Race Report 2

It's 2012 now (more on that in another post) and I haven't been on the bike much for the last couple months, never mind racing. It's also been a while since I've updated this (a mixture of having other things to do and the recurring feeling that blogging about your own exploits feels awfully pretentious and self-indulgent), so there's more to tell nevertheless.

I've had two races since the first one. The second one was at the same venue and rolled out much the same as the first. The difference was this: I felt horribly tired and unfit. This turned out to be a bit of a dummy that my body and/or brain was throwing me. Although my heart rate sat very close to my max the entire time, I felt pretty good once things started to heat up.

Lap after lap went by and then someone near the front clipped a pedal at the first (and fastest) corner, sending him sprawling all over the pavement, iPhone and the other contents of his jersey pockets in tow, making it slightly more expensive an affair. This is noteworthy (aside from the reminder to be careful not to pedal through fast corners) as it caused a bit of a split in the group. A handful of riders, maybe five, opened a gap which stuck. This was about two thirds into the race and they were pulling away. No one in the rest of the bunch seemed too interested in working to pull them back, so a couple of laps later, I tried.

I went on the finishing straight, which was the wrong time, and two guys came with me. We pulled a pretty good gap on the main group, but weren't cutting into the breakaway very quickly. The two others with me weren't doing much work and when I went to the front, they went off the back. Made me feel pretty strong, but I wasn't going to catch them by myself.

This went on for a few laps, and then when it was clear that they didn't have anything more to offer, I tried chasing them down on my own. The legs hurt, my heart was nearly jumping out of my chest, but I was chipping away at the lead group. For the remainder of the race I was on my own in that horrible nether region between groups where you are spending twice as much energy to go the same speed as the rest of the bunch. Every few laps I would be tantalizingly close, pushed extra hard, and then pop, only to watch them re-establish their gap again. As crummy as I felt just prior to starting, I was holding my own, on my own, against the main group. This I all found quite surprising.

In the end, I never caught them, but the main group never caught me, and I finished sixth, which I was quite happy with.