Did a quick practice at Kenrick on Thursday. Probably the least amount of CX prep I've done, ever, before the first race of the season. Kenrick was bumpy AF and I was hurting and wondering how bad Sunday would be.
Ultra nice weather and the course was pretty much fully laid out by 945, which was great. Got in a good warm up and was ready to roll. After a week of being back on the no booze train and a few good nights of sleep I was wicked fired up.
Couple new faces on the line. We started 15 seconds behind a large group of (8?) SS riders including Kukla. I got a good jump on the long uphill paved section only to be passed by Jamey at the top, who dropped into the first turn before me. He took a wide line on the next turn and I went around him. I was happy to pick the clear lines and trying to ride within my limits.
We hit the pavement and I wasn't going to lead out the group so I sat up a bit and Jamey caught me off guard with a massive attack. I was the only one to respond and bridged up to him just before the grass. It was full gas and there was going to be enough of that on a fairly non technical course that I started to worry a bit. Going around the tree after the sweeping left hander that ended up being almost as fun as riding mtbs, Jamey went down and I went around him. I put a pretty decent gap into him and the chasers right away but he made another huge push on the pavement and probably got to within 5 seconds of me. After that, I was able to extend my lead by 5 seconds or so every lap to take the lead with really no mistakes and feeling pretty good, aside from some tightness in the back and hips.
Post race my brother told me I made it to within 23 seconds of Kukla before he extended it to 40 seconds or so for the rest of the race until he started to slow up on the last few laps of so.
All in all I felt good about the race. Little worried about the lower than average NP but the speed was good and there was a fair amount of coasting so I'm hoping this was more due to efficiency than fitness. We'll see.
