West Hill Shop Race Report
I made this video on Tuesday and I thought I was going to blog about the race but then... I don't even know what happened. Let's pretend I have kids and they got sick or something.
West Hill Shop CX Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo.
ANYWAY the video is nice, you should watch it.
I made the lead group on lap one, which was cool, because it had roughly half the field in it, but not cool because I was the weakest dude there and guys wanted to pedal hard (shocker). So I made some big efforts to stay attached, and it turns out there's a price for that, especially when you have to run up a freaking wall right after the big pedaling section.
Soooo eventually I got sawed off the group and rode around by myself, trying my little heart out, until I realized two dudes chasing (Eric Follen and Craig Calhoun) were steadily taking time out of me. When they got to within 5 or 10 seconds with 3 laps to go, I decided that I would rather hang out with them than continue TT'ing and probably get caught anyway.
Hanging out was a lot nicer it turns out.
Eric seemed to be driving it and putting us under pressure, so I encouraged Craig to "close that gap" because that's the kind of game I play when I don't feel like making a pass to do extra work (aka "all the time"). Craig closed said gap and then we dropped Eric right after that, so man, I don't even know what was going on.
In any case it came down to a sprint between Craig and I on the road, which is the 4th time in 6 times at Putney this has happened to me. You might think I have it dialed by now, but apparently not, because I almost crashed into the ditch at the base of the runup and then smacked my bike on a tree while freaking out. (watch the end of the video)
That being said I did win the sprint for the first place out of the money. Yeah!
I must say the new version of the Putney course, with turns in the field instead of just riding around the perimeter, is a much less horribly painful bike race, and has the nice side effect of making the lap length reasonable, too.
West Hill Shop CX Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo.
ANYWAY the video is nice, you should watch it.
I made the lead group on lap one, which was cool, because it had roughly half the field in it, but not cool because I was the weakest dude there and guys wanted to pedal hard (shocker). So I made some big efforts to stay attached, and it turns out there's a price for that, especially when you have to run up a freaking wall right after the big pedaling section.
Soooo eventually I got sawed off the group and rode around by myself, trying my little heart out, until I realized two dudes chasing (Eric Follen and Craig Calhoun) were steadily taking time out of me. When they got to within 5 or 10 seconds with 3 laps to go, I decided that I would rather hang out with them than continue TT'ing and probably get caught anyway.
Hanging out was a lot nicer it turns out.
Eric seemed to be driving it and putting us under pressure, so I encouraged Craig to "close that gap" because that's the kind of game I play when I don't feel like making a pass to do extra work (aka "all the time"). Craig closed said gap and then we dropped Eric right after that, so man, I don't even know what was going on.
In any case it came down to a sprint between Craig and I on the road, which is the 4th time in 6 times at Putney this has happened to me. You might think I have it dialed by now, but apparently not, because I almost crashed into the ditch at the base of the runup and then smacked my bike on a tree while freaking out. (watch the end of the video)
That being said I did win the sprint for the first place out of the money. Yeah!
I must say the new version of the Putney course, with turns in the field instead of just riding around the perimeter, is a much less horribly painful bike race, and has the nice side effect of making the lap length reasonable, too.
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