Sport 35-44

14th/19 (1:35:14)

Great weather and trail conditions to race in Ft.Ord this week end. I was hoping more people would go race at Cool, but the field was about the same size as last time.

Drove down to Monterey on Sat and pre rode the course with fellow Team Integrate members: we did 2 laps at a moderatly fast pace. Course was about 5 miles with almost 600ft of elevation.

On race day, since I was already there, I arrived earlier than usual, around 9AM: this time I wanted to try a longer warm-up: after watching the Beginner class start I got ready and started riding around one and half hout before race start, for a total of 1 hour, doing 1.5 laps.

There were about 20 riders in my group at the start line: the start wasn’t as fast as the past two races, ot at least it didn’t feel like it and I was able to hang with the big group for the first half of the lap. After the first lap I couldn’t find my rythm and every time a got passed by a faster rider I couldn’t keep up for long. Second and third lap went by pretty quick and in the fourth lap I really started to feel my legs. No cramping but legs felt really heavy and had to slow down. I think I rode too much in the few days before the race: I consider these races as hard training so is no big deal, but it is definitely something to keep in mind for the  bigger races later in the season.

I’m still 11:48 behind and this is the way this season will go, pretty much the same way it was 3 years ago in beginner class. Riding with faster guys is definitely the way to get faster, but it’s easy to loose motivation when you’re hanging at the end of the pack. Need to keep focusing on the fun side.

Next race Lake Sonoma, fun race, more technical.