I was less than enthused going into this race. I haven't been training that hard, and my knee has been hurting, and there's smoke in the air, etcetera, etcetera. I guess I whine a lot. It looks like my kind of course, finishing on a kicker of a hill that's about eight minutes long. My wife volunteered to take my place as a course marshal so I could race, so I had to follow through (my other job of placing prime signs went to those more well-suited, so I ended up bringing pylons to to the finish area.) We rolled out in the fog, and quickly passed the first sprint prime. We went pretty hard on the climbs, but harder on the descents! No breaks really rolled away, but we kept the pace fairly high.
The first time up Haskin's, we rode hard, but well within my limits. On the second lap I started to wake up, and started to plan for the finish. I had kept track of landmarks and time from finish on the first lap, thinking I wanted a 1-2 minute attack to stick right at the end. Both Roaring Mouse and Squadra were keeping the race active, but it seemed that Squadra had three strong guys that led the pace up the last climb. One of them attacked near the feed, but they seemed to bring back their own guy. After the 180, they attacked several times and I followed wheels, trying to stay around 3rd place. Peter from Action Sports came around and really started to drill it, finally putting me in pain. I attacked with a minute to go right when I sensed some fading, opened a gap, and held off the charge for the win! I rolled across the line, and right to the portapotty while the marshals were trying to get us all to run downhill. I had tried to visualize my attack all week, and I executed it just the way I wanted to. Felt great to win that way, especially among such a strong field.
I now have more than enough to upgrade to cat 3, but might stick around for a while. Have to make some decisions coming up...
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