12/7 Missouri State Champs @ St. Vincent. Masters, 1 OA.

 

Very rarely do I feel this level of satisfaction from racing, let alone across three races in the last few months. I think a large portion of it is coming from the discoveries I've made this year and how that translates to racing at the highest level possible for my current fitness and age. I get a lot of satisfaction from that. The craziest thing I learned from yesterday is that I was likely only 90% rested for the Burnin' and less for the BT Epic. The biggest pitfall was quite simply trying to squeeze in more volume before both, and not enough time to taper, decisions made largely based on vacations before each. I felt so good for the Burnin' I question it a bit, but it makes more sense at the BT Epic where much higher powered repeatability was needed and I wasn't able to.

I had a pretty high level of confidence after racing in the snow the weekend before, was feeling great all week with unusually low anxiety, usually did pretty well at St. Vincent and was really looking forward to some bad conditions. I was a little bummed leading up to the race that there weren't more people registered in  either the 40+ or 50+ classes, but when race day rolled around, there were some heavy hitters and it was going to be a race. What I wasn't expecting was a very unique course layout that had a ton of climbing. It was either climbing or flossing snow covered ground soft ground with a frozen layer below that  which changed dramatically as the race went on. It was pretty epic. 

My plan was pretty much the same as it had been since moving up to the 50's- go out hard and try to get to the pointy end of the 40+ race as quickly as possible. I had a hint of reservation due to the stiff road climb shortly after the start that if I went out too hard I might detonate, but what's between my ears typically gets overridden by brute force so planning to much of anything is often fruitless. 

We lined up behind 10 or so 40+ with Devin, Anthony and Terry in the mix and gave them a 30 second head start. I flubbed the start and didn't get the hole shot, slipping back to 5th, but once we hit the pavement I launched a nuke and went all in on the climb, about 655 W for 30 seconds, which was a PR for me. I passed some of the 40 plus guys and got up to Terry and Laberta with Devin and Anthony leading the charge 5-10 seconds ahead. By the main climb on the 2cd lap I had caught Terry, Anthony and Devin but Devin countered and put a gap into the rest of us. 

For the next two laps Anthony and I rode together with Devin 10-15seconds in front and Terry not far behind. I don't remember the exact spot where we caught Devin, but he was off the back pretty quickly and Anthony and I started trading blows with Terry dangling. I was trying to communicate to Terry that Anthony wasn't from MO, but it wasn't going to well. Anthony and I were riding pretty dirty and it was a ton of fun. I was putting time into him on the more technical sections so he was juicing it to get in front of me through the 180 run up.  Rico and Christopher were there and offering a ton of encouragement and there was never really a point I started to have doubts. Not to say that I was thinking about winning, I just never had an issue staying with Anthony and was riding pretty well. 

With 4 to go I gapped Anthony through the upper really technical section and by the off camber along the road at the bottom, which was by far the most technical section of the race, he was out of sight. I glanced over my shoulder once at the top of the second climb on the bike path, probably 30 seconds back, and he wasn't in sight. I didn't Thibau for the rest of the race. 

I charged for the next 3 laps. I was riding at my limit and didn't give a fuck about riding conservatively to avoid mistakes, which I made few. It was the hose. I got pretty fired up on the bell lap with CC and Rico hollering and went full send one more time up the hill. I ended up winning by a pretty good margin and was utterly thrilled. 

Thinking about this past season is nothing but positive, maybe my best ever. Form like this was always hard for me to maintain, but I learned so much and think I might be able to improve on it for next year. Super stoked. 

11/30 Bubba #10 Bellafontaine Numero Dos, Masters, 1st.

 Snow day. It snowed way more than I was expecting on Saturday, about 5" by the time we woke up. Saturday was ultra stressful and I was a little run down from the holiday week. I started my openers indoors and bailed because I wasn't feeling it.  It was supposed to shift to rain later in the day and I was assuming most of it would melt and it would be a mud fest, but instead woke to a crusty 3" on Sunday morning. Weather was pretty chilly with a 17* wind chill but naturally I was pretty stoked for some fun conditions. 

I walked a bit of the course and found it to be pretty straightforward so opted to get a good warm up in on the rollers and a quick lap before lining up. It was going to be slow and  pretty straight and there wouldn't be any real lines from the small group of die-hards warming up until a few laps in. I considered trying to run really low pressure, as it was 100% snow covered, but stuck with the usual 24/24.5 I've been running all season, which turned out to work really well.

I was happy to see Anthony and another 40+ guy in attendance I didn't know, among the other regulars. There were about 5 40+ and 4 SS that started in front of us. Dr. Mark took the hole shot and I waited a bit before making a move around him and then burned a lot of matches moving up off the line. It was brutal. I think I caught Anthony and the other guy on the second lap and shortly after that had my only real mistake of the race and went down, but didn't lose much time. 

I built a decent lead on the Purdue guy and Anthony with 3 lap cards to go and when I came though the next time it had been adjusted up. It felt really hard and I had no idea how long into the race we were but had started to nail some of the lines and was finding it was pretty easy if you didn't deviate, but my legs felt torched. I had almost a half a lap (short laps) lead by the time I finished, which was about 31 mins. I couldn't believe it was that short, definitely didn't feel like it. Overall really happy with the way I raced and getting my shit together this week so I feel a little better next weekend at States. The weather this week should make things interesting!