Michigan State Road Race Championships

Today michigan had our State RR Championships at Cedar Creek in Muskegon. The course was a little unchallenging for a state champ race and a little short in my opinion also. The first excitement of the day for me was when i got a flat on the 2nd lap on a fast downhill, luckily i got a fast change and was able to chase back on, only to see the first big break of the day up the road. Rob was in the break, but i wanted to get better numbers for our team. I tried crossing to the break, but picked a bad section and wasn't able to get across. I stayed near the front and the attacks kept coming. After the break was caught, i countered with 2 WM Coastal riders and we got clear for a while and began to roll well. Soon a chase group caught us we formed a group of 9. The unfortunate part was Coastal had 3 riders and the rest were single riders. After a little while, we got organized and began rolling pretty well, everyone was contributing well. I knew Scott Riddle from Coastal was one of the strongest in the field and I knew they would send him up the road on a flyer. Just as i was thinking to get on his wheel with abou 5K to go, i swung off after pulling on the left and he attacked on the right. I immediately went to the front and picked the pace up a little and swung off thinking the other individual riders would help to real him in. i was wrong, they refused to help at all. They sat on me and refused to help at all. I was racing to win, a top ten is great, but anything other than the win was not what i wanted. The other riders had relinquished to racing for second and wouldn't contribute. I attacked them a few time and with about 500m to go i went all out to try and cross to scott, i just missed him and the rest came around me in the last 50m. I ended up 9th out of 9 in the break. I was very frustrated with myself and with the way the other riders were racing. But i guess that is bike racing. I will never make that mistake again of not being on a strong riders wheel in the closing kilometers. I guess this is another lesson learned.