Charles Kyle wrote Today was the 2010 Michael Murad Road Race. The race is near Poolesville Maryland. The course was an eight mile loop and for the Men.s 4, this meant 6 laps. I figured we would average between 24 and 25 miles per hour thus a two hour race. Being that I still am not supposed to be peaking, I had determined that I would work in the back of the pack, getting use to the peloton and get rid of the jitters that I have from several wrecks so far this year. After eight hours of traveling from being in San Diego and a little bit of dehydration and jet lag, I took the preemptive strike and brought two sets of bids, .Just in case.. Evan, my teammate, said he could pony up some Imodium AD, but since I am not use to taking stuff like that a begrudgingly declined. The weather was beautiful and started to heat up a little, I had my game face on, but with reservation, upset stomach, a bike that I just put a new group-set on that had exactly zero miles on it, and my longest ride since spring camp had been Jefferson Cup a few weeks prior and to top it all off, I had been on the bike four times in the last three weeks (travel and death in the family) had kept me off of the road. The race started fairly calm, the course was pretty uneventful, with the exception of some of the standard characters, the Coppi rider who loves the gutter and spends a majority of the time riding in gravel and dirt, hmmm, wonder why you flatted at Jeff Cup?? The Cyclelife rider that I have personally witnessed caused two wrecks at Vint Hill and finally, the Velo 1 rider who ALWAYS bombs the corners, drinks straight up right looking to the stars and generally is up front but all over the place. Oh yeah, and the NCVC guy who gets relegated to the back of the group EVERY race for crossing the centerline. I am not saying that I am the pro rider in the group, but I at least try not to be a danger to others and myself. The first five laps was standard, we just pedaled around and kept a pretty good pace. I had decided that I would move up during the last 5km to have a decent chance at being at the front during the last 1km. The way the course was laid out, we would make a right hand turn and the have 1km left. So I figured at about 5km out I would start to move up through the pack. I had early on considered this a training event and was sitting toward the back. With the descents and ascents I would just coast down hill and let my weight take away any gap that would have occurred It worked well for each lap. On the last lap, Velo 1, must have either ran into the back of another rider or just lost control, I saw his bike just start wobbling and then he went down hard, taking out three or four to my right, I was able to get around on the left without much effort. As I began moving up through the pack, the speed began to greatly decrease. Two teams had gone to the front and began blocking. I heard someone scream out that this was a race not blocking practice. What it looked like, was that the two teams were allowing their teammates to move through the group so that they could have a heavy representation at the front. Coppi and NCVC did not seem to be able to organize to move forward so I did. I got up to the front and they were really blocking. I basically moved to the right and got around them and took off up the road. It took a few minutes and I was joined by two or three Coppi riders as we began to move forward the moto-ref drifted back and sent the Coppi riders to the rear, apparently they had reacted to my break and had crossed the center-line to get around the four. After that I keep the pace the best I could for a kilometer or so. Basically, I caused chaos behind me. We hit the turn for the 1km mark and I was sitting in the top twenty or so. There was a lot of left and right movements, two riders slammed into each other but both did a great job of staying up right, I kept pretty good power going and was not in contention for the top 10 so instead of .sprinting. for the finish I just keep pumping hard and came in 20th. I was happy with the result until this morning and I realized that once again, I worked hard, rode smart but still did not finish. There was no reason not to have been in the top 10. [Uploaded 5/2/2010 8:39:18 PM] ***