It paid off, because while I *think* he stopped caring about winning right about the same time, it razor-focused my efforts and got me over my fear of tangling with another rider on the final sprint.
In my first win, I rounded the final corner 5 bikes back, but on the fast side, realized I had nowhere to sprint with two guys ahead, and just shouted at them that I was coming through. They gave me room, and I made it work.
The second win was the hardest possible way I could think of to win a race. We were running clockwise, so the sprint was a 45-second affair with the first half uphill. I love going that way, so I ran off for the first prime. And then the 2nd. And coming off that 2nd prime sprint, the two other challengers decided we should make a break of it...with 8 or 9 laps remaining. It seemed foolish, but I stayed with them for a lap or so before deciding it wouldn't hold.
As I was just reaching the front of the peloton, gasping for breath, 3 strong riders broke and rolled across the 1/10 mile chasm to the 2 up front. Uh oh. We'd tried all season to make 2, 3, and even 4-man breaks work, but everybody seemed to agree a 5-man break was really needed. They held their distance at 1/10 mile ahead for two laps while I failed to organize the group.
One other rider tried to bridge across but was dying in the middle, and we just couldn't do anything to chase it down, so I ran off with 5 laps to go, caught the guy in the middle, took a breath, told him to follow, and knuckled down for the remaining distance across. It took 1.5 laps, but we hooked on just as the leaders were starting to up the pace.
With 2 laps to go, the gap was just edging 2/10 of a mile, and we had a group of 7. I was hurting really bad, but stayed glued to the wheel ahead and tried to find any opportunity to rest.
In the final lap, they threw me out front and set up the finish for the only team that had 2 riders in the break. I quickly abandoned any thoughts of the win and just got out of the way, rounding the final turn in 4th. But then the guy ahead sat up to let his teammate sprint. And then the next guy bobbled a shift. And the guy expected to win took a swerving start to his sprint, scrubbing speed. I figured my heart-rate was already a zillionty-five, so why not. I jumped on his wheel, followed him up the hill and into the kink, popped out left and threw everything I had at it, edging him by less than half a wheel. Strava data showed that by the end of the race, we had increased the gap to 3/10 of a mile, or almost 45 seconds!
With that 2nd win, I had secured enough points to end my B season prematurely, just barely out of reach of the 3rd place finisher.
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