Movin' on Up

Another lovely spring day in Southern Ohio, mid 50's and rainy for almost the entire race. I had some teammates today and I think it made a difference. From the gun Team Abundance was trying to get away and we kept catching them, we weren't going to let them get one up the road by himself again.
Halfway through the 1st lap, I asked Mike More to get me toward the front and he did, great work! Soon after that, a Campus and an Abundance went, I knew from their race #s that I wanted to go with them so I did. We had a nice little gap as Brett and others got to the front and started regulating the pace to prevent any counters. An Echelon bridged up, then Brett told Steve Fine of Dayton to go so they had a rep in the break and that was all we needed. We had 5 in the break and stayed away for the rest of the day. We dug hard to get as big a lead as we could and ended up passing the Cat. 3 field. We worked well together and everyone took pretty equal pulls, although I felt a little weak at times.
After the last turn, there was about 1 mile to go and Jim Dennedy of Abundance took off. I knew it was way too early so we just slowly ramped it up, Steve Fine took a nice strong pull then we all came to a complete stop as the course marshalls waved a car in front of us at the 4 way stop with @ 500 meters to go!! We got going again, playing cat and mouse until maybe 150 to go when Campus' Mike Chewning got a nice jump and I hesitated just long enough for him to get a bike length on me. I closed the gap but ran out of real estate, finishing a bike wheel out of 1st.
2nd is my best result ever, but with the taste of victory so close, I really want to be there next time. I'll let Brett and Mike blog their versions, but they did great and I couldn't have done it without them. Hopefully Adam's novella is forthcoming as well, he was strong as always.