The race conditions were not ideal for me. There seemed to be a very stiff head wind leading up to the short hill. I attacked once to see what it felt like, but it was too far from the finish to work. There were numerous attacks with none of them establishing themselves well. That was probably due to the hill being short, the wind high and the field large (70+). Then again, maybe the conditions did tilt in my favor. I do like massive field sprints.
Kudos to Chris bean for working for me in the race. He did a good job moving me up to the front with 2 laps left and then pushing the pace high on the last lap. That was good because nobody attempted an attack as they were just hanging on.
Here's how I saw the field sprint. As we entered the first tier of the hill nothing happened then as we topped the first tier somebody jumped and got everyone excited. I was buried in the front mass of people thinking that I might not get out. As the surge developed on the hill, the group strung out and left a lot of room to move around. I saw a couple of Dayton riders to my right ,including Tim Beberniss, surging and I jumped on right behind them. At this point two trails of riders were surging from opposite sides of the road with one lone rider between in no man's land. As the surge died out or topped out, I wound up my sprint and shot out from behind the Dayton riders towards the two riders ahead. Bearing down on the line, I was just a few inches behind and I threw the bike hard. I was pretty sure I had 2nd and so did the other guy. It was hard to tell who won as there were conflicting reports and the camera battery was dead.
We went around and around during the contesting period. In the end end, we split the difference and shared 2nd place. I'm OK with it, but I would like to have seen the video just to be sure of the result. If I really lost it, it would have been because of the timing of the throw. If I won it, it would have only been because I threw the bike. I was probably only a few inches behind him when I threw it.
