This past Monday the road racing season finally ended for me. My last two criteriums were somewhat bittersweet, but gave me a lot to feel good about going into next year. I will start first with the previous weekend where I raced in downtown Birmingham for the first time. This event was new for 2011 and set up on a 6 turn .52 mile loop. I don't normally have fun in crits, but this course was technical, fun and fast. For a change the weather was in the 70's and perfect. My race was scheduled to run for about 45 minutes. Which ended up being 34 laps. The only downside of the race was the Cat 3 field was to race with the Cat 4 field. I thought this would be a bad thing, but to be honest the course was such it weeded out the weak links in the first few laps.
Off the line I didn't feel great, I hadn't raced on the road in some time. The first 15 minutes I had to fight hard to stay with it. The only thing that kept me in it was my ability to rail corners, a new confidence that has grown recently with all my trail riding. After I finally settled down I took to taking it easy riding near the back. I knew I could use the corners to my advantage to move up later in the race. With four to go things started to get a bit more serious and the pace picked up. With one to go I started to push up hard on the outside to gain spots. Unfortunately that was where the only crash would be going down the front stretch. I had absolutely no where to go but lockup the brakes and wait to go around...race over. Despite that part the event was awesome and for a rare turn I actually felt good in a race.
This past Monday was the season finale in Auburn Hills. Dabaets Devos had a new course layout, making it a giant long loop at 1.5 miles long. Unfortunately the weather was crappy, 56° with a little mist and a lot of wind. I wasn't really to motivated to race, mentally the road season had already ended for me and the focus was on the trails. Once the race got going though I perked up. Throughout the race I took a few pokes at making a break or going for a prime. With the conditions though it was going to come down to a sprint. I tried to focus a lot on positioning after the last races debacle. With 4 laps to go I had a solid spot in the front, however holding that was another thing. The windy back stretch left the race wide open. Sure enough any move I made was countered by another line of riders coming back to the front. With one to go I found my side of the pack was failing so I went to the back to make a surge up the other side. This move allowed my to get back to mid pack, about where I wanted to be for the sprint. Unfortunately once again I got hosed, the guy in front of me with two corners just kind of took the corner half pace. The other 3 lines surged up my inside and instantly 10 spots where gone. To make matters worse I had to start my sprint early to get back in the swarm going to the line. That little bit was enough to kill me and I couldn't make up spots and crossed 21st.
Still though it was another solid race for me, next year once I get the leg back to 100% and can train like normal again things will be much better. Just being competitive with the lack of training I was doing is great. Next up a couple days of rest and a change of focus. I've got 2 months to prep for Iceman, this year I will do it by doing 4-5 MTB races instead of one. Also since I am not burned out like last year I got a little bit more motivation to train hard and get revenge on the grudge I hold with Iceman. Should be fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment