I thought that quote was perfect for this post. The race last night was much better than last week. Overall, I placed 10th last night with a final time of 1:48. Total of 4 laps, about 4 miles per lap. This is nothing incredibly impressive, but a personal best for me. On top of it, I've trimmed down 13 minutes on my time for the same amount of laps, since the race in April. Quite an accomplishment for me.
The race started out the same as last one. No Le Mans style start, just sitting on bikes in a cluster and then start. I was in back of the middle pack and jumped up a few spots at the very beginning. Immediately going into the singletrack, some girl wiped out hard and took up all of the space to get into the trails. It all came to a stop and people started walking bikes up the first hill. I downshifted and just sat on my bike, sort of track-standing, not wanting to disengage. Once it started moving again, I started pumping hard to pass those walking up. I passed about 3 or 4 people and shot through the singletrack. The pace was really fast and I was feeling good. I got stuck behind a slow rider, he messed up on a technical feature and I shot by him. I passed maybe one or two other riders after that.
At this point, it was about 1/3 through the first lap and I caught up with 2 other riders who were clipping along at a really good pace. I ended up in the middle of these two riders and we kept our pace with one another for about another lap after that. It was a lot of fun, as I felt we were working to push each other. The riding was a really fast pace for me, but I felt good. About half-way through the second lap, I clipped a tree with my handlebars and hit another tree next to it with my shoulder. The two riders took off without me and I was left alone for the next 2 1/2 laps, until the finish. I lost my pace pretty bad from there on out. I saw no one else for the rest of the race.
In hindsight, I should have pushed harder to pick those two riders up more quickly. However, I did feel good about my time and my start was really strong. I just need to keep it up in those last two laps next time.
More next week. No pics again, but someone was taking some last night. I'll see if I can get a hold of them.
2 comments:
Sounds like you had too much ND on the brain--shoulder blockin' trees.
Thanks for the write up and way to represent.
Great job. Top ten. Next race top 5 finish?
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