I lost a race of sorts during my group cross country trip. Our original leader was a buffoon and not the strongest riders. One day in Montana we had about 20 miles left to the campground. Leader took off from a town after we had had a second breakfast. He said something like "See you there." Three of us were determined to beat him the campground, but one guy needed to use the rest room before we started riding. We finally took off maybe 10 min. behind him. There was an incredibly strong tailwind. So strong that I managed to sustain 32.5 mph for several miles on a fully loaded bike. Finally had to drop back to 28 mph. Another chaser who had larger gears flew past me like I was standing still. In the end though, we never caught him. The guy with the bigger gears came within about 30 seconds. I was about 1 minute behind. Our leader was smug about the whole thing so we had to remind him that he got about a 10 min. head start. The icing on the cake was that he was clearly hurting from his effort to beat us.