Snelling RR p1/2 - one of the biggest NorCal road races of the season, where pretty much everyone shows up.
WE WON! (and I got 4th)
We had almost our whole team (6 out of 9) in the field of ~80, with a few other strong teams well-represented. Our sprinter who got 2nd here last year wasn't there, but we had a powerhouse/breakaway guy, me the sometimes-sprinter (and definitely not a breakaway guy in an 84 mile RR), and everyone else is good at breakaways but not winning from them.
P1/2's did 7 laps for 84 miles total, through rolling terrain with some really nasty pothole/bumpy sections. One section has a short bridge that is a ****ing minefield, and only gets worse every year. It was windy, but not overly so.
First lap everyone was fresh and trying to get away, but nothing stuck of course. I covered a few moves early in the race, got in one break but sat on and it fizzled. I was kind of low on food to start with (two clif bars, bottle of "heed", bottle of "perpetuem"). On the 3rd lap my bottle of perpetuem ejected, so I was down to one bottle.. no neutral feed so that kind of sucked. I wanted to steal a bottle but everyone was too smart for that I guess..
Anyway our Powerhouse guy had tried a few mid-race moves but nothing was sticking - the big local team Mike's Bikes was going for a field sprint for their sprinter, so was trying to shut everything down. I told Powerhouse to wait until 2 or 3 to go when everyone was more tired, then try again. With 3 to go there was a group of ~5 up the road with one of our guys in it, and our Powerhouse bridged up with another powerhouse/breakwawy guy from Mike's - perfect.
On the last lap 4 of the break riders came back, but the three strongest dudes (Powerhouse, Mike's powerhouse, and another break powerhouse) were still up the road. With ~4 miles to go the two other guys came back - our Powerhouse guy had attacked them and rode away, and was now solo. A ballsy move, but if anyone could do it, this guy could.
And he did!
The field sprint for 2nd was sketch af, as it always is on this course. There's a long straight section of BUMPY road leading up to the final corner, then maybe 400m of slight uphill (and more potholes/bumps) to the line. I survived the scrum to the final corner somehow, came out of the corner in maybe 12th place, and somehow when I stood to sprint everyone else went backwards. I almost caught a guy who had jumped early, but didn't - and one came around us both for 2nd, so I got 4th.
4th for me was my best result at this race ever (possibly my best p1/2 RR result, in fact), but really all that mattered was that WE WON! Our team did everything right, and it worked. Can't ask for anything more.