The last couple weekends were full of exciting racing and good opportunity for me. The weekend was the first significant block of racing for me since I got back from Europe. My tired legs would attest to that for sure.
The weekend started off fast with the Russ hay's/ Specialized tt. It consisted of a 5 k individual effort along a windy stretch of Dallas road with 2 180degree turnarounds in the course. It was more of a prologue really and I knew that mere seconds would make the difference between placings. The wind was quite shifty that evening and would change several times during the course of the event. The later it got, the stronger the wind became. Our team was among the last riders to start. As soon as i left the start ramp, I had a feeling that running a 90mm front wheel paired with a disc would be a bit hairy in the crosswinds. I was being buffeted quite strongly to the point that it felt like my front wheel was skipping sideways along the roughly layered pavement. To the say the least, that tt was not one of my greatest and my lungs felt like they had been torn to shreds after I finished.... probably due to insufficient warm-up and starting the race feeling cold. TT position felt good to say the least.
With Saturday came and early morning start for the Accent Inn's Provincial Road race in Metchosin. The junior men were slated to start at 7:30 am... early considering some races I did earlier in may started at 6 in the evening. We soon set out to do 8 laps of the rolling course with a field of about 15-20 guys. The first lap was chilly and a few guys started the race with full leg warmers or winter jackets. I just did some embro and some arm warmers, but that's just me. The pace was not overly hard at all in the first lap and a half and pretty soon I found myself in a break with Jackson. He had a problem with his bike soon and was unable to continue with me. Being a bit naive I kept the pressure on. Not time -trailing but going a decent pace. I had thought in my mind that a select group would be able to break away or drop many of the guys in the pack and bridge the gap to me. The course was on roads that were winding just enough that as soon as you had about 30 seconds, you were out of sight. I was away on my own for about 4 laps before getting caught. at that point I was not at all stoked with my race tactics and was just waiting for a sprint finish. I went with Joel on a few digs during the last lap but i missed the decisive one. Not wanting to race for second place i went to the front and tried to chase as hard as I could for the last 1 km. But it was too late, the gap had been established and Joel took it. I can say that with the form I had that day, I raced extremely poorly tactically. What I did seemed right in the moment. Good job to Joel though. He was one the only people in that race who wanted to race hard.
Bastion Square as a cat 1/2 was quite uneventful for me. I just did not have the legs that day was I was forced to pull out early in the race. So many strong teams were killing it at the front of the race and with my poor staging spot, I found myself about 2 thirds of the way own the pack. The pace was hard enough for me to be hurting in the draft. It just was not my day and it was just a really fast race. Congrats to Rob, Jake and Adam who had good races on the weekend.
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