I started the day with my usual smoothie, and pretty much rested all morning. After riding to work most of the week, my legs were pretty tired, so I wanted to take it easy as much as possible. My race wasn't until 4pm, so I was going to have plenty of time to relax.
Around noon, I whipped up a tossed salad with some chicken. I picked up a package of "power greens" from the store today, and gave that a try. I usually just do some iceberg mixed with spinach, but today I mixed some premade lettuce mix with some "power greens". This consisted of spinach, kale, chard and something I'd never heard of before. And I don't feel like walking to the fridge to check it out. Pretty tasty, though.
After lunch, I started gathering all my stuff together. I've put together a race-day checklist to make sure I don't forget anything. Everything packed up and in the car, and off I go.
It's about an hour drive to the race. I got there plenty early, so I had some time to get ready without rushing around, which was nice. I was able to chat with some of my teammates for a bit while we were all getting warmed up, and then rode the one mile over to the start line. Once we got there, it was a little bit crazy. Like I said, they had filled the 75-rider field, and then some, apparently. I'm not sure how many racers they had in the 4/5 group, but there were a lot. There were so many, they actually ended up splitting it into two different races. Now, you would think they would have just split it into a 4 race and a 5 race, but I guess there wasn't an easy way to do that at this point in the day. So instead, they just picked a bib number in the middle of the field. People lower than that number were in the first race, and people higher than that number were in the second race. I ended up in the first race, and the second race started three minutes later.
I was a little worried that the race would explode from the gun, but was happy to see the group really stick together. It took a little while for everyone to get comfortable in the group, and there was a little bit of squirrelly riding going on, but it calmed down after a few miles. We had some good speed going, and the pack generally worked together fairly well. I was just happy that I was able to stay with everyone. The end of each lap included a mile of dirt, followed by a decent climb to the start/finish line. That tended to break up the group a bit, but everyone seemed to come back together again at the beginning of the lap.
We had a really good pace going, and while I think we dropped people along the way, I was able to just hang on to the back of the main field. I occasionally moved up a bit to check on my Cat 4 teammates, but eventually they moved up and I ended up at the back again. When I would start to straggle a bit, I had to push it a bit to drag myself back into the group. But after 4 laps, I still managed to be hanging onto the back of the main field and knew I'd be able to finish with the group as long as nothing crazy happened. And nothing really crazy happened. I expected some big attacks off the front, but it sounds like everyone must have been as cooked as me, because nothing big happened. I think we sped up a bit, and everyone started going pretty hard once we hit the dirt, but for the most part, everyone was able to stay with the field. We made the turn onto the final climb, and everyone decided to go for broke. I pushed it as hard as I could, but kind of blew up a couple hundred yards from the finish. After blowing past a bunch of people on the start of the climb, my legs just gave out and I struggled to get to the line.
With the race over, I found my teammates to see how they finished. Official results haven't been posted yet, but it sounds like we had one guy in the top-10, and the other guy finished a few spots later. We then stuck around a little longer to see the second heat of the 4/5 race finish. Then back to the cars to get ready to head home. Unfortunately, while I was riding the 1-mile dirt road back to my car, I got a pinch-flat on my rear tire. It was going to be a long walk back to my far, but a couple CSU guys came along and gave me a lift. Back to the car, change clothes, grab a chocolate milk, and realize that results aren't posted yet. Then, the one-hour drive home. I stopped for some Qdoba along the way, then home to relax and write this blog post.
Hopefully, by tomorrow, I'll have some results and photos to share. For now, it's time to post this thing and go to bed.
UPDATE: I checked for results online one more time before going to bed, and they had been posted. In my race, we had 12th and 14th place out of a field of 55 racers. I ended up 25th, so pretty much right in the middle. I'm fairly happy with that. I have some work to do, but I learned a lot, and am feeling more comfortable with the dynamics of pack racing. And looking at the results, there were only two Cat 5 racers ahead of me. Everyone else in front of me was a Cat 4. That gives me a little hope for some of the upcoming races the break out Cat 5 into a separate race.
Food:
- Breakfast: Fruit / protein smoothie
- Lunch: Salad with chicken
- Dinner: Steak tacos at Qdoba
Exercise:
- CSU Cobb Lake Road Race. 40 miles.
Today's weigh-in: 181.8
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