My team is made of awesome

I'm taking a break from the self-imposed 'blog-about-every-race-experience' blackout (easy when you're dropped from the lead pack at Glencoe), but all racing should be as fun as last night at Soldier Field.

The cuttin' crew was rollin' deep, and we did one by the books in the first race. The players:
Andrew - Mechanical issues kept him from racing, so he drove the rickshaw down, with an injured Jannette and her sister on board.
Bradley - Flat in the first lap
RoadHouse - Crampy legs when he tried to move up. He just got into grad school yesterday, so one can't expect everything to go right.
Maxwell - Everyone could see cuttin' crew had the numbers in the race, so our attacks had to be taken seriously. Max and I led a few early to push the pace and soften the field.
Mike - Shows up out of nowhere with 2 to go, straight to the front, to pick up the pace and stretch out the field.
Me - With one to go, I take over and Jeff's yelling GO GO GO GO GO. I get 2/3 of a lap in, at the best pace I could manage.
Jeff - Jumps off my wheel and takes it home for the win.

I took a prime and Jeff took the other two. That's James Brown Tight.

Race #2 was a whatever, but with free entry for any repeat offenders, a bunch of people jumped in ass-dragging. Andrew managed to play a part in this race by offering a $5 prime on the 5th lap and the field imploded. Jeff took it, and I confess I let him stay up there, thinking he could repeat his last performance at Soldier, where he sat 3rd wheel in the break until unceremoniously stealing the win. I made a bunch of folks chase around me and didn't help anything. Pockets of 2, 3 riders everywhere and...oops, I see Heffy coming back. Time to make the donuts.

We get going again and we're in this little packlet of 4-5, then 10, then 8, then 4-5...all the while still 10 seconds off the three leaders. It wasn't so much working together as it was trading attacks to shell our group. It became clear that we weren't bringing them back and I decided to sit on Jeff's wheel and let him do the thinking for both of us. Around 3 to go, he was like "you ready?" and I'm thinking no, but saying yes. 1.5 laps to go and he ramps it up. Our group sees it coming but only Bicycle Heaven can respond, but he misses my wheel but stays in sight. Heffy pulls off in the penultimate turn and I go all in with a throw for good measure. Snap! 1 to go! I had a gap and just had to give 'er all the way around, and I see the leaders just a few seconds ahead. Could I? No. It wasn't meant to be, and I finished just off the podium, holding off Bicycle Heaven.

Mike from Mox was about the only wild card in the deck last night, finishing 3rd and 1st in our races, and that's with no team support. The main event turned out to be a pretty small affair, down to Liam and Padfield, with Liam FTW. Ah well, 1 win, 5 premes, a wooden medal for me, and my first proper leadout. Not a bad night for the team.