CX06 #3, Mill City, Powderhorn Park
C rae, 25/74, 16th C1 (after most of the SS category)
Cold, blustry day, high of maybe 40°F, but with a cold wind. Malte and I rode to the race from home, a nice way to warm up, but flippin’ cold too. I should have brought more clothes to wear after the race, too cold to hang out for the results (below) and schwag raffle.
Nice course, pretty much looped the circumference of the park, lots of up and down the hills, with two sets of stair runups and one steep but rideable hill climb. The first barrier was a little tricky, being right after a realllly fast descent. One killer was the final barrier and runup - it wasn’t so much that it was steep, but it was fairly long. The way the ground slopes on that hill, when you’re on the left side of the bike, you’re slightly downhill from the bike, so you have to go a fair ways up the hill before it’s level enough to jump back on the bike.
I felt pretty good through the race, had a good start in the top 12-15 riders, and kept it pretty steady until fading a bit on the last lap. The race ran 6 laps, and i was done in after about 5 1/2. It was the cold, plus an increasingly tired/sore back (probably from the hill climbing), and the clif shot wore off too. Maybe a second shot and more water would have done it. After 5 laps of passing a few and holding on well, i lost 3 places on the final lap, including one guy who came out of nowhere to sprint by in the last 2 feet. grrrrr… Not that i had anything left to sprint with by then anyway.
There was something going on with the results. I don’t know what the problem was, but it was taking a lonnng time to get results posted. Nothing up by the 2nd lap of the A race, so we headed for home to warm up after 90 minutes of freezing (though the pizza and coffee helped some). There was a little mixup with Malte’s registration. He was put into C1 instead of the usual C3 group. He finished around 5th overall, and would have been the first C3, but because he was put in C1, didn’t win a thing. Because the results were so late, and it was too cold to wait, we couldn’t even see that there had been an error (though i don’t know if it would be changed anyway). It was a fun race otherwise, but this part was a bit of a bummer.