10/28 Bubba 4 @ St. Vincent, Masters, 1st.

 

I've always been a big fan of racing in bad conditions, especially in CX. I don't consider myself to be a pure power rider and never have. Mountain biking was different because the races were 2 hours and my strength was definitely a combination of maintaining flow through technical stuff and endurance orientated power. CX is a lot different and my weakness is definitely responding to huge spikes in power and then recovering. Probably should do more group rides and VO2 training but I've always been a believer in building the endurance engine and old habits are hard to break.

Anyways, weather looked perfectly shitty all week leading up to the race and given that the area of St Vinnies we use is not well maintained, I figured the race would go on. I was stoked when the call was made on Saturday night. Cancelling CX races due to weather makes me fucking sick, though I fully understand why we have to.

The conditions weren't too bad during warm ups and the Bubba team did a great job of making an interesting track with a little single-track to boot. I knew Devin was going to crush the pavement climb and didn't think the track was technical or snotty enough to really slow him down.

I jumped out front pretty quickly and was having fun taking a lot of chances which involved a lot of drifting a clipping the same root for a few laps. I think I had a little gap after lap one and Devin had caught up to me on the straight after the start finish on lap 2, but I was able to keep a few seconds until we hit the hill and he passed and put 8 seconds into me for the next few laps. I was getting splits from Rico and was really surprised it wasn't growing. 

I caught and passed him coming through that same start finish straight and tried to gain enough time to hold him off on the hill. I did and was able to build on the lead. The course got worse and my lap times were super consistent and afterwards Devin said he lost confidence after some close calls, which slowed him down. I think Rico said I had about 1:10 on him at the end.

So much more fun to have some racing going on instead of just chasing.