Still some awesome, awesome racing going on in men's bee.
I wasn't too confident heading into this one, rally duty has kept me busy and the last time I was on a bike was at the previous weekend's race. A couple practice laps around the course just drove that point home- plenty of opportunity to hammer to your heart's content. Unfortunately, my heart wasn't feeling up to the task.
I was disappointed to see that Matt Danielson didn't make the race, he and I had a pretty good battle going on in the last couple races. So, I slotted in behind Nevin at the start line and figured I'd try to keep pace with whatever pack he ended up in.
Unfortunately, it seems his mechanical woes last week lit some kind of fire under his butt for this round and he set a blistering pace at the start, the rest of the pack followed suit and the first lap was just crazy fast. I had sort of picked out some gears and shift points ahead of time, but all that went out the window trying to keep up.
And then we got to the second lap....
Go ahead, take a look at the detailed results. Notice a precipitous drop in lap times after the first lap? Yeah, I guess we all learned we weren't "Eh" class racers. Unfortunately, that wasn't the only tactical mistake I made, on the third lap I tried way too hard to stay ahead of somebody on a section of the course I shouldn't have. On the fourth lap, I came to my senses and looked at what I could with where I was in terms of the overall point standings and lined myself up for an awesome final lap.
Mike, Bill, and I went into the final lap, nose to tail. No sneaky treachery tricks on my part would do any good- these guys knew what they were doing. The next racer was too far up for us to overtake, so this was a battle between the three of us. I did manage to get a good line at the entrance to the mud pit to get into the lead and get the good line through, but after that was a lot of very fast, somewhat technical riding- Mike on the mountain bike would have the advantage, so I kind of cooled my jets in hopes that he'd overtake me and I could draft off him for a bit.
He never actually did make the pass, so on the final stretch of open road ( where my 'cross bike had the advantage), I slowed way the heck down in hopes he'd pass and I could draft and take the final sprint.
So I slowed down....
Then he slowed down...
Then I slowed down....
Then he slowed down...
And then we were going about 10mph.....
And then he figured what the hell and cranked it up a bit.
I drafted for a bit, and then just dialed it up and managed to take the final sprint, beating Mike and Bill and getting 7th place for myself. Unfortunately, Mike still thought we had another lap to go after that one- so he was working a whole different strategy. That seems to be my best opportunity for winning these days, just making sure I know what lap I'm on when my fellow competitors don't. :)
There was a bit of a shakeup in the points this weekend- Steve pulled out an impressive finish for 2nd place. Kenny took another commanding lead, but not so much that he's completely untouchable- it gives us something to chase anyway. I'm really looking forward to the double header in two weeks up in Copper Harbor. I'll be making my single speed 'cross debut in at least one race for sure.
Chris had healed up enough to race this weekend, but thankfully he was still out there getting great pictures of the rest of us....
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