Long weekends

Although much of my life seems to consist of long weekends, a real long weekend always seems to provide some added fun. Probably because other people also find themselves not having to work on Mondays. Had a good Saturday exploring downtown Montreal with good food, better company and then a good ol' Belgian style race. The course brought falshbacks of a particular Kermis I did last season. Though the roads were a little wider (not too much though) and this day was probably slightly slower. Decided I wanted a good day in my legs and wanted to finish pretty shattered, Montreal-Quebec is next week and I have not done a good road race in some time. Got myself into the front in the rain right from the gun and spent the entire first 2 laps following attacks, rolling in breaks and chasing moves down for the boys. I was very happy with myself and my riding. The middle two laps were not quite as nice, I fell back a little to eat and recover a bit and let someone else take a turn up front and my legs hit a bit of a bad patch. No worries though, I kind of expected that so focused and gritted my teeth a bit. Got back to the front for the last 2 laps and got myself into what proved to be the winning move with JS. After bridging up I got myself to the front of the move to bring back a solo rider up the road and hopefully set JS up for something. JS, as usual did not disappoint attacking at just the right time with 2 to go just as I brought back the dude out front. Now with 3 riders up front it became time for me to simply sit on the remainder of the break (now chase group) and see if we could hold off the pack. I rolled through the front a few times pretty relax as otherwise most of this chase group was intent on sitting on me for some reason and I wanted to stay away from the pack. A second LG rider launched a pretty good move on a little climb which caught me off guard and a little flat legged. We got caught coming through the start/finish by the Volks/Sleeman's train and I swallowed hard and jumped into the top ten as gate keeper to their train. I was feeling pretty toast by this point but their was only 1 lap to go and if JS was caught I needed to be there to go. Unfortunately there was a touch of wheels on the back stretch about 10km from the finish in the leadout train bringing down about 3/4 of the field I hear. I manged to jump/roll over the crash (they were directly in front of me) before ending up in a ditch then corn field and then getting back on the road to chase down the leaders group ahead. After bridging up I blew hard and fell back into the little chase group (aka 3rd group on the road) and just held on rolling through when I could to the finish. Finished 21st in the end with JS taking the win. The legs are coming and I'm now super pumped to race again tonight. Its good to be a cyclist.