I like to mention certain details about any of the races I take part in, the location, the size of the field and the weather conditions—as all of these details have an effect on the outcome of the race and they help add to the word count required by my editor (who is me, imaginarily dressed in a green visor—as I prefer my mental editor pictures to be olde timey). So the conditions at FBF on Tuesday were hot, kind of windy with a medium sized field. There, I’ve satisfied the requirements of my mentally be-visored self, now I can move on to the race itself.

We needed to drop James.

That is the only thing that needed to happen on Tuesday. Aaron is sitting second place in the overall standings to James, and he has been losing ground because we have not been able to accomplish the aforementioned goal. We have not been dropping James. And if James is not dropped, he will outsprint everybody. Every. time. So we made our plans to alter this circumstance on Tuesday. James has been doggedly (and I mean doggedly) marking Aaron’s wheel, as that’s what he’s supposed to do. He is trying to win this thing, after all.

Our plan was to have me attack and potentially get away (James doesn’t care about me), and then Aaron could jump up to me with James on his wheel, and then we’d try and drop him. We lined up and I took off right away (these races are short, you have to punish while you can). I was caught, I repeat this scenario or something like it for about three laps. After the green jersey sprint, the speed went up and Aaron got away in a group of five that included James. I was not included in this mix, but I felt that the group ahead would offer Aaron a good opportunity to try and sneak away.

The group did not drop James.

I worked my magic on the remains of the peloton to ensure a successful break, but in the end, James proved to be too tenacious to be discarded. James won, with Aaron finishing fourth. Maybe we can blame the puzzling lack of FBF wind this year or other factors, but there’s no denying that James is on very good form, and it’ll take a gargantuan effort to drop him.