Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Sunday, October 03, 2004

Redemption

This weekend was the Carter's Lake MTB race. Last year in this race I crashed six times in one lap and finished sixth in beginner class. This year I was looking to finish and stay on the bike for the sport class race over two laps. I knew that the race was going to be one of attrition and that I wasn't going to be able to hang with the leaders so I adopted a strong and steady strategy. The idea was to ride this thing just like a time trial where I kept my heart rate lower to start so I had somethign in the tank at the end. The other idea was to take the descents, which are long and technical, more slowly so as to stay on the bike and avoid a crash that took a lot out of me like at Macon.

The strategy worked great as I finished ninth in the race and stayed on my bike. It's my second best finish of the year and means I may actually move up inot the top fifteen in the standings. It also means I made my goal of three top tens in Master's Sport this year. The next race is at Dauset which is my home course so I'll have home field advantage and motivation at that race. I've got four weeks to ramp up and peak for that race and a rescheduled Gainesville race to see if I can make it up to the top ten in the overall standings which would be a huge victory for me. I was hoping to ride reasonably well this year and after a tough stretch through the summer I may be recovering a bit.

Thanks for reading.

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