Manhattan Beach Grand Prix cat 2 - 7th place
Came into the race with 4 teammates out of a field of 56. I was the designated sprinter as I had good legs and placed 5th in the 3's last year, so I was looking for some redemption. For the most part, the race was pretty uneventful for me. Two of my teammates were on breakaway duty due to the hilly/rolling hotdog shape of the course. The other two were on cover/leadout duty for me. Everything was going great with one of my teammates on breakaway duty getting away several times, his most promising was with only 2 or 3 laps to go (he was caught on the last lap though). Unfortunately, with 5 laps to go, I went down in the the only crash (I believe) behind a guy who clipped a pedal through the first U-turn at about 20th position. I took my free lap and got back in, but at the very back of the field with 4 laps to go. My rear derailleur hanger was pretty bent and I had a hard time shifting, but I was fine otherwise, as the crash was on the slowest of the turns (I flew over my bars and landed frog-like, luckily for me). It took a lap and a half for me to work my way back to the front without wasting too much energy. We were pretty organized with two laps to go with 2 of my teammates in front of me and 1 behind me, but we got swarmed and lost contact with eachother on the first hill. On the last lap, I only had one teammate to bring me close-ish to the front from about 20th wheel and one teammate near the front who had managed to keep his position. On the backside of the last lap, I burned a couple matches shooting up the outside to get to the top 5 before the last corner (a U-turn, so positioning was key to finishing well). I latched onto my teammates wheel, but had to play the elbow game with some guys to keep my position going into the last corner. I backed off a bit too much through the last corner and wound up coming through it about 9th position with 300 meters to go. I sprinted as hard as I could, despite my f'ed up shifting delaying me a secondish after the corner (excuses, I know), and made up some ground, but my finishing result came down to a bike throw at the line which could have been as good as 5th and and bad as 8th. Wound up 7th, but I was glad I at least finished in the top 10.