By Dave Allen
TMBM riders: Adams, Allen, Berkman, Bromstead, Cox, Eisenberg, Foley, Funke
From the start, as planned, Adams, Foley, Berkman, and Eisenberg were actively instigating breaks and/or covering breaks. The idea here was to make some of the other teams work while giving our protected riders a free ride. This actually worked well, as Jan, Carinio, Theobald and others were either chasing them or getting brought back by them.
The point i want to make here is that i didn't have to get out of the saddle or "turn a pedal stroke in anger" for the first 30-40 minutes of the race. Pretty sure the same goes for Bromstead. It was so easy that i actually kinda felt bored at times. This could not have been better.
With about 4-5 laps to go Matt went to the front (presumably to keep the pace high, and rightly so) but ended up unknowingly in a solo move. Going up the finishing hill with 2 to go, the whole field practically came to a halt and everyone started to swarm. I starting screaming obscenities for us to get it going and luckily for us, Foley and maybe another went back to the front again and did a really impressive job of keeping it together and strung out. That was awesome.
With a little over one lap to go, going up the hill, I goaded Funke into taking over (followed by Cox, myself, and Bromstead). He thought it was too early, and he was right, but we had no choice at that point. He took the most heroic pull of the day (the pictures are proof that he was giving it everything) all the way across the top, nicely through the hairpin, and most of the way along the back stretch. Incredible!
From there Cox took over and it was blazing. We somehow made it through the 2nd to last turn at mach speed and when i gave a glance back, i noticed that there was about a 1-2 bike length gap back to Bromstead. Oh shit! Nothing to do about it though but go for it. I screamed at Cox that we had a gap, and i think maybe that gave him a little too much adrenaline, because going through the last turn (again at mach speed!) he clipped a pedal, did a wobble, then high-sided and went down. Oof...!
I managed to get around him but lost some momentum and had to re-accelerate. It was ridiculously painful, but again, there was no choice but to just go. I could feel guys coming up behind me and tried to dig deeper but there was no holding them off. Carinio, then Jan and Bromstead all came by, finishing in that order. The rest of the field was pretty far behind.
We ended up 3rd (Scott B) and 4th (myself). If you had told me 2 months ago that would be the result, i would've been stoked. But, with how perfectly (more or less) we controlled the race, i'm honestly just a tiny bit disappointed.
