Result: 7/20
Starting Row: 2nd
Call Up: 12th
Yet again, I pull off the best finish of my cyclocross career! While the field was only 20 riders, I did finish within the top 10 for the first time (7th place). To make matters even better, I had a relatively poor start where I wasn’t able to move up at all and even lost a few spots going in to the first turn. Overall, I’m super happy with this result, but I need to keep two things in mind before I celebrate too much:
- The USAC quality score meant this result means as much as my 19th at Valmont
- I didn’t push through the race to get to sixth.
Now, there’s nothing I can do about point number 1, but I need to keep point number 2 in mind. I could easily have gotten up to sixth position and, given the gaps, possibly made my way up further. I fell short in two ways, the first is that I wanted to maintain what I knew was going to be my best result. The second, was not racing the course correctly. For months, I’ve been pushing myself to race courses in an even and paced manner, but that’s a problem at a venue like Rhyolite because the course is so punchy. When you race here, you are either going full out for ~30 seconds or recovering through a technical or downhill section. I road like I would at Valmont, sustained, but you can’t sustain power here and, next time, I’ll race accordingly. In fact, I will keep this in mind when I race at Cross of the North this weekend as it rides very similar to Rhyolite.
Good:
- Rode smart after poor start
- Technically I rode a sound race
Bad:
- Needed to push harder for 6th
- Need to race the course as it is intended (punchy vs. sustained)