Monday, November 9, 2009

Cycle Smart International November 7 & 8


So Saturday was my birthday, and I can now officially race in the 45+ geezer class. Yep, 45 on Saturday, and a 10th place finish as a present to myself. Those geezers are fast and really know how to ride. They never let up.
It's amazing how much confidence has to do with it. As I've had some good results lately, I start to realize that I deserve to be there, and that all my hard work and "training" is paying off. But confidence is only part of the equation. I've definitley been feeling strong and have been getting a lot better at chasing, attacking and recovering along with just plain riding faster. I'm a little slow to pick up on the strategy part though.
On Saturday I didn't get a great start, but through the first three laps I managed to ride up to a group that was basically the "chase" group to the leaders and had some fast riders in it. The next few laps I noticed that I was faster than them through the sand, which was only a quarter lap to the finish. I knew all I had to do was not blow it this last time through the sand and I had 'em. When I hit the grass they were ahead of me, but the thing with riding vs. running is that you usually have the major advantage of acceleration, which I did and never looked back.
Hey, 10th isn't that good, but I'm getting closer.
Sunday was a real fun race. The course was quite a bit more turny, but still really fast. Again, not a great start, but I worked up through the group. I caught up to Nyberg in about 8th or 9th place but he wasn't having any of it and left me in the dust. just as we settled into a group, I clipped my pedal on a root while trying to take my super secret line and went down. There goes the group. I think that was my first fall of the season. I didn't think I would catch back on but I did and even managed to beat all but two of the guys in the group. I finished 13th and managed to move back up to 20th overall for the series. I'm looking forward to Mercer next weekend, for the racing and the chance to spend some time with our daughter and J-dog (sup).


The youtube clip above was made from the exact same .mp4 clip as you see below. The only difference was Maggie copied the file to her mac and then uploaded it to youtube. It sounds like the problem is with my PC. I'm open to suggestions.

2 comments:

  1. The second take is a huge improvment. Still think the problem is with the Blogger site. Next video you might want to try the You tube method from your computer.

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