Monday, December 04, 2006

Burlington Cross

The penultimate race in the NC cross series was on Sunday in Burlington, NC in a city park on rolling terrain. It was a pretty twisty course with some short little climbs, a mix of paved paths, grass, hard-packed sandy gravel, and a section thru some woods. Little bit rooty and rocky in the woods but I didn't pinch flat so I'm not going to complain.

For the first time since I had a bad head cold a couple of weeks ago I was finally feeling good in the days before the race. I've been doing some anaerobic capacity work the last couple of weeks because my first laps have been sucking. It seemed to have paid off as I had a good start and went into the first turn in 4th and stayed in touch with the front of the race for the first lap. It wasn't a good course for catching a draft and I certainly don't have the power of the front guys so not surprisingly I didn't stay with them much past the end of lap 1. Once things shook out after a couple of laps I was riding with around a few other guys at the bottom end of the top 10 when my chain started skipping. I figured something was stuck in my rear cassette and had to stop. Sure enough a pine needle had strategically wrapped itself into the sprocket. Probably only lost about 10-15 seconds but couldn't catch back on for nothing. Started running into alot of lapped traffic so I'm not certain but I don't think I caught the guys I was with.

I ended up 10th, which isn't great but I felt really good. I was able to give it 100% the whole race, getting out of the saddle for each little hill, etc. Nice to be pushing it in the closing laps rather than just waiting for the suffering to end. This is uncharted territory, usually I'm completely burned out by this time of year. Last year I had pretty much stopped riding in the weeks before nationals thanks to promoting a race and a bum knee. Not sure what to expect at nationals. I'll probably be happy if I can finish in the top half of the field, really happy if I end up in the top third or so. Next week is the NC series finale, double points, but I don't think it will matter much to the series standings for me. Maybe a guy or two I could catch and only a few that could overtake me, should end up top-10 overall.

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