Ownesboro turned out to be a really fun course and our team did pretty well in three seperate categories (men's 4/5, Men's 3/4 and womens). However my race was over within the first three miles.
Heading out of the start things were pretty tame. We have five team members in this one, fewer than usual so we knew we would need to work pretty hard to protect the two guys we had in the points. We lined up a little further back than planned so we wanted to move up the pack pretty quickly after the start. The roads were very narrow and with a yellow line rule I was concerned about moving through traffic before the first climb, but it turned out to be pretty easy to get all of us up there within a mile or so.
Dean and Rob we're on the front and I moved up to third wheel. When they came off another young guy in a red kit and I went up the first little climb and opened up a small gap from the pack. It opened a little more on the decent and I kept looking back to figure out why the pack wasn't catching us. After all, I was working for other guys in this one and did not need to be off the front this early anyway.
We passed the corner marshall and realized about half the pack had missed the turn. Now look, I'm not saying it was the corner marshall's fault but I didn't even see her or hear "turn right" until we had already passed the turn. About half the pack figured this out and turned and now the guys that we're off the back were on the front and out guys had to scamble to catch on. (Props to Dean from Cycler's Cafe for helping drag our guys back to the pack).
This is where my little false gap turned into a real problem. Rather than slow things down to let the peleton regroup, the new leaders just kept on going despite team riders yelling out "hold position" and "let everyone catch up" after all it was mile 3 in a 32 mile race. I guess that's racing in the 4/5's because I ended up off the back alone in in dead last place within a few minutes.
I chased the pack for a lap and a half. They were always in sight and I was still thinking I could solo catch but it was not to be. I would catch guys coming off the back and rest on their wheel for a little while but could never really get anything going since they had already popped and we're coming off the back anyway. Somewhere around lap 2 I realized my race was over and all I could do was finish what was now a 32 mile training ride. I sat up and waited for a small group that was rotating to catch me. We got organized into a rotating paceline and caught some more guys. By the end we had about eight guys, got passed by the 123 break (then pack) so we singled up and let them by. The finish was a non event. I went early and and encouraged this one guy who did most of the work on the last lap to grab my wheel for a lead out but he looked cooked. A few guys blew past me to the line and I ended up finishing 28th.
On the other end of the race we had one teammate get crashed on a climb (guy in front of him broke a chain and went down) and we ended up getting our points leader a good leadout for a second place finish - putting him in the money and I think in first place in the point series.
Pretty sure I'm going to strap a Tom Tom on my stem for the next race.