School Yard Cross

This was going to be my first attempt at a Cat 3 race. I was looking forward to the race. I didn't do too badly the week prior. I believe, however, the outcome to this race began a few days prior to the race. Last week I was at a Wednesday evening worlds ride, which has been a lot of fun. We were doing about 30 minute "hot" laps. I was feeling strong at the beginning of the efforts but quickly tailing off, the legs were tired and sore (after the hard racing last weekend I wasn't surprised). Hey, it's just practice so I sat up and took it easy working on skills and flow in the corners. I took Thursday off and had a one hour mountain bike ride on Friday to open things up. This has been the basic schedule for most of the season.

Now fast forward to my race. The Cat 3 race is much later in the day compared to what I'm used to. The late race was actually a help for the family, I got some work done around the house, hung out with the kids and had fun. We got out to the race early so the kids could play at the beach and I could get warmed up. The weather was crazy warm, 70's in November. The dust was so thick and there was no wind (a rarity for the afternoon at the res). Warming up I knew the legs were not 100% but I was excited to get my first Cat 3 race on.

The ACA did their call up then called racers up by their registration order. I had a second row start behind my friend Peter who had upgraded earlier this season. The start was pretty good. I wasn't super aggressive as I wanted to see how this group raced, nothing to sketchy but everyone was certainly stronger. I stayed in the mix through out the first lap and a half. There were a lot of corners and some nice sand to keep you on your toes.

After those first laps I might as well thrown out a boat anchor. My back started hurting for the first time all season. I simply couldn't put any power to the peddles. The wind stopped and before long the dust was so thick it was hard to breath, I felt like I had a mud pie in my mouth. I was determine to do as well as I could. So I muscled on purely on will power.

When the race was done I was physically wrecked. My placement wasn't terrible but I knew I could do much better. I went out to a nice dinner with the family and began to wonder what I was going to do to salvage my fitness. I down loaded my heart rate file from the race and it told the story. First 10 minutes I had my typical race output but things dropped off as the back and muscle pain limited my output. Not good.

All in all I'm calling it a success, it may not sound like it based on the description above but I got in the race, completed the race and more importantly I didn't break anything (it's been a problem for some upgraded racers lately). I'm looking forward to the next one.

Photos from the race are from Jim Heuck SixDegreestoSlush

Update:
Crossresults.com says this was one of my worst results all season. No kidding.