Cascade Cross

Thanks to Michael Larimer and Snakebite Racing for designing this course and hosting this race, this was a great event. My race wasn't so great though, although it could have been worse I guess. I'm racing the Masters class this season and it's a fast group for a bunch of "old guys" again, you have to bring your best each and every weekend. This past Sunday I didn't have the legs that I did the weekend before at Manatoc, most likely because I did way too much in the way of openers on the trainer the day before that really left me feeling tired and fatigued, I will NOT do that opener workout before a race ever again.

This race was a 35+ Masters group, so there were some pretty strong fast guys here. It opened up pretty fast and the conditions were good. The traction up the big hill was good and the mud pit was hard core. I was going pretty good for the first two laps but could feel my legs fatiguing and I wasn't putting out the power. I started to ride at my pace and try to limit my losses for the remaining three laps, keep climbing steady and stay reasonably fast on the road sections. The last lap I was in a group of four and that motivated me to stay on the gas. There were three of us that came into the finishing straight together with just the set of barriers to split us up . I went hard over the barriers, gapped one and almost got the other at the line, but still only rolled in for 9th overall 35+ and 3rd. 45+. There was no 45+ group but I looked at the guys ahead of me on the results sheet and figured that one out for myself. Even though I suffered in this race more than usual it could have been worse, a top 10 finish isn't too bad.

This weekend is the last triathlon of the season for us at Portage Lakes, I'd love to be at Wendy Park and Nate Loman and I even kicked around the idea of doing the tri and the cross race on the same day but there wouldn't be enough time... There's plenty of cross racing coming up.

See you all in a few weeks.