Doing too much work and settling for 2nd. Bryan Park 2025 No. 6

I felt great about the ride. But, I'm looking back on the race now with some regrets. We, as a team, were happy to have a breakaway go today. We wanted to get more of our team in the overall points. But we also wanted some other riders from District Taco to get higher in the overall points so they wouldn't be so committed to the sprint for the season. The first half of the year, we had 3 sprinters fighting for the leader's jersey, and our teams controlled the field really well, but there was a lot of negative racing in break formation. Hopefully getting some other riders in the picture for the overall will keep the racing more dynamic going forward.

Long story short, I did too much work in that final break and left myself with too few options in the final.

From the start, after some early attacks and counters, Brook and I got in a 2-up break about 10 minutes in. I was pretty surprised that we got pulled back, honestly. We rolled it 29.5mph for the 10 minutes we were off the front, but the gap went from 20 seconds to 8 seconds pretty quick, and it was clear there was a reshuffling in the cards.

The next couple of moves were too big and/or didn't have the right makeup to work, but Mike, from Roanoke College, Brook, and I were able to get a jump on the field with 3 to go. I put in some big turns to establish the gap. Looking back it was too much. On the last lap, I knew I didn't have much snap in the legs, and I wasn't sure how Mike could sprint so I decided to go long from a minute out. I got a gap, but Brook was able to latch back on as we got onto the downhill section and rather than playing cat and mouse, I told him straight up that he had me beat if he went to the line.

After parting ways from racing together in 2023, he and I had a little more than our fair share of mid race BEEF the last couple seasons. It's been great to see him racing really well this year and get one over on me fair and square. On to the next one!