Lake Sunapee, NH (Cat 4)

May 16, 2009

Good number of BRC’ers for this race: John, Julian, Kevin, and myself. We lined up at the front of the field for the start. Good to be there at some point during the race.

I’d come up the day before and had ridden (over-ridden?) the course. Good to get the feel, as there were some really bad stretches of road. And, it was good to get a feel for the finish around the rotary and up the hill to the line.

Held on near the back of the pack early, finding my legs, then moved up to the front third with John. Got uncoupled at the hard right turn after the downhill section leading to the homestretch, and had chase long and hard to catch on. Same issue as I’ve been having all season. But, I caught on and stayed on for the second lap and the third. The problem was that despite having stayed with the lead pack, and not having been gapped, we were neutralized for a different group, and everyone who’d been dropped caught back on – so I was back mid-pack.

On the last lap, I tried to get better position heading into the right hand turn onto the homestretch and did a bit better job, but still had to chase more than I should have, as the leaders had accelerated. I was toward the back of the lead group as we got to the rotary. I was setting up for the sweeping left, when the guy in front of me misjudged his line and hit a traffic cone. the cone went into my line, so I swerved, and slowed, dodging the cone and the rider – he went into the rotary island, and the cone went right. I navigated that, but had lost position. So, I hammered to catch up as the pack headed up the long hill to the finish.

Having practiced on the hill a few times, I knew not to hammer on the bottom part, but to ride at my own pace, then go all out near the top. That seemed to work as I moved from far down in the field to finish 26th – 13 seconds off the winner and 13 places behind John.

Moderately good effort. Again, too much energy wasted chasing after getting dropped on turns, and then having poor position going into the finish. Need to be more confident and to get further up in the pack – that’ll keep me out of trouble, I hope.