Koppenberg

Today was my first race of the year - The Koppenberg Circuit Race, which gets its name from a famous cobblestone climb in the Belgian spring classic De Ronde Van Vlaanderen (The Tour of Flanders). This wasn't one of my 'A' priority races (or even close), but I still thought I'd be able to do decent.

I had an okay starting spot, but I lost some position once we hit the dirt section. It was pretty windy, and being on the loose dirt in such close quarters kind of sketched me out a bit. Ideally you want to be near the front of the race for the first trip up "The Koppenberg Climb", because it's a good place to lose some time as you get stuck behind people falling off their bikes. And being stuck behind people is exactly what happened. I wasn't aggressive enough to be at the front so I found myself near the end of the main field and wouldn't you know it, people starting hopping off their bikes in front of me and I had to run up the hill carrying my bike. It was not a pretty site, especially when I reached the top and got hit by some strong wind. At that point, my race was pretty much over. With the 30+ MPH gusts of wind along the front range, you can't make up time against a big pack. I put in a good effort, but it was super frustrating.

I know I'm in way better shape than last year, so it really sucked to do so poorly today. It's not that it's a big deal to not place highly, but I really felt like I should have performed better than I did. At least I didn't fall off the bike, and the race season is just getting warm. The silver lining on today's race experience was that I managed to pass about 5 or 6 people in the last 200 meters of the race.