CCCX #5

[Mark Gibson]

With the Nevada City Dirt Classic scheduled for this weekend canceled due to snow, I was happy to find this race scheduled for the same day down in Fort Ord.  I headed down the morning of the race with my daughter who was also racing (her first race for Acme!), with the plan for us to both use it as a training race.  We did not have enough time to pre-ride the course, but I knew from the High School races they host in the same area that the course would be flat and fast.  Also sandy, but with the rain over the past week I was expecting perfect conditions, which turned out to be the case.

The race starts with a couple hundred yards on a paved road before turning off onto narrow singletrack with limited passing opportunities, so getting into a good position at the start of the singletrack was important.  I entered the singletrack in 2nd place behind Larry Hibbard and just held his wheel for most of the 1st lap.  Fairly soon, there was a group of 5 of us out at the front, a mix of 35+ and 45+ Cat 1 riders.  It stayed that way for the first few laps until we were eventually able to shake one of the group.  With some moderate headwinds on the course, me, Larry and Giles Healey worked together, taking it in turns to do pulls at the front, and with none of us able to gap the others, despite a string of efforts to do so.  The 4th rider in the group was being cagey and staying at the back of the group.  On the final lap, having reserved some energy, he took off up a climb and left us behind.  It turned out he was in the 35+ group, so it didn't affect the results for what was now a group of three 45+ guys with me, Larry and Giles.  The 5th and final lap was pretty frenetic, and by that time we were coming up to lap the stragglers at the back, which made things even more tense as you could not afford to get caught up behind a slower rider when one of our group of 3 made it around a slower rider on the tight singletrack.  

Coming in to the finish area, the 3 of us were neck and neck.  As we sprinted to the final 180* turn before the finish line, Giles came through the inside, forced Larry off his line which caused him to almost go down right in front of me.  I had to un-clip a foot to avoid going down as I swerved around Larry. Giles was clean through; Larry was able to keep going but I could tell he didn't have much of a kick by that point, so I thought I could at least get 2nd place.  However, with a delay in my being able to get clipped in again, I lost momentum, and lost out to Larry by a wheel.  So, 3rd place.  On the positive side, this was an excellent training session which I really needed as my fitness is nowhere near where I want it to be at this point of the season.

This was a very fun, fast, course, and I really enjoyed being in such a hard fought, close, 3 way race, which after 28 miles of racing came down to the wire.