“Boy today everything sucked: my chain sucked, weather sucked and i did too.”
That’s what was going in my head as I pushed to finish the last lap of the 4.5 laps of the CCCX course today: that was fun!
I did a pretty good job of setting my expectations right in the last few days. I know the Sport boys in the 35-44yo age group are extremely competitive and looking at the times from last year I knew it was hard not to finish last.
Goals for today were, in order of priority:
- Finish the race (do not DNF)
- Do not DFL
- Finish in less than 2hrs (whatever the course was.)
Seems like I did achieve all 3 of them, still ending up in 15th place (out of 16th) in 1:56, 19min behind the leader.
Yesterday I didn’t feel too great, sore throat and feeling pretty weak: I got pretty soaked few times this week riding my bike to work and I was kind of expecting this. This morning I woke up with general soreness in my arms and legs: not good.
A slightly change in routine: sport races start at 11AM rather than 9AM. It felt kind of strange to get out so late to go racing.
Late breakfast (at 8AM) and then snack and protein drink to get to to the start line
I had most of the stuff ready the night before, but still I managed to forget home my Garmin Edge (still attached to the battery charger…). This felt like a big blow, as I usually rely a lot on the Edge to pace myself and see if I’m pushing too hard or not hard enough. This added to the stress of the first sport race as well.
Started warming up around 10.15 and pre rode the first half of the course. It was raining and the trail was pretty sloppy: almost immediately started to see chain suck in the middle ring. Went back to the car, cleaned up the mess and lubed again the whole drivetrain with wet lube. Then went back to warming up.
At 11 we were all lined up ready to start. Start was delayed and I think we ended up starting around 11.20. I t was cold and windy and thos extra waiting minutes seemed endless.
My age group started real fast and at the end on the road stretch I was already end of the pack. The course included new sections of trails, pretty fun but don’t seem to drain as well as the old ones. In particular one hill (which I renamed ’sloppy hill’) was pretty bad. After the initial half lap we were told to go 4 laps. Halfway thru the first lap I couldn’t run the middle ring because of chain suck (which made me stop a couple times). Luckily the small ring didn’t seem to suffer from this problem, although it slowed me down on the fast sections (but even shifting to the big ring did not seem to work).
The rest of the race was pretty uneventful, I was riding alone for the most part and getting passed by some faster & older guys: I was pretty sure I had at least a couple riders behind me.
The lack of the Garmin made so that I wasn’t sure I had one more lap or not, but I got confirmation when I crossed the line and was told ‘one more to go’. I felt I had still gas in the tank but still I’d rather have stopped at that point.
The trail got real sloppy in the last lap and I started to feel my legs tired. Possibly the worst lap and I think I lost at least 2 positions. The small ring started to pull the chain and I had to stop and no choice other than put the big/big combo: that way the chain/derailleur was so stretched that there was no way the chain would suck.
At some point somebody was still behind me...
Felt good to finish my first sport race, even with a second to last position.
The outlook for my first season in sport class is pretty gloomy though and I’ll have to improve real quick or start piling up a bunch of DFLs.
http://i368.photobucket.com/albums/oo122/Zen_Turtle/2009/CCCX-1%2015Jan/474901407_8oU4c-O.jpg
