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Last night I left the TT venue thinking that I rode an okay time trial and that I just might be able to come out favorably on a multi-way (18-way) tie for 10th place overall. My TT ended up putting me near the bottom of that at 27th overall, but … the first place in the cat 3 bonus competition. So all I had to do was finish the circuit race with the field probably…. easy, right? I did it last year, why not?

After watching the end of the womens race and the category 4 race (my photos linked here and some from MV racer Michael Carpenter … here), it was time to warmup. Surprisingly, I felt pretty good. I knew that I had raced, to be sure, but much better than before the TT yesterday afternoon. The weather, which had been off and on raining even seemed to be coming around. So we lined up at the start line and did the usual LAMBRA roll call. And then it started to rain. First lightly, then heavy, then back to light.

And then we started. Due to this rain, the field was taking the corners uber-conservative and then killing it out of each of the two “technical” corners (not really that bad, but the only ones that involved downhill speed and 90-degree turns). This meant, that 2-3 times a lap, I would go from not pedaling/braking to a short 700W burst… nice. Thankfully after 20 minutes of that, the rain stopped and the roads dried out. This meant we could corner sensibly, but also the attacks were harder to compensate. By 30-35 minutes in after advancing at least 6 places from the back, I found myself at the back as people disappeared behind me. My time was coming up..

At 37 minutes in, they rang the hot spot time bonus prime bell and I knew I might be in trouble. It proved itself out when on the backstretch, I was barely there and then up the grade to the finish, I was gapped… After turns 1-2 I was into the wind alone 10 yards of the pace. That was it. I rode 2 or 3 more laps and then I was pulled. Crap. After I stopped I looked at the field, one of my Cat 3 competitors was still in it. There went 1st place in the Cat 3 bonus (99% sure I am in that at 2nd place, didn’t wait around for results, results posted online don’t have categories).

So, all in all, it was a good weekend. It served to prove to myself that I can make it as a Cat 2 at least in races without a ton of climbing anyway. It also should put me in pretty good standing in LAMBRA points, not sure if I will pursue that or not. I do have Tour de Louisaine on my calender, but last year there wasn’t enough Cat 3’s to make points. Who knows, if I get enough of the right type of successes, I might upgrade by then anyway.

Frogge took photos of the Cat 1/2/3 circuit race.

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Post Script. I looked at the final standings and if I could have finished with the group in the circuit race, it would have put me at +1:56 in the G.C. or 21st place, just out of the money….(ended up +5:37, lost 3:38 to the field in the circuit race), not that staying with them would have easy if I would have cleared 40 minutes… the pace looked pretty brutal.