Stormy racing

This weekend was a stormy affair, but racing in the Cinci-nasty area all the same. Honesty I almost didn't go. Night before the race Bloomington had tornado sirens, crazy wind, crazy rain and all that. Mostly 1-2am to boot (I had to get up ~5am). Looking at the radar when i got up, those storms were heading east and not moving particularly fast. So I was going to drive following the tornadic storms to go ride a bike in them, right? Check. Problem was I pre-registered. I wasn't about to loose $20 for safety's sake or any other sake for that matter...it was on.
I'm glad I went. It turned out to be a pretty nice day and an ex excellent race course.

(early on. group was still kind of big)

I had never done this race before, but I've heard it's a tough course w/ lots of climbing. So I was excited for it.
Given the storms that had rolled through, the roads of the course were a mess. Tons of water (running across the road in several places) and all kinds of debris. it was pretty bad conditions, but that's what you get sometimes; you can only roll with it.
(these two pics are taken in sequence, we've thinned it down quite a bit. This was the break for most of the race)

The climb was ~1.5miles and we basically started at the base of it. I could tell from the start I was feeling good. I had a teammate in the race w/ me and he and I race well together, usually w/out ever even talking about it. We both have a good enough tactical sense that we usually know what each other is doing. He's not a 'climbing specialist' though (and we were climbing w/in ~2min of starting) and I didn't want to end up missing out on a move in the first lap, so I rode toward the front from the gun just in case. The climb was 5+minutes long and as expected the group was splitting the first time up. I'm finding myself more and more being what Paul Sherwin and Phil Liggit used to call a rider like Thomas Voeckler, a breakaway artist. I am consistently finding myself in the break and/or am getting the break going.
Anywho, I think the break was established on the second lap (of five) and we whittled one or two off in the remaining laps and ended up w/ 5 riders.

(this is probably leading into the final lap I had to take off my glasses because they were so covered in road spray that I couldn't see a thing)

I felt good and thought my best chance was probably to lead up the final climb and set a hard tempo until ~300meters out then go. I thought if I set a hard enough tempo it would minimize the chances of the others attacking me on the climb. With ~200-300meters to go I ramped up the pace from "solid, hard tempo" to uncomfortable, and as the line approached I was overtaken. I didn't really feel like i had another full-on burst left, but I gave it a go and finished 4th. I really feel in hindsight like I didn't go full gas and probably could have given more and probably have won. Coulda, woulda, shoulda...It was a good race regardless and an awesome course.
The weather for this week's training looks like total sh!t. Going back a few days our forecast is 6 days of "severe storms." WTF? I'll get in what I can though. I plan to time trial this weekend.
I think this post is long and I'm now even boring myself (which happens when I start a pot one day and finish it the next), so until next time: thanks for reading my lame-ass blog!