Today's was a first. I started quite steadily planning to wind it up and finish strong, trying to judge the extra 5 miles over 25 pacing. Things were going to plan and I'd stated picking the pace up and was rolling nicely and feeling okay.
The problem came at 18 miles where I started reeling in a queue of 5 cars stick behind a slow moving tractor towing some massive piece of equipment. As I got closer I came off the extensions on to the base bar and was soft tapping a bit behind the last car in the middle of the lane making sure they'd seen me. I then went to move out to overtake the first car and just as I moved out so did it to the white lane to block me. No idea why as I know they'd seen me in their mirror.
I moved back behind and as their stayed out wide thought maybe they were leaving space to go inside them, so I eased up there, still soft tapping on the base bar. As I got alongside the passenger window soft knuckle dragging cretin lent half put the window to start shooting abuse in my face. Nice. We then did a left at a roundabout and the traffic cleared a bit a after concertinaing in to it and I thought finally they'll sod off, they did but not without swinging in to squeeze me in to the gutter first.
I am normally a very Zen cyclist and just leave people be but the continued abuse in my face whilst adrenalin was up and my race already spoiled I shouted something back. Can't remember what, something erudite like f*** off.
Race ruined and my race head was long gone. Ages on the base bar stuck in traffic and a load of abuse shouted in my face kind of spoilt things.
I noticed at HQ that the rider who started 2 minutes behind me but caught me after 10 miles also DNF so hopefully he had a puncture or just was feed up with the tractor and didn't also get abuse.
No idea who won as I wasn't that bothered about the result board.
Fortunately these cretins are very rare and this morning was a one in a million occurrence. Two races next weekend, anyone want to run a sweepstake on what might happen
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