave Jeremy and Andrei a good laugh. The first disappointment was that the race course had to be changed do to a forrest fire, so the 7 mile climb was out and the course ended up being flat with 2 large rollers each way. Jeremy and Andrei went immediately to the front and started picking up the pace. This strung out the pack, but none of the other teams were really helping to keep the pace high. I sat in about 20th place. Eventually Jeremy got up with a group of 12 or so guys and Andrei and Matt put the brakes on opening up a nice gap. I then rolled up just to say high and helped block. As soon as I did this, I started getting yelled at to close the gap and stop blocking, boo whooo. Had one rider yell at me with the commment, "oh, they are really going to get away." If he didn't think they were, then why did he come around me and start chasing? This is why racing 4s sucks. Everybody races so negatively. No breaks get established, no one will work, etc. We were just trying to get some action going. Otherwise it is always the same - speed up, brake, speed up, brake, crash, attack through feed zone, brake, crash, field sprint. I personally get tired of this and want to make the race hard, so there isn't 50 guys left at the end. Anyway, Matt, Jeremy, and Andrei all got dropped and I was left alone with 10 miles to go so I had not choice but to sit in. About 3 miles out I was thinking I had good enough legs to win. I positioned myself on the yellow line sheltered from the crosswind. This side had been surging all race when there was an acceleration. I was sitting 3rd wheel behind Brent who got 2nd at Hugo the week before. Usually someone jumps with about 1k to go and things split up allowing you to move around. Not this time everyone held tight until 300m and then a guy on the outside jumped, but the guy in front of Brent never reacted, boxing us in. Never even had space to sprint so ended up 15th. This sat the tone for the rest of the weekend. It was basically going to come down to the TT, because we had 30 guys with the same time. The crit the next morning was uneventful as suspected. All my teamates got dropped again, so I spent a lap hammering the pace to try to drop even more guys so that there weren't as many to contend with at the TT. My legs were cooked after this and could only manage 13th in the sprint. I ended up 20th in the TT, which I was happy with, since it was my best TT placing all year. I ended up 16th on GC because 4 of the guys that beat me in the TT got dropped in the crit, so I guess keeping the pace high helped. Overall a frustrating weekend.