Last Race of the Year

For me, at least. This coming weekend, I have a USA Cycling Level 2 Coaching Seminar that I will be attending so that I can become a Level 2 coach and to better serve my athletes. Back to the race...

Mike, Paul and I all lined up for the race in Lombard. This race was very unusual as I was actually on time and Mike and I beat Paul to the race, so it already started out as a little bit of a strange day. I didn't have my normal pre-race jitters. I have had a stressful week, so I guess the stress of this race didn't compare, especially since I didn't have high expectations. Translation... I didn't come in with a positive attitude which usually doesn't help.

We take off after normal instructions. We find out very quickly that the wind is very strong, especially between turns 3 and 4. There are a number of attacks off the front, but a break wasn't going to stick with this wind... or so we thought. Evidently, a rider got off the front and with a lot of riders attacking, most riders didn't realize that there was a rider still off the front until after the race was over. Very impressive performance for this young rider from Turin.

The rest of the pack stayed together. It was a normal race where if you sat in the middle of the pack, you faded back so you move to the outside of the pack and moved up. This work very well until minute 32 into the race when I started to run out of gas. I haven't been riding a lot, so it started to catch up with me. I did my best to catch my breath but by the time I did, it was too late to move up and I finished in the bottom half at 39 out of about 60. The good news was that Paul finished 5th and I am pretty sure he sits 3rd overall in the Cat 4 Fall Fling overall going into the road race.

This was a bit of a disappointing season, but it was to be expected. I took the winter off last year as I let work and a crash become excuses as to why I didn't get on my bike. That won't happen this winter. Now that I am a coach, I have to set an example for my athletes. I will be strictly completing my workouts in my program just as I expect from my athletes. I will talk about my goals for next year in a separate post, but let's just say that I will not be the same rider come next spring.