Could not wait to get out and race, I have not been in a couple of weeks and was going through major withdraws!
Rode down with Hoppe who was going to race the 2/3’s on the day.. Myself, I doubled up and did the 3/ 4’s and SingleSpeed…
The event was well attended and the course was sweeeeet! I love courses that actually have some run ups, technical sections.. Kind of levels the playing field for us MTB guys…
Toed up for the 3/ 4’s, quite a big field. I was 2 rows back which sucked, hit the hard left off of the cobbles about 8 back and within about 2 min later I screwed up a turn in traffic and approx 8 more passed me…
Got back clipped in and started doing the best I could to pick guys off. Some folks are very timid with the off camber and the 180’s… I accidently was rubbing a bunch of back tires…
There was a rather steep short climb that some people were running up and in traffic there was a bottle neck developing. I hammered it up and took the high side and passed 5-8 guys right there in a 30 foot space… Back on track!
The rest of the race was good, just got into a groove of pedaling your insides out, recover and repeat…
The long run up (well, run up for us mortals) was not that bad until the last lap where it was draining your legs pretty bad…
During the last lap I went with a 360 guy. My plan was to suck on his wheel a bit and then out sprint him at the finish. We could not even see the leaders at this point.
Well, we farted around a bit too much and a third guy joined our little group. The three of us were back to back on the final cobble section where I knew it was going to be an interesting finish. 100 feet from the finish the guy took off on the sprint past the 360 guy, I got on his wheel and just missed out sprinting him by inches…
Come to find out later that was for the podium! SOB!!! So I was 4th by inches… If I had known that, perhaps I would have pushed it a bit more on that last lap... But who really knows...
Singlespeed race was pretty uneventful.. The soft course, run ups, sprint finish had really taken its toll on my legs and I was pretty much out of gas before the race even started…
I hit the hole shot 3 back and that was the best it was going to get… I immediately lost ground after that and never got it back… Finished a mediocre 7th… Owe well…
All in all, it was a great day of racing on a great course and venue!!!
Peace!
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