Raced the Highland Hex yesterday, much improvement over last season mud fest. The weather was excellent and even with the course was relatively dry, with mud in only a few sections. One major difference this year was the addition of looong climb up to the highest point in the park. The course was really difficult. With the open fire-road descents that were at high speed, it really felt like you were just continually climbing. You would descend immediately and then start the next climb. While there was some great sections of singletrack, this was a really tough course for me to adjust too. I prefer lots of loaded singletrack interspersed with short to intermediate steep climbs.
I started out really strong and felt great the first few laps. I was comfortable on the climbs and really ripping it in the singletrack. I led for the first 4 1/2 laps or so. Soon though, the toll of the climbs and the efforts from last weekend were catching up with me. I could feel some cramping starting to come on, so I backed off a little and had to let Terry Blanchett (Bear-Naked/Cannondale) by. He was ripping it up the climbs and I couldn't follow his pace. He dangled out front by a minute or 2 the next 2 laps, but then climbing as well as he was extended it up to 5 minutes by the end of lap 6. I surged pretty good on lap 7, but wasn't closing the gap so I started to let up a little. I realized that I was still going to have to do another lap so I let off the gas and settled for my 2nd place. I was having a tough 8th lap and just took it chill. Little did I know the 3rd place rider finished 1:45 behind me! I didn't catch word that there were any other solo's still riding. I woulda busted my ass had I known he was out there!
I ended up taking the victory for my age group, and 15 minutes down on Terry. It was a good race, but my legs were no where near where I would've liked them to be. I used the ergomo though and kept myself paced well. Once I upload it to my pc, I'll throw up a graph of the course and some other info. Time to go riding now......
Currently playing in iTunes: Sealings by Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Epic Peaks Coaching
1 comment:
Nice writeup on the Hex Jason, I'll look forward to the upload of course stats if you get a chance to post those. Great fun racing with you, thanks for the excellent competition and also the post-race enthusiastic chitchat about your Horrible Hundred plans with all that nice riding out there around HighTor, Italy Hill, FLT, etc. Hope to make it to the two remaining NYSERS events, and maybe cross paths elsewhere out in western NY (Raccoon Rally, etc).
Cheers... terry
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