http://www.slowtwitch.com/Opinion/Fl..._word_111.html
"those racing clearwater this weekend (or IMFL last weekend) are charlie browns. florida is lucy. lucy is asking charlie brown to kick the football. charlie brown knows better. he knows better. but, he tries to kick it anyway. at some point, you have to stop placing the onus on lucy, and start considering charlie brown's judgment.
i don't care how many times charlie decides to yet again try and kick the football. the only thing that bothers me is when he yet again complains, and blames the draft marshals, or NAS, or WTC, or his fellow competitors. when you place a championship course, with parity of field, on a set of pancake flat roads, you haven't learned what USA Cycling has learned about criteriums: that you've got to stick a nice hill in there somewhere.
i'm cool with NAS sending off 2600 people off at once. i'm cool with WTC sending the country's best AGers off in groups of a hundred or more, waves separated by a few minutes. but, whenever this happens on these flat florida courses, big packs will form. if you go to these races, it's because you want to go. you're not coming in protest, you're coming because there's something here that you're drawn to — that even tho you rail about the drafting and the packs, the flatness by nature appeals to you. otherwise you'd choose a course designed to split up the packs.
go ahead and kick the football. but when it gets yanked out from under you again, i'm not laughing with you, i'm laughing at you.
Dan Empfield
aka Slowman "