DClog

State Cyclocross Championship

A solid fifth place finish and a pretty decent ride left me mostly satisfied.

It was a long and very technical course which required a wide variety of bike handling skills. The rain had begun before the start so the course was becoming more technical and increasingly slippery as the race progressed.

By the end of the first lap a decisive selection was occurring, six riders were moving off the front and the winner was going to come from this group. Gerard was the fifth rider of this group and I was right on his wheel trying to conserve energy. Around a 90 degree turn, on mostly gravel, Gerard's tires slid out and he went down hard, I was practically doing a wheelie on my front wheel trying to avoid running over my fallen teammate. Meanwhile the other four riders got a substantial gap which I tried to close for the remainder of the race.

By the seventh and final lap I had nearly bridged up to the fourth place rider and had a comfortable advantage on the riders behind me. But in the end the grassy fields and asphalt sections were not quite long enough for me to make up ground, while I tried to limit the damage on the long run-ups and twisty, muddy single-track.

This championship race was worth more series points than the normal races. If I did the math correctly this will put me in fourth place in the overall series, in a very tight race with third. First and second place have a comfortable margin, while fifth and sixth are distant.

The HRM data suggests that I was not well rested for this event and the altimeter graph shows the severity of the climb on this course.

Posted by dancoy at November 21, 2004 02:02 PM