Weekend Riding and Racing

I got out Saturday on for a nice 60 mile, 5000' climbing day through Buckhorn and Rist canyons. My legs felt pretty good and I pushed hard all day. It was the best I've felt on that ride in a long time.

I need to get ready for a stage race at the end of the month, so I followed up Saturday's climbing day with a circuit race in Golden. Part of my goal was to also gain some more confidence/experience in criteriums.

Each lap of this particular race has some high speed downhill cornering and a killer little hill. I did fairly well at getting myself near the front of this race. The real killed on the course was the climb and, more importantly, the corner before it. Since I wasn't on the front at the corner before the hill, I ended up having to brake hard and then really get on the gas to get back with the group. That braking and surging finally killed me and I got dropped along with one of my teammates.

The high speed corners on this course were good practice for me (and they were fun). My teammate (Rob) can rally corner well, so I was following his lines and it really helped out.

I ended up finishing 10th place (out of 40+ finishers) which is a great result for me. Maybe spending money on a power meter this year was a good idea. :)

I'm currently "recovering" on the couch with Belgian blonde and quadruple ales while I watch the Tour of Flanders (a.k.a Ronde von Vlaanderen), a classic Belgian bike race.