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photo: julie

fort ord
2006/10/01
elite men
14/18 [14/23 if you count dnfs (slackers)]
'mate: aron

now that's better!

definitely felt much more in the game this week. like i was actually racing again instead of just dragging myself around the course like last week.

julie and i went to the santa cruz mountains for a really nice wedding on saturday. things were civilized and wound down on the early side, so i got to bed at our hotel in santa cruz at a decent hour. slept ok on the strange bed, but the stale air was more annoying. wasn't able to sleep in quite as late as i would have prefered, but did get a good breakfast at zachary's.

i've had good results at this east garrison course. this is where i won my race in the b's last year in very similar cool, overcast conditions. the land this particular course is on has been slated for residential development and this was to be the last bike racing there. i will be sad to see it go despite the general sense of military blight and decay.

we got to the venue fairly early, so i had plenty of time for 4 laps of warmup to figure out some good lines through the sandy bits. i started out in the back, but managed to get around the pile ups on the first barriers and immediately after, so i ended up in a decent position heading onto the dirt. i was on the tail of a decent sized group of midpackers when we got to the sketchy singletrack split. they all took the fast rutted right. i decided that was too many people to follow that way, so i took the curvy left line. my instincts served me well, because someone in that group crashed and a pile up ensued, so i got around a bunch more people for free and shot out into the open field in the top 10. that felt pretty good to come through the first lap in front of a bunch of people. by this point my karma must have been a little out of balance because i dropped my chain after the tree hop in the second lap and lost several of those places.

as i resolved to do last week, i took off my hr monitor and just tried to hold wheels as best i could as the midpackers came back around me, especially on the long open paved straightaway into the wind. i found isaias' wheel a couple laps in. based on our results last week, i thought he'd pull away from me eventually, so i resolved to hold his wheel as long as i could. three strong but comfortable laps of wheel sucking later, i found a firm line up one of the sandy rises and worked my way around him and got a gap, so i just kept going and didn't see him again. i felt (just a little) bad that i couldn't return the favor, but that's racing i guess. i'm sure i'll have an opportunity to pay him back at some point this season.

i spent the third quarter of the race mostly alone reeling in a couple single speeders that went out too hard. i could also see a rocklobster guy up ahead slowly coming back to me. i dropped my chain again coming down the rutted singletrack, and lost another couple seconds, which put me into jay buenaventura's sites. he reeled me in with one lap to go, but i was able to grab his wheel and recover a bit as he came past. i got back around him pretty quickly as we got back onto the dirt, i bet he had some recovering to do himself. i was able to get a decent gap on him through the trails but could sense him rallying and catching back up. i turned on the gas as much as i could, and in the process was also getting the rocklobster guy in my sites. i put my head down for the last long straightaway and gave it all i could to reel him in, but i didn't have quite enough road. jay came on real strong and was nipping at my heels up the last pitch, but he also didn't have quite enough road, and i held him off by less than a length.

whew! much more of the drama that makes bike racing so interesting. good times. now that the legs are coming around i'm feeling better about where i'm at. i'm also recovering better than last week, so signs are good.

i do need to resolve my chain dropping issue, i'd say it cost me a position this week. i wrestled with the sram powerlink a bit last week to try to shorten my chain but got frustrated, put it down, and did't get back to it. i was hoping last week would be the anomaly, but i guess not. so i'll get back to it for sure and put on a new chain if comes to that. only other technical note this week, i dropped my pressure in the flexuseses to 35 psi front / 38 psi rear, and felt the difference. felt like more traction in the loose corners. i think i'll keep them there for a couple more races before going any lower.

thanks to julie for coming down to the race with me, and to lauren, joe, and chris for sticking around after their races to cheer and give me water.

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