Friday, Cat 4, 54 miles, ~30 riders, 3rd place
The highlights...
• Woke up at 4am. Ate 3 eggs, some toast and pooped.
• Made a large bowl of oatmeal for the car ride.
• Drove in the dark, ate oatmeal, toggled between NPR and rap.
• Stopped for gas, pooped.
• Got to Laguna seca and finally the sun was rising.
• Got to registration by 6:45am because they said you have to register more than 60 min before your race. However, they open at 7am and my race was at 8am. So, little room for error if they wanna be pricks. They weren't, but played it safe nonetheless.
• Suited up, pooped.
• Prayed the new tires i put on the night before would be fine and not unveil a pinch flat.
• Warmed up with one lap around the race track. Fun.
• Peed
• Race started. During the neutral, talked to the rider next to me who had his arm in a sling. It took a few seconds to realize the water tank behind his seat was not for urine but rather his fluids since he could only use one arm. Am I in the right race? Straight cat 4 not disabled cat 4?
• On hill number 1 in the first 2 miles of the race we lost ~5 guys including the sling man. I felt so bad for him. Drove all that way, pay $70 and race alone for 54 miles? bummer. (he finished btw, i saw him roll across finish line ~20 min after us)
• Six 8-mile laps. 2 steep sections - feed zone and start of each lap. Random accelerations from time to time but nothing terrible. I just chilled in the very back for 50 miles. Chatted with 3-4 guys. Realized after 3 laps that we were doing a reverse CCX course for part of it!
• Despite all my trips to the porto-P I had to pee for about the last 20 miles. Not so bad that it hurt but bad enough that i thought about it constantly.
• We shed people from time to time. By the last lap we were ~15 guys.
• Okay - bell lap - time to get serious. Well, not really - I just need to be at the front on the final climb so on the final descent before the final climb I just coasted past 10 guys into 5th position.
• Final climb - in 5th position - we're flying up the low slope section. Just flying. So I sit tight. One guy goes but we're going so fast we suck him up pretty quickly. Another guy does the same thing so I just still sit tight. As soon as the hill steepens it gets serious. Half the guys drop. We're down to ~6 guys. One guy goes and another follows. I'm not in a good spot to jump then so I sit and let another guy work. Ride his wheel a little, realize it's now or never - go with everything so he can't suck. 1k to go. What? Inching up closer to them and out of nowhere it's 200m to go. What?? And around a bend and there's the finish. What???
• Usually the final 1k is the longest when going uphill. Not so here - the 1k and 200m distances were either shorter than advertised or I was so burned I couldn't think.
• Net result - happy with 3rd but a bit pissed I didn't go harder a little earlier - especially considering I misjudged the distance from 1k to end.
Thx for reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.