HPCX Race Reports

Last weekend Christin and I went on and adventure to the Mid-Atlantic, because there was a UCI doubleheader four miles from where she had to be for work that week.

Mid-Atlantic UCI racing is an exotic thing that I rarely sample.  It is a mysterious land of single tape, @gregwhits, and a healthy scrubzone full of dudes I have never raced with before.

But!  Lest you measure your race quality in double-tape, let the record show that the day one HPCX course was DOPE.  There was a lot of turning and a lot of climbing, but somehow the climbing was broken up enough to be shockingly tolerable, except the finish straight which was just a good old fashioned WOW THIS HURTS section.

I drew a crappy start spot but nailed the clip-in and was shortly having to back off before I accidentally passed someone who was actually good and got in their way soon after.

Then some dudes tangled going into turn one and a lot of us put feet down and that was the end of my good start.

The descending portion of the course was not easy to pass on, which meant lots of time for making jokes while hanging out in traffic and not yet feeling the effects of the effort.  It was a lot of fun. In the highlights around 1:30 you can hear me and Greg yelling at each other: http://dirtwire.tv/2015/10/hpcx-elite-men-day-one/

Eventually the effort put a damper on jokes, and around 25 minutes in I started to feel quite feeble, and whole host of dudes I wanted to beat rode away from me.

Around 45 minutes in, the gel I had eaten on the start line kicked in and suddenly I stopped getting sand kicked in my face going up the hill.  I settled in with a group of two other guys and we rode around merrily not getting 80-percented.

On the last lap, the guy at the front decided he was sick of going super hard, which meant we all got to recover, so when the race started up again I felt AWESOME and won the group so hard, if you look at the times you'd think I lost the group ahead of us.


HPCX Day 2

Day two's course was allegedly "less climbing" but what climbing remained felt longer and steadier than anything we did on Day one.  There was also a rad downhill sandpit and a difficult uphill sandpit:

This time I drew a back row start and definitely didn't get anywhere when the whistle blew.  So I rolled around near the back remaining competitive with a few gentlemen and dangling annoyingly close to the @gregwhits group.   I was slaying the downhill sand but having to run the uphill sand, which left me totally freaking winded at the bottom of the climb, which led to me eventually giving up on ever hanging out with Greg.

Just like the day before, I eventually found a scrubbuddy and he was very enthusiastic about pulling on a windy day, so clearly we were going to be buddies for a while.  He wanted to chat, which was great, except when he told me we were going to "get this guy on the hill" which made for a quite uncomfortable two minutes.

We did get that guy though.

I added value to our group by riding into his back wheel when he botched the sandpit.

When we got to the last lap I prepared to THROW DOWN, but I guess not everyone has the same final lap adrenaline spike I do, because I kinda just gapped him two minutes before the sprint, and once again bridged far enough ahead to the next group that I appeared to lose a sprint.



Did I mention I didn't get pulled on day 2 either?  WOO FINISHING RACES


Comments

a said…
Awesome vids and race recaps as usual!

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