Yesterday was my last bike race of the season - the Colorado State CX Championships. Mentally, I was done with my season a couple weeks ago, but I decided to drag it out a couple weeks and race states since I was doing reasonably well. The body was willing, but finding the motivation to ride in the recent cold snap was difficult.
As much as I wanted to stay sitting in the nice warm car, I got out and raced. This was just not a good course for me. The temperature was dropping, and any hope of mud was rapidly freezing away. With some tricky descents and off-camber snowy slopes, it was more technical than I was ready for. Mental note for next year - do more skills work later in the season.
I got a decent start, and went into the first corner in the top 10 or 15. That put us on to a pretty tricky section, and I lost some spots as I was being tentative. I also dropped my chain. First time of the season amazingly.
I could see the leaders pulling away. Always a disappointing sight. Within a lap or so, I settled in with a group of 3 and I was content to follow them all the way to the end. We swapped positions occasionally, but I mostly just tried to sit on them and not set the tempo. My lack of motivation towards racing was really showing. :)
Eventually, one of that group had a mechanical and that just left two of us. I took a nice spill on the off-camber snow, but caught back up. I really wasn't working all that hard surprisingly, and I should have just attacked. In the end, I finished just behind that kid for 8th place overall.
Just for fun, I looked up the ages of the people in front of me. Everybody in front of me was younger (22, 22, 26, 23, 29, 14). So, I'm first place in the 30+ crowd. :)
They did age awards at a local half-marathon and the woman who won the 60+ said "you don't have to be fast to win your age group, you just have to stay alive and keep running".
ReplyDeleteLoved it.