Yesterday was the annual Donut Derby- its a goofy-race put on by the Lehigh Wheelmen where you ride 36 miles with 2 checkpoints where you can eat donuts for time bonuses. Catch is, you chum the course, you are DQ'ed. I decided to ride in, and after 2 'where the hell are you' calls from Mark and Cody,  I get there with plenty of time to spare only to find out Cody forgot his shoes. And Im usually the late one... Oh well, I find Kristy and the rest of the SVB crew, and we begin to line up. A few of us were taking this a bit more seriously than others (I wanted to beat my last time in this race) so I lined up with Kristy who is waaay faster than me. The rules were given, a trumpet blasted, and we were off. Kristy and I ended up in the third group back, not really where we wanted to be, so I suggested we move up. Thats the moment Kristy showed me how quick she really is-- off she went, so I chased. We made our way into the first group where I proceeded to suffer for about 3 miles of keeping up. I guess Im not that fast, but at least I hung for a while...after getting whipped off the back, several other groups formed and I found myself in a good group with Bill Bray. We made the first checkpoint, and Mark and Cody rolled in. I decided I better stay with my teammates, so we rolled out together. Apparently, Cody had pulled his calf in the first segment and Mark was whining about pulling him along. I told Mark to go ahead, and I would hang back with Cody to see if his pain let up a bit. We made the second stop, ate some donuts, and headed back out. A small group formed again, and we started working together pretty well holding abou 18-19mph average. Some kid kept attacking and blowing the group up, so when I heard him whining about how 'this group is slow' after he refused to take his pulls at the front, I decided to make sure he had his turn. He jumped one last time, and I hooked onto his wheel. He saw me coming, so tried to accelerate away. I held on firmly, while he increased the pace. Somewhere around 25mph, his buddy popped, and he signaled for me to take a pull. I hung on his wheel. He swerved. I hung on his wheel. He started complaining about me not taking a pull, so I reminded him about his comments about the group being 'too slow' and told him if he was so strong, that he needed to set the pace to see who could follow. Oh, and let him know he just blew up his friend. He grumbled a bit, and our group reassembled...and magically he began to take his pulls. I gotta admit, its nice to be strong enough to mess with the young bulls every now and then. In any case, we came down to the last 8 miles or so, and Cody found his steam. There was another guy in the group not taking pulls, so Cody got frusterated and decided to blow him up. And he did- it was pretty damn funny, too, because he also blew up Mark in the process who was now bitching about pulling Cody along for 18 or so miles. Oh well, I surged, moved up front, and set a new pace. The group broke apart at that point, and I hooked onto a group that was ahead of us. An older guy in a yellow jersey hung onto me, and we both began to pull the new group along. Eventually we cought a few more small groups on our way up, and managed to come in under 1:45- a full 17 minutes faster than the last time I rode the DD, and that included some time pacing Cody back into the group. At the end of the day, my legs were pretty blown, and we were proud to find out Kristy came across the line first with the best overall non-donut-adjusted time. Cool!  I met my goal, but next year, I will stay with the lead group