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Another season is underway, starting off with blowing snow off the driveway (8" of wet stuff at sunrise) then heading into Buffalo for our spring bike race series. About 20 interpid souls (e.g. idiots) showed up in to ride a few hours in 28 degree weather, wet, snowy roads and howling winds. After a neutral start of about 10 miles were were racing north across desolate plains into a slicing crosswind. With the roads open to traffic, we were kind of squeezed into a clump by the winds and riders quickly started to leave gaps and blow up. Two riders escaped early on while I was sightseeing. A second group of three went and the riders ahead of me just sort of sat there, so I rode across the gap and that was that for the day, two riders, then our group of five that became four. Snow was blowing across the road in spots and the winds was godawful. We were drenched and covered with roadsalt pretty much from the start. Our group was not working very well together and the two up the road maintained their gap. I was happy to see I had decent fitness relative to the other riders in the race today, despit a bout of the flu a couple weeks back, so that's a small victory.<br><br>
So, in the end we chugged along, me and another guy were doing most of the work and two others were mostly sitting on or taking a quick swing through, all of which added up to not catching the two leaders. There didn't seem any point in attacking our group to further split it, so we just swung through to the end and had a little sprint into the wind, I was out of the saddle in the 53 x 17 at about 21 mph just going nowhere. In any event, I ended up theird. The clothes are in the wash, the bike is washed up and tomorrow's another day of early season grime-a-thon action in the Queen City.
So, in the end we chugged along, me and another guy were doing most of the work and two others were mostly sitting on or taking a quick swing through, all of which added up to not catching the two leaders. There didn't seem any point in attacking our group to further split it, so we just swung through to the end and had a little sprint into the wind, I was out of the saddle in the 53 x 17 at about 21 mph just going nowhere. In any event, I ended up theird. The clothes are in the wash, the bike is washed up and tomorrow's another day of early season grime-a-thon action in the Queen City.
