Sturbridge?

As much as I want to race and have a grand old time.. I have to remind myself that I am not known for being an excellent road racer. I actually do a poor job of being pack fodder lately! I raced in Rochester Sunday, GVCC Classic Pro-1-2-3.. When I felt highly uncomfortable during te neutral opening miles, I knew I was in for a joyless day. Racing commenced on a right hand turn and everyone took off with guns blazing.. that is, all 25 of us. I later discover that that very first acceleration took me to 1120 watts.. WTF are we doing over 1000 watts in the opening kilometer of a 70 mile road race?? Give me a break! Twenty or so minutes later, I was riding all by myself.. hating road races, swearing to stick only to crits and getting a nice sunburn in the process.. From there, I met up with my kid brother- told him to drive himself home and that I was gonna salvage my day with a good 3 hour ride. What a death march! I could barely hold zone 1-2 and I was feeling very much like I had just started in this sport- weak and untrained.
Monday I did a one hour recovery ride- still in Rochester- and covered a lot of the old roads I trained on as a junior back in the late eighties. It is absolutely astonishing how much farmland has been transformed into suburban communities of 2500 square foot homes! Disgusting. Food prices got you down? Eat your house!
Tuesday we were back in town (drove back Monday night) so I rode to work easy, rode home easy- still feeling like 1/2 a man.. (skipped the hill repeats I was supposed to do!) Wednesday I repeated the same- 12.5 mile easy ride to work, repeat on the ride home. Legs still feel like mush and tank feeling empty.. Today I ride to work and start feeling a touch better.. strength coming back.. hey I think I can do my scheduled intervals tonight! And so I did. Nailed every single one of them without a single watt of slippage in the numbers, all the way to the end. Hard CP6 intervals in zone 5b.. each of the three sets topped off with a 30 second CP1 effort.
Sturbridge (?) Do I dare? Here's the thing.. I'll hate myself more if I don't bother to try, than if I try and fail. Besides, four of my newest team mates are going to be there.. and one of them needs apparel from me. I think it's a no-brainer.. but in the back of my mind I'll be having recurring thoughts of sprinting at 1100 watts in the GVCC Classic just to keep up with the field! That really sucked balls. An off day in a small and stacked Pro-Am field. Recipe for disaster.. Saturday- having team mates will help. I'll grab the wheel of Ralf or Adam or Kyle and just fixate on it I guess. Maybe form will be there for a change! Maybe letting the spring unwind a little bit these past few days will do the trick. Thanks for reading.