Monday, June 8, 2009

The truth hurts sometimes

My first venture into Cat 4's was this past weekend in East TN for the Roan Groan and associated crit race. I didn't do the time trial.

Basically the road race boiled down to this. I did the cat 4/5 race. There were 55 of us. I ended up 25th out of 55. My time was pretty much the same as it has been the past few times doing this race. I finished 10th last year with basically the same time. The 4/5's came within a minute of catching the regular cat 4's. Oh well. Better results next year.

The next day was the my first straight up cat 4 crit race. Right to the point. The race was fast from the get go. The race was unusual in that there were 7 turns. I stayed with the pack as long as I possibly could. When I finally couldn't go anymore I looked down at my timer.......25 minutes. That obviously is the typical length of a cat 5 race. Coincidence? I think not. I have more work to do. I made it 30 minutes and then got pulled. I wasn't even lapped and they pulled me......how rude. I ended up 20th out of 32. The good news from all of this was that 12 people were pulled before me.

Here are some pics from the race. Some people didn't like the course, but I personally loved it. It was different than your typical 4 turn race.

Here is the view coming out of the 3rd turn. You can see the 2nd turn in the back.


Coming out of the 3rd corner headed to the fourth. The fourth corner is a left turn followed by a quick right turn that was maybe 30 yards between then.



No comments:

Post a Comment