The Rocky Hill road race is one of my favorites. Its a rolling course around the Millstone creek with one big climb. Its hard enough to make things interesting, but not so hard that it makes you consider taking up a nice gentle sport like yoga.
All the talk before the race was about whether or not the impending thunderstorms would hold off until after the race. Sure enough, halfway through lap one sprinkles started coming down. By lap three it was a full blow rainstorm. The rain added another element to the race. Everyone stayed upright, but people were hesitant to respond to attacks in the rain.
Laps one and two were pretty boring. I lost my bottle taking a bad line over the bridge after the downhill, but Tboughts got it back to me by lap three. Halfway through lap three, I went back to take a quick nature back and by the time I chased back on the lead car was gone. I asked around about what was going on, but no one knew if there is a break away. It stayed this way for the rest of the race. Westwood had numbers and the leaders jersey, but they didn't want to chase.
On the back stretch of the last lap, everyone at the front was making attacks. They weren't very good attacks (I was sitting on them in my little ring), but they served to bring the break back into sight by the final time up the hill. The pace up the final climb was fast, but I was able to hold on with just a little cramping. In fact, I came into the descent 3rd wheel. Going downhill in the rain was tense. Everyone was jockeying for position trying get in good position for the sprint. I followed the best wheels I could, got boxed out a couple times but was able to set up about 20th. I jumped a little early and made my way through the crowd, but I didn't have quite enough left and ended up tenth.
Tboughts and I stuck around to watch the pros finish. Troy Wells got in a late break and looked to be in good position for the win, but got his chain all wrapped up in his frame coming into the sprint and had to roll in fourth.
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