The season is over!-Plattekill wrap-up

What a lovely day for a bike race.  Awoke to a nice cold drizzle/downpour.  Packed up and headed to Plattekill for the race, it was around 40 degrees and 40 mph winds.  To top it off, they loaded us up on the chairlifts and took us to the top of the mountain to race, ie no access to the car and no place to stay warm! 4 laps around a 4.5 mile course

I focused on staying warm and dry so my warm-up consisted of a few quick rides around the start line and the first 300 meters of the course.  It was a small group, I was the only pro cat racer and about 10 other experts.  I hit it hard off the start and cleaned house in the technical sections, not bad considering I was riding the course, sight unseen.  I flew around and led the first lap, but was caught just after the start finish line.  I stayed hot on the riders heels throughout the second lap, any ground he was taking from me on the climbs, I was taking back in the technical sections, on one of the climbs, the 3rd rider in our group put up a nice charge up the hill and got off the front.  I was slowly losing power as my lower back was beginning to ache really bad and thus couldn't put the power down on the climbs, by the 3rd lap I was sitting in 3rd place a few minutes down on 1st but I was closing on 2nd.  I grabbed a nice bottle of coke at the start for the last 2 laps and it started to kick in during the 4th lap.  The caffeine caused me to forget about my aching back and get back to the task at hand.I charged hard and soon caught 2nd, who managed to break his chain just in front of me, but my efforts to catch 1st place weren't quite enough.  

Overall, my legs were pretty good, just the lungs and back took me out of the race for a bit. Besides, 1st place rider had home course advantage as he lived at the bottom of the mountain and that can go a long ways.  He snagged me by about 2 minutes or so.

My poor mother had to work alot harder than I did to stay warm as she rode the lift to the top (for the first time ever) and stayed the whole time to feed me, thanks ma :)

Plattekill always puts on a good race as they just got back into the xc side of it as they were doing construction on the mountain the past few years. They always hand out some good prizes, in fact the first person to email me can grab my $25 spy sunglasses gift certificate, as I just recently picked myself up a pair of tifosi. Look out for a good series to come from them next year, and maybe a 6 hour race as I spoke to the promoter about joining the nysers

This season is wrapped up and I'm looking forward to recharging the batteries and coming out with a full head of steam next year!

As its time to rest...I'm on my way to get me a twelve pack and some mcd's! Frank, you're not reading this are you?