Rick Newhouse Criterium

I'm dead tired after a seven hour drive back from Rochester, so I may cut this short..
Saturday I raced the 35+ at Ninigret and was having a pretty good day.. until I discovered that the weird bouncy feeling in the rear tire which began 1/2 way through the race, was in fact a slow leak.. I must have looked pretty silly looking down at my tire after every corner. The same thing happened at Attleboro last year, and it turned out to NOT be a flat- just some slippiness in the corners.. so I shrugged it off as the same issue- after all these were brand spankin new Conti 4000S tires! With two laps to go I finally saw the tire for what it really was- 40 psi of soft mushy rubber. With my team mate Adam Sternfield up the road with Team Benidorm rider Wade, I was hoping I could just coast across the line and to hell with sprinting for 7th.. but then when they were overtaken with 1/2 lap left to go, I resolved to finish this thing without disgracing myself. So when a right handed surge erupted in the final bend, I followed it as best I could, put my head down and sprinted in the saddle- to take 6th in the field sprint (10th overall, 4 escaped early) A disappointment that they changed the prize list to 8 deep instead of 10.. Oh well! Such is bike racing..