2nd Race, 2nd Place

Well it was another good Sunday for a race with the temperature maybe a bit cooler then what i would have liked, coming in at 11 degrees. The race was called Torigni sur Vire Maillot des Jeunes, the race consisted of 12 10km laps with 107 starters. As i was getting ready for the start of the race our director pulled me aside and said that for the first 3 lap he wanted me to attack and keep attacking until I got into an early break. So I did a good warm up as I prepared to attack from the gun. As it happened I attacked from the get go and stayed away for about 5km. Just before the pelaton caught me I started to have trouble breathing as my lungs had become irritated from the cold dry air because they wont use to it. So I retreat into the safety of the pelaton where I tried to recuperate. After about 30 km I was all good and ready to go again but unfortunately a break of around 11 riders had already form, so I was forced to take turns with my team mates at covering any other breaks that might try to form as we had one rider in Kenji away in the break.
With 40km to go a 2 man break got about half way to the lead group with Florent who is a team mate of mine again about half way between the pelaton and the 2 man break. I basically just rolled off the front of the pelaton and when I had about 50m I put the hammer down and went for it quickly catching Florent. We then preceded to work together and catch the 2 man break and then just before we got 3 laps to go our group of 4 had caught the lead group. Now with 14 in the lead group including three from my team about half of the 14 started to swap off as the others had some sort of excuse why they could not work. Anyway after crossing the line and getting the 2 laps to go sign we had put over 2min into the pelaton. Now It was time for tactics to come in to play. With Florent only knowing a bit of English, Kenji who is Japanese not knowing french or English and myself only knowing a bit of French we had a hard time deciding what to do as we were forced to use sign language to communicate. anyway some how we agreed on a plan and it was that 1 would attack and as soon as he was brought back the other would attack and so on till one would stick. This went on for about half a lap until myself and another guy ended up getting away on the hill. we swapped of together till we got the bell lap because Kenji and another rider had just joined us. now we were a group of 4 with about a 40sec gap on the chasing group. Kenji and I went back to attacking one after another until with 4 km to go I broke free with one of the riders. At the 2km to go sign going up a short hill the other rider attacked me, I tried to get onto his wheel but my legs started to cramp, however as I got over and crested the hill on to the flat I started to reduce the gap and finally caught him with 1km to go where I decided to sit on him and attack him with 500M to go. unfortunately I was not strong enough and he came round me with 250m to go and I had to settle with 2nd which I was still very pleased with considering it was my second race for the year. Kenji ended up just getting out sprinted for 3rd.
My next race will be this Saturday being a French Cup Time Trial of 25km, so I am looking forward to that.