Category: 2
Result: 3rd

I raced to my first real result as a cat 2 this weekend, a 3rd place at the Ronde Van Brisbeen circuit race. This is a cool course that can be really hard if the racers ride it hard. It goes up for half a lap, then goes down half a lap with a few turns thrown in to keep you from getting bored. My race had maybe 50 starters with two teams being really well represented, I won't say who they were, just that it wasn't FFBC.

I don't remember much of the race other than the downhill portion as this was where I had fun railing the turns and pushing the bike a little harder than most of the other racers. There's a particularly sharp right-hander at the bottom of the descent (I hate how that word is spelled/put together. It's one of the many french ripoffs we have in our language that when taken away from its native dialogue is stupid and ugly), that the pack had been scrubbing about half their speed just to enter and that I had wanted to dive into at full speed all day. The only problem with my want to hit this turn hard meant that I would need to be into it first and would also have to stick my nose in the wind on the descent (stupid word), the only part of the course we were actually racing on, so I only got to do it once or twice. One of the times I railed it really hard and hit a bot dot with both wheels and skipped a few inches toward the outside of the turn and ran it right to the barriers, almost crashing into them...almost.

Like I said, the pack basically rested on the uphill portion and raced down the hill and to the base of the hill. The first few laps were damn fast and included a break that I was in which laste for a lap. After that, the two well represented teams just rode a tempo up the hill that nobody really wanted to come around. At five to go, one of the teams stuck a few guys on the front and again rode a solid tempo that nobody came around until the last lap. I rode that little train for 4 of the last 5 laps and hid myself about 10 back on the last lap. I hung out there for most of the hill because I know people like to sprint early and end up blowing up before the finish. Coming into the final corner, only a few guys had started sprinting so I lit it up and came around lots of guys with the top three in sight. Just before the finish, the guy in third, one of the Belarus kids, came unclipped in a big way and was trying to sort himself out while drifting towards the finish. I gave it one last push and just managed to pass him to take the final podium spot for the day.

I didn't really clean up on the prize side of things, only taking away a box of Girl Scout cookies that my son and roommate later devoured, and a nice medal, the medal I've been waiting to get for about 5 years now (there's a story behind that). I don't think I get any points either since the race had fewer than 60 riders and was almost certainly shorter than 35 miles.

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