and expect to do either of them well. I just read a post from Adam Myerson and it more or less summed up Sunday's races. In my case, the the only thing at stake was a $20 prize and pride. Thankfully I don't race for a living so making the wrong choice is low risk.
More on that later. It seems like most of my posts start with an apology for the lack of posts. The good news is that I've been riding and racing my bike a lot. I already have 5 races in the legs this season which is an early start for someone that tends to start late and focus on CX. As I mentioned in my last post, I was headed for Battenkill. It went pretty well. 14th place out of 105 starters. Not exactly a stellar performance but considering how seriously some people take that race, I'm pleased with the result. I know there was a lot of debate over whether or not Battenkill was worth the price of admission. I must admit that initially I had no interest in paying for the experience. That said, I had decent early season form and figured I'd might as well check it out. Without going into a lot of detail, they did an outstanding job with the race. The volunteers were awesome, the course was very well marked, they were highly organized and there were port-o-johns as far as the eye could see.
By the end of the race I started to feel like the Grim Reaper. It seemed like every time I passed people and felt like I'd moved to the middle of the pack, I'd turn around and see the wheel van. We'd climb a hill, I'd move up 10 spots and start feeling pretty good about myself for moving up. A minute later I'd turn around and no one would be behind me. Kind of an odd day in that regard. I even finished with the wheel van right behind me in a sprint. Ironically I didn't have any wheels in there . . .
Fast forward to last weekend and it was time for the Binghamton Circuit Race. Typically this is my first or second race of the year. In previous years I've tucked in, held on for dear life with questionable fitness and sprinted to the finish. This year I was unsure how to approach the race. My fitness is at an all time high for April, so I had some options. Option 1 - sit in and save my sprint. Option 2 - get to the front and hope to get in a break. There were two races, so I ended up trying both options. In the first race I covered one break knowing I had some fast teammates in the race, but other than that I sat in and hoped to set myself up for a decent sprint. Coming into the sprint I was in great position, but it had rained the whole race and the guy to my right started sliding into me and I got off the gas on an uphill sprint. I was in the drops and in the wrong gear to wind it back up, so getting it going again wasn't really an option.
Race number two was the opposite race. Right before the race I ran into a local Cat 3 and he excitedly told me we were headed right to the front. We were going to try and get in every break or start one. He said we could sit in and get popped or crash in a sprint, or we could try and get a break going and better our odds. That's exactly what we did. Actually, he was so excited about our plan that we didn't realize that we'd lined up behind the Cat 5 race and we had to chase onto our race. Once we caught on we got right to the plan. We bridged to a handful of breaks and got into a two lap break with 7 to go. Unfortunately no one joined us, so we were doomed for failure, but nothing ventured as they say. By the time I needed to wind up a sprint I was out of matches, but as Adam said . . . you can't do two jobs. Thankfully one of my teammates had gone with option 1 in race number two, after he'd gone for broke in race number one, and he grabbed third place in his second race of the day. Keeping all of this straight?
Next stop Hollenbeck. I haven't decided on option 1 or 2 yet.
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