Deer Trail RR

It's been awhile since my last post. I feel like I've been hiding from the Internet for the past week. I've also been waiting for pictures from my last race. So far, I haven't found what I was looking for.

Anyway, last Sunday was the rescheduled Deer Trail RR. This is the third year I've done the race. It is basically a 42 mile L shaped race with 180 degree turn arounds at the ends of the L. An hour east of Denver you'd think they could find more roads so we didn't have to go out and back. The turn arounds actually end up playing an important roll because it's really hard to get 70 people turned around, the lead riders always hit it while everyone else is slowing down to get around the turn.

This year we had about 10 riders from the team out there in a field of about 80. All have raced before and are strong riders. They key for this race is positioning. You don't want to get dropped because someone opened a gap you couldn't close.

This year the weather was nice and wind speeds were the lowest I've ever raced. I've done this in 40-50 mph gusts. This allowed the race speed to go way up too. The team all lined up early and had a great starting position. Sadly when the pace went up I started hurting and had to drop back. Somehow during this race I was able to move around in the group pretty freely and I used it to my advantage. After dropping back, whenever the pace slowed I moved up. I survived the first turn around and continued to try and move up. By the time we hit the right turn onto the top of the L, I was in the top 5. I tried to stay comfortable on the way out and not loose too many positions. I was yo-yoing pretty bad. I tried to eat and stay out of the wind, fortunately my teammates helped me out.

This outward bound was into the small head wind and I knew once we turned around the pace would go way up. So I was in the top five going round the cone. I wasn't disappointed. I was also amazed to see how small the group had already become. We were flying back and I wanted to try and slow things down. So I went to the front in an effort to keep people from working together. But there was one dude just flogging himself. So I just sat second wheel in an effort to keep him isolated on the front. I knew I didn't have it anyway so pulling through wouldn't have been smart. We road back almost half the coarse like that. My legs were starting to crap a little but I tried to hang.

Invariably the pace shot up again when some other racers pulled through and I didn't last long. I tried to help other teammates and hold on to the best position I could. I settled for 19th. Not bad since there were about 80 or so starters. I also finished about 10 minutes faster than any previous year. The team had three racers in the top 20 and veryone else in the top 50. I would say that's a good showing, everyone felt good and had good time.

Two years ago I go 6th in this race. Last year I was 18th. Maybe I should take a pass next year. Maybe I should train more?

Thanks for reading, I'll post photos if I find them.