Masters 3: The race started off poorly for me = lesson learned = check your equipment when you arrive at the race. I did much better to get to the race early enough; about 2 hours before start time. Unfortunately, watching the finish line instead of checking my equipment left me to find that I was missing my Power Tap CPU, and now had a wheel that I didn't want on my bike. The wheel was changed along with a cassette for the climbs = ugh. Without data, but with a bike that was fully functional, I rolled out for my 8 minutes of warm-up. Downright laughable! Anyhow, it was warm enough that I didn't think a long warm-up was in my best interest. Race began at a reasonable pace as we started the 1st of four 15 minutes climbs (with sections of false flat in each). Due to a few attacks and chases, I think a split happened up the 2nd climb (Denzer Rd). About 10 of us worked together to increase the gap. After 30 minutes of pace-lining the gap was formed, and the pace slowed considerably. Dwight (Ace Hardware) from Marquette came up to me and said that we should wait until the last climb up Denzer to sort things out. I agreed, and the pack easily rolled on. Sure enough, Dwight ramped it up on Denzer creating a 10 second gap. I rolled up the front to tell my compatriot from the Circuit of Sauk (Doug Braun) that we should make this a 3-man race. I didn't think he'd bite on that, but he did. I followed, half the gap was closed by Doug, so I came around to finish it off ,and we then became an 8-man pack with another ¼ mile of climbing left to go. Shortly thereafer, Dwight's team mate jumped around the front of the pack and we all gave chase. This time there were 6 that made it across. We took this pack down the final descent towards the finish line. They left me on the front so I carefully braked on the descent. We should have been going 45 mph on this descent, but had slowed to 20 mph. Finally somebody jumped and we all gave chase with me on the back. One by one I let these guys draft me towards the front and passed them as they faded. At about 100m, I was getting really excited to go from about the 3rd wheel, but waited, and with 50 m to go I jumped out of the Dwight's slip stream to take him by a wheel. So much fun! Rick came across in 7th and Brian won the field sprint = success for Team Extreme!