This past weekend, I was originally going to just race the DRT Series finale MTB race in Fort Wayne on Sunday but once I realized there was a circuit race in Cincy on Saturday, I threw caution to the wind and decided to do both.
Since I've done well in the Huntington 140the past two years (it's a two day stage race with about 40 miles of cyclocross and single track) I wasn't too worried about overextending but I was still curious how my legs would respond on day 2.
The circuit race started much like every other Cat 3 race where everybody wanted everybody else to put their nose in the wind. Ugh, here we go again... The finishing straight was about 2% with a headwind so we'd end up barely going 15 mph many of the laps. I was surprised to see that the small break was not coming back - you know - because the 2% climb was too much work for the peleton, but towards the top it would usually end up at about 15 seconds. With about 5 to go, I decided to punch it about 100m from the apex. Since there was about the same grade downhill, I only really had a few hard seconds then another 15 at just slightly above threshold before I bridged.
With about 1km to go, one guy launched at a short, not steep climb but since nobody wanted to chase he took the W. I suppose I could/should have tried to bridge to him but I think everyone else was ready for any accels so it would have come down to a bunch kick and me half-gassed from bringing it back. As it ended up, I took second from the breakaway group sprint, third on the day. Not too shabby. I just need to get a bit more positioning experience to capitalize on my power.
Anyway, on to the MTB race. I really just wanted to have a good race without any stupid crashes resulting in me chasing for 2 hours, as has been the case lately.
Job Done. I didn't even sweat that I didn't get the hole shot (I was 2nd into the woods). The guy who took the lead laid it out in a corner about 3 minutes into the race so I took the lead from there. SuperMechanic Zach and I stretched it out to about 45 seconds after the first lap, then he dropped his pace to make sure he finished strong. I was feeling super good so I was gassing it as much as possible. I didn't realize how much time I pulled out until after I burped air, stopped, reinflated and got back on the bike without anyone in sight. In a wide open field, I still had about 30 seconds, which was nice.
After all was said and done, I clicked off 4 laps within 30 seconds of each other at just over 25 minutes, plus a silly-fast first lap at 24:38. I even got to bust out the Robbie McEwen running man victory salute.
I wasn't surprised afterwards, tho, that for about 45 minutes I was cashed out. After sitting around for a little while and getting topped back up on fluids I started to come back around. Capped the weekend off by having dinner with the family at a typically nice Italian joint. This time the food was molto salty. Should have had Mexican.
All in all, a good weekend!
Sorry for the lack of pics... Blogger is having upload issues tonight.
-the ATM
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