Gate City Cyclone Nashua NH

This is becoming one of my favorite races. I did it last year & went pretty well there so I decided to drive up again this year. The course is 3/4 mile and goes around a stadium and a park. It has 7 corners, 2 of which go right up against the stadium building. Nobody cuts the inside on those 2 corners!! There’s a small hill between 2 corners-but you get up it pretty quick & I usually stayed in the saddle up the hill. I like a technical course with a SMALL hill. It was pretty quick because it was a 35+ (no 45+ that day). It seemed like there was always a couple guys just up the road, but they never managed to stay away. I did pretty well staying in the top 20-30 the whole day. The last 5 laps were pretty helter skelter; everybody wanted to get NEAR the front, but not ON the front and no team really set up a lead out to string it out. With 2 to go, my old nemesis Mike Norton told me to get on his wheel and he would “bring me home”. As soon as he said that I lost him. With a lap to go across the start/finish I was back on Mike’s wheel and it was all bunched up & I was in the second row on the edge of the pavement. Somebody tried to get me to move over-where he thought I could move to I have no idea. First he yelled at me then he slapped me on the thigh. I didn’t say anything, or move out of his way, but I thought, “you’re gonna have to hit me a lot harder than that to get me out of your way”. Up the hill with half lap to go I was near the front, top 6 maybe, near Mike, but not on his wheel. I had a little trouble with my gears, slipped back a little in the next 3 corners, came around the last corner with about 250 meters to go in about 10th, my legs were fried so I stayed in the saddle and did the best I could. I got a little boxed in and let a few guys by me. I thought I was about 12-15th and they only paid the top 10. The official results list me, along with 40 other guys at 11th place. Apparently the generator that was providing power for the photo finish camera ran out of gas with 1 to go so the officials had to pick the finish themselves. I overheard one official say that 10 guys had told her they were somewhere around 6th or 8th; hmmmmm. I didn’t even bother to ask if they got me in the finish. All in all I was pleased with how the race went, especially considering my DNF last week at Concord (no race report on that one). It looks like summer is really here; HHH today. Probably about 4-5 race left for me this year. Ciao -Dave