I rode in my second ever cycling race today. My first was just this past Sunday morning. Both were criteriums - riding multiple laps on a short course. Sunday was hard. I expended a lot of energy needlessly chasing riders breaking away from the main pack. These riders always slowed and dropped back into the group. It saps your energy to try to stay out front and gives you little advantage. I promised myself that my second race, the one today, would be different. Well, it was and it wasn’t. Again, I ended up pulling, that is, riding at the very front and taking all the wind. In fact, I pulled for the last three laps. I was pretty annoyed that the pace was so slow and thought I’d just hit a comfortable stride and if everyone else wanted to draft let ‘em. So that’s what I did. I expected a final push from the well-rested riders behind me that would be hard to keep up with. But it didn’t come. I just widened a gap along with one other rider. In the end I came in fourth because, you see, there was a break away group of two that had long left us in the dust. Next time I’m going to be in that group! But pulling the main pack for three laps and then still kicking ass at the end felt great.

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