This would be my 1st race outside of Oklahoma and what an adventure it was......
Pre-Ride
Friday afternoon we packed up the bikes and headed out to pre-ride the course. We had to wait a little bit to get our racing numbers before hitting the dirt. Once that was complete, off we went. We did both loops, the Pro/UCI course and then the Cat1,2,3 loop that I'd be racing......both were technical, hilly and like nothing we have in Oklahoma. The whole point of doing a pre-ride is to see where on the course you can attack, what sections you can make time, where you need to be careful etc...etc. Conditions for the pre-ride were not good....hot and humid so I was pretty spent by the time we were done.
The famous Pave....from Paris-Robaix
Race Day
Race day arrived bright and early with a 6am alarm and headed out to Lance Armstrong's ranch for my race at 8:45am. When we pulled up to the gates, the place was already packed. We parked the car and I got my stuff together and headed out for a warm up. I was pretty sun burnt from the pre-ride the day before and my legs weren't very happy with me for riding again, however once I got the 30 min warm up done I felt much better. Did my usual pre-race routine of drinking a bottle of EFS and downing a gel before the start.
I headed over to the staging area and pushed my way towards the front, then they called us up by name and number. Luckily I got a spot on the 2nd row. While waiting on the rest of my group to get lined up the officials told us they had 9 more people enter the race for a total of 90 racers!!!!
At the start line I chatted to the guy next to me who came over from Australia for the race....then another guy who came over from England......turns out there would be quite a few sandbaggers in my group.
The whistle blew to start the race and I didn't get a great start being in the middle of the row. I was trying to be careful and not wreck instead of hammering it to get out front. By the time we hit the single track I was probably sitting about 12th overall. The front part of the course was pretty technical and it was here I started to pick people off.....going around them as they hoped off their bikes on the rocky sections. I'd made my way to 4th place as we went down into the bottom of the course and the guy in 3rd flatted and all of a sudden I was holding a podium spot!! These guys were flying and I was pushing myself really hard......on one section of downhill on the backside of the course we were hitting the turns and a little table top at 22mph....a little scary for me!!!
Super fast downhills...
Eventually we came to a point in the course about 4.5 miles in when my body had had enough......I'd pushed it too hard and the heat from the day before took its toll. My speed and output started dropping dramatically and the guys I'd picked off started passing me along with a bunch of others. I had nothing left in the tank and my goal was to spin it out for the remainder for the race.
I settled in with a couple of guys who I figure I could pace in with, when we came over the hill to climb the last big hill of the day.....there was a good crowd of spectators gathered there, which was pretty inspiring and somehow I found a second wind and attacked a couple of guys up that hill which was a really cool feeling.
About to attack on the hill
Giving it all I got on the hill about to pass that guy..
The last section pops you out of the trees and into an open section to the finish and Mark was there waiting and I knew he was about to get on me to sprint finish, so I hit the big ring and hammered it before he could yell. I managed to beat out 1 guy in the sprint in my category and catch the guy who finished 2nd in the 40-49 category.
Sprint finish
In the end I took 29th out of 90 riders from across the nation and a few from overseas. This was such a cool experience, course, race and I will definitely be back next year. I left came away knowing I totally spent myself and left everything on the race course.
Sat afternoon was the UCI/Pro event that Mark was racing in against some of the biggest names in the cycling world......these dudes show up to the start line wearing ice vests to keep cool!!!! Unfortunately Mark snapped his chain right off the start line and DNF'd. Below is the video I took of the start of their race......those guys are fasssssssst.
Next race is in 2 weeks at Roman Nose State Park which is another technical rocky course which suits me just fine.
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