Adventures at Granogue

This past weekend was yet another adventure in my greenhorn racing career. After the debate between racing Michaux (my back yard) or taking the opportunity to ride somewhere new, I decided to do the latter and race Granogue. I am getting more comfortable with the idea of racing my bike but still have plenty of learning to do still. All of the races I have done so far this year I try to take three things from; training, experience, and the all important thing to have fun! I enjoy the feeling of accomplishment by finishing a race (even better if I do well) and I am enjoying the overall feeling of feeling fit. So back to Granogue…Before the race I laid out a pre and post race plan and tried to follow it with limited success, but this may help provide what does and doesn’t work for future reference. Sunday was an early start, waking up at 4:45am, hitting the road at 5:30, and arriving at the venue around 7:45-8:00. Once at the venue me and Zach scrambled to get the tents set up, registered, bikes ready, dressed, use the port-O-potty, etc, that I had only left myself less then 15 mins before the start time of 9:00am to get warmed up. Needless to say I never got warmed up and thought I almost missed the race start staging. So off we went at 9:00am and my legs felt like two useless pieces of meat as I fell off towards the back of the starting pack. I managed to keep relatively close to the group and eventually as I warmed up I was able to make it past several other racers but not until a good bit into the first lap. During the first lap I had a couple of back and forth battles between a couple racers, I would pass, he would pass, I would pass, etc, and eventually I was able to pull away and eventually drop the rider from sight. I knew my teammate Scottie was ahead of me but didn’t know how much, I was both wishing him the best to go and kick some butt, but in staying competitive I wanted to catch him but….never did (good race Scottie!!). Made it through the first lap with limited problems and moved onto the second lap now with the knowledge of the course and lap time so I hoped to use that info to push myself and catch some more riders. But on the second lap the fields began to mix and I couldn’t tell who was who and may have passed some or been passed by some riders in my category but I wasn’t really sure. I ended up finishing 6th and Scottie 5th out of a field of 15 riders. Overall not a bad day, had great weather, hung out with cool people, and enjoyed the experience. So looking back what would I have done differently? Well for starts it would have been to actually warm up a bit. Second I still need to work on my ability to judge how hard I need to be pushing. I still cannot judge whether I am going too hard, so I usually default to backing off the throttle a bit and I think this in the end costs me places. So on to the next race to continue to learn, train, and of course have fun!!...and maybe win ;-)