Hells Kitchen RR

I took the fam to missouri for spring break to chill at the lake house and figured while i was here i would drive the hour and do the hells kitchen road race. What a great idea! I took the two days prior to the event off, not even turning a pedal so i could be well rested for this race, one that i consider to be the hardest race on the calendar.
For those that dont know the rr, it is a 20 mile loop that cruises up a few little climbs and then near the end of the lap there is a monster climb that takes about 6 min's to climb. Most use a 27x12 gear ratio in the back so they can spin up the thing, but im not most people and figured i'd just suffer up the thing like a real man in the 25x11 (i need the 11 for the sprint you see), anyway as im cruising along on the first lap i notice that the ol legs arn't real happy about taken two days off and feel like concrete. Not a good thing to feel before we even started climbing, so i figure that the 40min spin to the first hells climb they would warm.
I made it to the climb and felt ok but as i started going up these guys ramped up the pace pretty hard, I was pushing 420w for the first two min of the climb till the legs told me to take a hike and the grouped kept cruising along and dropped me like a bad habit, the average wattage for the climb was 367w and took 5min and 45sec to climb, near the top i was wishing i had that 27x12 gearing as it was all i could do to granny up the end standing and keeping the bike going in a forward direction. My power to weight ratio is not so hot and the climb showed it fo sho.
In the end i caught up with 5 guys, and waited for another so we could finish the race and get some good training in just the same, but after the first lap two undiscovered guys that were with us quit and headed to the car so that left 3 of us to soldier on for the next two laps. Looking back on the power files i worked harder out of the pack than i did drafting in it so i ended up with a good workout.
Great results for the folk that kicked it up in kc last weekend. We are having a great start to the season.
Time: 3hours KJ: 2457 TSS: 274 NP:289 VI: 1.25