I’m pretty short on time today, so I’m going to just dump my notes in here.

Things I Forgot:

• HR monitor
• Repair stand

Prerace Thoughts:

• Tighten removable bottle cage or get rid of it; the mount kept spinning when I was trying to remove the cage.
• Wake up 15 minutes earlier to eat breakfast earlier:
  • two hard boiled eggs
  • banana

Things I Need to Buy:

• Rocky Mount thru axle adapter
  • For spare bike
• Chain guide

Post Race Thoughts:

• Might want to switch to dry chain lube because everything sticks to the drivetrain when the grass gets wet
  Consider switching to different pedals. The sand started to clog up my pedals and make it hard to clip in, but it wasn’t a deal breaker this time
• Given how wet the grass was, should have gone down to 25-26 PSI, but I was too nervous to do it since I didn’t have my low pressure gauge
• Cornering skills were much improved, but I did begin braking a bit too much especially when tired, but overall excellent progress
• Dismounts into sand pit and running form were excellent. Definitely made up time there, but often lost it during the remount
• My result definitely doesn’t tell the whole story, because I lost ~9 spots and a lot of time when I slid out on the down hill off camber. Before that, I think I was slowly catching the guy in from of me.
• I think I lost most of my time in the power sections, but was catching people in the more technical parts, which is a nice change of pace.
• The 40 tooth chainring might have been a little large for my current fitness; I should consider a 38.
• My breakfast seemed to settle nicely
• Drive train made some weird sounds after going through the sand; something might be rubbing, but hopefully the chain guide/new chain/new cassette will take care of that

Action Items for Future Races:

• Pass slower riders immediately. Do not wait for a “good” pass because you will lose too much time. A bad pass will be faster in the long run
• Really push through the middle laps to keep times down. It’s easy to lose focus in the intermediary laps, but you have to stay focused.

Result: 23/43 (15-18 without the slip up in the second lap)

Result: DNF (Crash at Start)

Starting Row: 2nd

Call Up: 14th

I was super excited about this race, especially given the amazing call up that I had.  I was called 14th, which landed me in the middle of the second row.  However, I got taken out in the first 10 seconds of the race. I had the tiniest slip of the pedal, I got clipped on the second pedal stroke easily, which allowed another racer to veer into my lane and take me out; his hip checked my handlebars. I might have been able to continue, but the impact exacerbated an issue I already had with my front tire (more below), so I was forced to withdraw.

Overall, the damage is pretty minimal and the onsite mechanic from velofix.com was amazing. He did a once over on my bike and straightened my rear disc as well as tightened my headset. My sunglasses were also snapped in half.  Beyond the minor damage to my equipment, I’ve got a good size bruise on my hip and some road rash on my right calf, but I think everything is OK. I had my camera, but I messed up the recording, so I don’t have footage of the crash.

The only mitigating factor of this race is that I already had an issue with my front tire that I discovered as I lined up. I was actually losing air due to some debris lodged between the tire bead and rim, so I’m not 100% sure I was going to be able to finish the race anyway. Despite the drawbacks, I think I’m going to try and scrap some cash together for next season and get a set of alloy tubular rims.  I’ve only had a couple of issues running tubeless, but each time it’s a massive headache.  I only get to race so many times a year and even giving up one or two to something silly is more than I want to deal with.

On the up side, a very minor upside, since this course had minimal preview time, I was forced to warm up on the trainer and I tried something new. I had read a while back about team Sky’s warm up protocol they use for basically any kind of race (prologue all the way to road races) and it seemed to be pretty effective. While I obviously didn’t get to test my legs much, I rolled up to the start feeling really good. I’m going to try the same thing tomorrow and see how I feel. As an added bonus, it’s only 20 minutes long!

Oh well, time to go by some new shades and prep my gear for tomorrow’s race. Hopefully I don’t suffer the same fate!

Good:

• Tried the Sky warmup and it had me feeling good

Bad:

• Didn’t actually race
• Minor pedal slip made the other guy’s sketchy move possible

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:

1. The USAC quality score meant this result means as much as my 19th at Valmont
2. 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)

Result: 19/61

Starting Row: 5rd

Call Up: ~35-40

This was, far and away, the best race that I have ever had.  Not only did I have my best placing to date (19th), I also did well in both my technical skills as well as having a solid start. To make it even a little sweeter, I had 15th in sight, but couldn’t close the gaps.  However, with the confidence that I gained from this race, and ranking, I believe that this is only the start of some very good work in the future.  There’s more work to do, but I can take a lot away from this race!

The only thing I can really nitpick about this race is my willpower to close down gaps.  I was so concerned with racing within myself that I didn’t close down certain gaps that would have almost guaranteed a higher placing.  For example, at the beginning of the second lap, I was overtaken by a couple of riders that ended up in 15th and 16th.  There’s really no reason that I didn’t hop on their wheel other than I was concerned that I wouldn’t be able to hold the pace, but I shouldn’t have worried about this especially on this course.  Valmont is known as a roadie course.  Having a big guy (which the Lucky Pie rider was) block the wind for me would have both saved my legs and pushed me up a couple more places.  I won’t make that mistake again!

Other than that, my only other issue is my tire selection.  I’ve now given the Specialized Tracer’s three races to show themselves at varying tire pressures and I am not impressed.  Tracking along the front wheel seems to be really good, but the rear is leaving a lot to be desired.  It’s becoming common for me to slide out a couple of times a race and it needs to stop.  Last weekend, it cost me 10+ places.  This time I managed to not go down and keep my placing, but it definitely put me on edge for the rest of the race.  I’m probably going to suffer through these tires for the next month and switch to mud tires for the rest of the season.  In the spring and summer, I’ll look into trying a few others, like the Clemente MXP.

Good:

• Great start – moved up a lot of positions
• Kept pushing through and didn’t give up

Bad:

• Slid out on rear tire again even at 24 psi
• Needed to make more aggressive passes mid-late to make up more positions

Result: 31/48

Starting Row: 3rd (People left openings instead of filling in)

Call Up: ~30

First race of the CycloX Series

Was sitting in top 20, but three big mistakes cost me 10-12 positions, but power was there.

I’ll update this with more details when I’m not so tired!

Good:

• Pushed through much better than last race
• Excellent start, but I should have played it more aggressively

Bad:

• Too much tire pressure in the rear tire (27 PSI)
• Didn’t defend my position well enough at the start

Result: DNF (likely 5th-8th)

Starting Row: 2nd

Call Up: 13th

It was the season opener, hopefully a validation of all of the work that I have been doing since January and it almost paid off.  To keep a long story short, I was staged in the second row and, after the initial sprint off the line, I moved up to fourth before being caught by several riders behind me, placing me in 8th.  However, I clearly had better technical skills than the 3 guys in front of me, although less power, so I was making up time in the back two thirds of each lap.  With a minute or two left in the third lap, I went up a steep section that immediately went into a hard left hand turn and pushed my tubeless tire off of the rim, unsealing it causing me to flat.  Thankfully, being so close to the start, it was a pretty short walk back to the car.  I would like to have a spare set of wheels, but that’s not in the financial cards at the moment.

Overall, I feel really good about this race and the course might become one of my favorites.  It had a fair amount of technical stuff, but also a good mix of power.  This was almost perfect as I prefer courses that are more technical in nature since I’m a light rider without as much sustained power as someone 20 lbs heavier.  That said, I felt that I held back too much on the power sections.  I was so concerned with not blowing up that I road too far within my comfort zone when I should have been mashing the pedals.  In the future, if I am on a power section like this, and Colorado courses are full of them, I need to be at no less than 95% of FTP.  I was around 85%-90% and could feel that I was too recovered when it came time to navigate some of the more technical sections which are, inherently, easier aerobically.

Another place I need improvement is on technical skills when I am fatigued.  Everything was clicking the first two laps, but, as time went on, I started feathering the brakes more and struggled in some of the technical sections that helped me get into fourth place to begin with.  I’m not sure how I should go about training this, but it’s something I’m going to have to figure out if I this season is going to be successful.

On a side note, I chose to wear a long sleeve skinsuit when the temperature was going to be ~60 at the start.  In hindsight, I short have gone with the short sleeve version as I was a bit overheated although I don’t think it was too much of a detriment.

Tire Notes:

I ran the Specialized 2Bliss tires at 25 PSI and I think, given the tame nature of the terrain, I should have run them at 27-29 PSI.  Additionally, this would be an excellent course to run a file tread on.

Good:

• Excellent start (best I’ve ever had)!
• Technical skills coming around

Bad:

• Need to commit to sustained power sections
• Fatigue in later laps lead to some major mistakes
• Should have worn short sleeve skin suit