Back to The Reality

Reality bites.    After a couple of "unusually" good races for this slow old guy,  started to think I was BACK.  You know,  able to race,  to get in there.  

And then came Flatirons.  Oh,  Yea.  NOW I remember.  I ain't much of a bike racer after all.

LONG,  sucking hills in velcro grass.   STEEP run ups (oh,  yea,  and TWO of them a lap....).  Yep,  everything I can't really do in a Cross race.   Nothing like that to put one back right in their place.

Really,  it was not THAT bad,  I had a crappy start,  and really could not move up too much because of  my inability to put out enough watts on the hills,  but all in all,  not a complete disaster.  27th place is not the end all of suckitude by any means,  but sure not where the last 2 weeks had left me.  

Outside of the 2 run ups and the seemingly endless climb up boggy grass,  the race was a full on hoot.  LOTS of off camber and twisty bits to make it a challenge.  Sweet drop off the start drag on the grass,  with a mildly scary looping drop to the bottom that seemed to give a lot of folks a hard time.  Killer hard uphill switchback,  and some ROUGH,  fast descents almost made up for the gagging,  tounge dragging climb.  All in all a good time.

The RaceRite lap timing is pretty cool,  besides being able to watch your friends & teammates times WHILE THEY RACE on your phone,  seeing each lap time on all the races lets you see when you had "problems" during the race.  Mine showed a solid,  consistent 3 laps while I struggled to stay on the back of a group.  After that group broke up,  and I sagged off the back,  I had 2 laps that were almost 20 seconds a lap slower,  before getting woken up on the last lap by a hard chase behind me.  Got back up to my first lap times on that last one.  Stupid lap times let you see when you "drift off" and start slacking a little bit.  It takes just a HINT of backing off to start loosing a LOT of time.

This weekend brings a return of the joy that is Frisco.  Cross at 9K.  Again,  not really my course,  but thinking I'll do the double this coming weekend,  since I have to miss the Boulder Cup/Colorado Cross classic weekend the next.  Have to skip 2 good races,  all for the joys of a visit to wonderful Los Angeles.  However,  Frisco might put enough hurt on me to last that 2 weeks.

This week My seat-cam is a bit short.  Some idiot forgot to clear the memory card prior to the race,  so he ended up with only about 4 minutes of the race.  At least it was not one to loose any sleep over.  Have at it.

Cyclo-X Flatirons - Men 45+ cat 4 - 9/28/13 from Dale Riley on Vimeo.