Tonight’s race at Tabor was a blast – and my first cat 3 race.  It’s a field that will challenge me, but at the same time I think I’m definitely at the level I need to be at to be competitive.

The race was 9 laps long, which ends up being about 10 miles – and it’s over before you know it has begun.  The first time I noticed the lap board coming through the finish line was with 5 laps to go, and the second was with one lap to go.  We averaged 23mph for the race, which is really fast given the constant up and down.  When the race is that short, every time up the climb is fast.

As far as the actual race goes, I spent much of the time figuring out the best lines to take, where to position myself, and where good places to attack might be.  I chased a small breakaway attempt up the climb on the third lap, and I tended towards the left side of the road – so much so that I ended up in the gravel twice when riders next to me moved over.

The final lap was pretty chaotic.  At the sharp corner at the top of the climb, (teammate) Justin was nearly forced outside into the gate on the side of the road, and I was riding to his left.  I hit the brakes and had to reaccelerate hard down the hill to get back decently positioned.  Everyone sat up and slowed a bit more than I expected, and at the bottom of the course leading up to the finishing climb I found myself too close to the front of the field for my liking.  I decided to be stupid (while thinking repeatedly in my head “this is stupid!”) and ramped my pace hard at the bottom of the finishing climb.  I had come around my teammates just before the base of the climb and I was really hoping one of them was on my wheel and I could provide a leadout.  Not so much, turns out I gave a bunch of non-teammates a leadout instead.  I started to die off pretty quickly on the climb (a little earlier than I was expecting – lots of lactic acid stored up in my legs from sprinting up the hill 8 times already) and went from the front of the pack to the very back of the pack in the last 300 meters of the race.  Fun times.

Here’s a great photo from Heidi Swift of the 3 field coming up the bottom section of the climb.  I’m way over on the right.  Like I said, I was favoring the left side of the road.

I think I might skip Tabor next week in favor of being well-rested for Elkhorn, my biggest race remaining for the year.  Then again, it’s such a short, fast race it might be good to open up my legs before Elkhorn begins on Friday.

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