Afton Avalanche

This weekends race was truley an exercise in attrition. I started the race very slow, sittting in about 12-15th place for the first 2 laps. I really couldn't make myself suffer on the climbs. Maybe it was the heat or maybe it was the huge week of training that I had prior to this race... who knows.

With an unpredictable workload at Wells Fargo, I never really know when I'm going to have a lot of time to train, so I need to be opportunistic. I took advantage of a lighter workload in the office by spending about 15 hours on my mountain bike last week (that's right, no road riding). On Thursday, I took a half day to ride down at Murphy with A.O. and set the course at Buck. I wasn't sure if I was going to race that night or not based on the fact that I had already ridden for 3 hours prior to the race. I decided to do it, since its all just for fun anyway. I crossed the line in 4th, which was my best Buck race yet this year, and had ~40miles on my MTB for the day, all in the dirt.

Back to Afton. I sat in mid pack for the first half of the race, never really breathing hard or suffering on the climbs. It was almost like I had a psychological block. I knew I should be going harder, but I wasn't. On the third lap, I began picking people off, one after another. It seemed like quite a few of the riders just a head of me were beginning to fade in the heat and with all of the climbing. During that lap I was able to get around Joel from the Hub, Dave Oachs, Wenk, and some other dude (and a fully blown Chris Fisher). I continue on, at perhaps a slightly faster pace, with my eyes on Jay Richards and Chris Peariso. Going into the 4th lap, I knew I was only about a minute down from Jay and maybe a couple of minutes behind Chris P. I still felt fairly decent, considering it was late in the race and we were right in the middle of the hotest part of the day. I finally passed Jay on one of the longer, more gradual climbs on the back side of the hill. I've found that when you are going to pass someone, you need to do so with conviction. It's important to really stomp on it and open up as much of a gap as possible, all at once. There is an advantage to be sitting behind someone since you can see their moves, predict when they are going to go hard and really pace yourself to their speed. So, it's important to blast by them and make it APPEAR that you are going to be going quite a bit faster for a while.

Anyway, I rolled into the finish line in 8th place, with Jay trailing only by about 20 or 30 seconds. Overall I am happy with this result and happy that my body told me to go slow during the first half of the race.