angry salmon

yesterday was the prologue. a different format. 2 mile neutral rollout to the bottom of a climb. the first 2-3 miles were pretty gradual, 2-3% with a strong wind. the last 3-4 miles however, were super steep, a reasonable format for the abilities of our guys. no full road at this race, so with 130 riders, you can bet it will be a mad fight for the front. our strategy then was to keep tom, dan and sean safe. if the pace wasn't high enough then we'd set it and keep our guys out of trouble. it was a crazy fight and guys were pushing and swerving and taking all sorts of chances to get up. a few guys were relegated for blatant yellow line violations. i felt that the whole thing was totally unsafe. i can't believe the whole weekend will be like that.
anyway, the pack started splitting as soon as we hit the climb, which really started with a 10% or greater pitch. the front group stayed essentially intact. i slid back a bit but was still in that group. on the next pitch however, i wasn't paying very good attention (and i was hurtin') and i was split off. i was at my steady tempo, so riding across the gap wasn't going to happen. in the front sean put in an attack with a few km to go to try and draw out some other guys and soften things up for tom. i don't know what happened after that but tom got second. tom doesn't really know what happened either. i asked him. he isn't sure.
dan decided at some point that this trek up the hill was much like the salmon running up the streams of the northwest. salmon never give up, so he couldn't give up was his logical next step. in his mind, he was a salmon all the way up. dan the salmon.
this morning we're getting ready to drive to the circuit race. it's 1015 and it is shocking that dan is awake., i'm not sure if salmon sleep 12 hours a night, but dan does.
the mad river barn inn turned our hot water on. that was nice. tom likes long cold showers. me? not so much. maybe that's why tom is so bitter.