Troutman 50k Road Race

Today was the Troutman Festival in Kewaunee. It is a bunch of diffrent races including a duathalon but, I did the Road Race. The race started at 730 so it was eat breakfast and hit the road this morning. So after registering and warming up we lined up for the start. The guy did the countdown but, I didn't hear any GOOOOOOOOOOOO. We headed out nice and mellow and chatted for the first couple of miles. We hit the first longer hill and dropped most of group. After that it was just a group of ten for rest of the race. It was me, Jeremy, Nate, Q, Jeff, Joe, Seth, Andy, Mitch and Erik from Marinette. We rode pretty sedately for most of the race with some hard efforts thrown in on the hills. Basically every hill we hit we would just hammer up and see if anybody got dropped. Around mile 15 there were some bigger rollers and Mitch, Andy and Seth managed to get a gap. Somehow we had just enough juice to nail them back. At the same time 2 guys got dropped. Things got pretty slow again and those 2 guys caught back on about 5 miles later. Then Andy attacked again and we all had to chase for a little while. Things were all back together then Q and Erik went on a little flyer about 5 miles to go with Erik. We caught them with about a mile to go. Then we headed up the little hill at the end. It was very steep in the beginning and I hammered up it at the front. Then it leveled out a little and I had to recover. Seth, Mitch Joe and, Andy headed up the road and I stayed with Jeff, Q and Jeremy. Q jumped with about 300 yards to go and I followed then Jeremy went around me. Then I just sat up. My goal was to finish with the lead group and have fun and, I managed both. SO it ended up Mitch, Andy, Seth, Joe, Jeff, Jeremy, Q then me. The way it played out, there were 3 guys everyone knew could win the race. The rest of us just watched them and tried to stay with them on the hills. So nobody wanted to work to hard and we ended up with a 21.3mph average. I think I did my fair share of work. Kinda wished I would of gone with Q near the end but, if 3 guys had gone they may have chased harder. In the end it was a fun little race which are kinda lacking in the Green Bay area. Next for me is Camrock. See ya outside...