Not A Bad Start

The first Mason Lake race was this past Saturday and it was a pretty good start to the season. Although there were some isolated showers in the area, none of them came our way. The Pro1-2 field was a good size with everyone there sporting their new team kits for 2008. BRI was no exception as we started out with 9 total guys, 4 of them new to the squad for this year.

I am typically a slow starter, especially in a road race and Mason Lake usually provides at least a little bit of clowning around catch up time with faces you have not seen since last season. Not this time though as I found myself covering a move that had no BRI representation in it 6 miles into the race. Next thing I knew I was going through and off with 6 other guys and by the time we crossed the finish line by the end of the first lap we had 2 minutes. WTF?

The eventual group of 6 (we popped 1 after a lap) stayed together until a little over a lap to go when the fireworks started going off. Shawn Ongers of Axley ended up being a deserving winner (when he countered with the winning move my immediate thought was "oh, that doesn't look good"- let's just say he attacked with authority), Chris Teufel was 2nd, Mike Hone was 3rd and yours truly was 4th. Hone and I just stayed away from a chase group who almost got us in our slow crawl to the finish (the last 12 miles were interminable).

New BRI team member Chris Torgeson ended up rolling across the finish in the chase group in 6th.

Nice.