I arrived early Friday morning to do a 3 hour volunteer shift before my race. They sent me off to work with Patrick Goguen which was pretty cool, I was setting up course tape and changing and adjusting a few course features to make it safer for the riders pre riding. The course takes a beating, especially the giant dirt mount which seems to just crumble to dust throughout the weekend and holds the only technical features of the entire 2 mile course. As I became familiar with the course I started to feel less and less confident with how my race weekend was going to go, too much pavement, too little fun technical stuff.
To sum up my "typical, small" local races, it's start near the front,get a great start, hang on as long as I can and then fade back a few spots. Although this is a decent strategy, sometimes it only feels like racing for the first few laps and then it's just surviving, at that point it's hard to stay focused. With the 3/4 of a mile pavement start I could see this going horribly wrong for me from the beginning, my great start approach was never going to work to my advantage on this course, especially after they called up 6 National Champions or former National Champions from the USA and Canada to the front row On Saturday. I think I was in row 3 both days, maybe row 2 on Friday, either way who cares, the guys in the back have 3/4 of a mile of open pavement to blow by me.
A few hours before my race on Friday In my head my race went like this. 3/4 mile pavement, 180 turn, then straight on grass (windy) a few quick turns on grass, 1/4 mile at least of pavement, run up a sand wall (I hate running). YAY FUN DOWNHILL off chamber for 15 seconds, 180 turn 15 more seconds of fun up and down off chamber. More boring mostly straight grass stuff, 10 second dirt section, around the little pond, Meh not very exiting, back into the infield more flat grass U-turn onto pavement for the finish. So basically I'm going to get dropped in the wind in the 1st mile and ride solo for 45 min on the road and flat grass course.
To my surprise this is what actually happened (both days very similar races) The start was fast but nobody really broke off the front, It was hard to tell how the start was really going to play out until after the 1st 180 onto the grass, until then it was a large group. We made that 1st turn and I quickly realized I must have been around 20 or so spots back, not really the start I was hoping for. Much to my surprise my heart rate was only about 175 BPM and I was comfortable (for a CX race). In the heat of SB and Midnight ride my heart rate was around 195 very early on (not good). I moved up a couple spots as we pulled onto the second section of pavement but my big move on Friday came right before the first run up, the group stayed on the pavement, I dove right to the inside and passed a bunch of people right before the run up. At the top of the run up I found myself in a much better position maybe 12-15 from the front. The course was designed for group racing which turned out to suit me pretty well. Both days there was a group of about 7 out front, all the usual suspects, Myerson, Timmerman, Laliberte. I was in the next group of about 7 and feeling quite comfortable with this group racing style, I didn't do a lot of the work and was able to keep my HR and legs in check. Both days I moved up into a group of 3-5 guys behind the lead group. Friday on the second to last lap I found myself in the back of a group of 3, I was just sitting in and feeling good. As I planned my last lap attack in my head they dropped me on the run up
, I couldn't regain contact and finished 10th. Saturday's last lap I found myself in a group of 6, one guy slipped up on the little steep climb and stalled 2 other guys with him. The rest of the group, myself and two others built a quick gap and were able to hold those guys off until the end. I lost to Miles Billings and Todd Bowden in a sprint finish to put me at 12th, I'll take it. Awesome weekend on a different type of course that brought out some great racing.Brian
