The Cap City race was windy, wet and muddy. A quarter of the lap was wet and slick. The Reynolds did their job that day helping me cut through the mud pretty easily. Andy decided to make us do a Le Mans start, making us run to our bikes for the start. I pretty much lost the race there. I had lots of room to cover but I was able to make contact pretty quickly. But as soon as I made contact, there was a bottle neck and we all had to stop. Well, we all bunched up, I was in the back and it just accordioned out. From there it was a hard solo effort for the next 50 minutes. I did slowly pick off people as the race went on. I was in the hunt for a Panther/RGF rider for the last few laps. He was always 10-15 seconds in front of me and I slowly reeled him in. With 2 to go, I caught a sight of Matt Weeks, the eventual winner fast approaching from the rear. Not wanting to get lapped, I turned on the jets. In the process I caught and rode past the Panther rider and even almost caught the 10th place rider. I settled in for 11th and was pretty happy with that. If I had a better start, I would have placed a lot higher.
Sunday I drove down to Louisville for OVCX #2 at Fisherman's Park. They screwd up the start order and did the top 5, then reverse order of registration! So I started in the back row. I stayed in contact until one downhill with lots of ruts. I had to go wide and came off the group. This could have been avoided if I pre-rode the course. To sum up the course, it was HARD. There was rarely a flat stretch of ground. A lot of the course was off camber, up hill, down hill, head wind, etc. The pain was turned up to 11. I motored along and started to feel better at around 20 minutes. I reeled in some riders and had my sights on three more just ahead. One of the guys dropped out while I started to fade in the last two laps and never caught the other two. Ryan Knapp also came out to race and simply dominated the race. He put in a sizable gap in the first few laps and just cruised to the finish. He lapped me at 3 to go.
I certainly did not feel like I had super legs on Sunday. Felt pretty flat through most of the race but I'm happy I kept at it and finished the race. I finished last but 6-7 others didn't make it to the end. 18th place.
The drive home was worse than the race itself. I felt like a horse kicked me in the stomach. Then I got chills, hot/cold, cold sweats. It got so bad that I had to stop driving and I pulled off on the side of the highway because I couldn't see straight. A few minutes later I hopped back in, went to the first gas station, used the bathroom and took an hour grimacing in pain/nap. I finally made it home at 11pm.
My fitness is coming along. I wished I would have done a bit better but I did lose about a week of training when I went to Interbike. It was not unexpected that I would race a little flat. This weekend is three days of racing. I'm going to get utterly destroyed at the UCI race on Friday and then the weekend I'll race 2/3 and try to finish near the top.
Miles; 600
YTD 6699
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