Well Comfort is a good race and a bad race for me. There is a lot of climbing, which is not so good for me, but the course is technical and has lots of downhills where you really can make up time, which is good for me. This technical aspect of the course is largely attributable to the vast amount of rocks present. Rocks and I don't seem to get along too well, having resulted in a pair of flats at the very rocky Reimer's Ranch course. Unfortunately, we continued our bad relationship this weekend when I flatted again. Yep, you heard right. I flatted 7 minutes and 30 seconds in this time. So immediately I was back to dead last. I fixed the flat and tried to get rolling again but I just couldn't get a good groove going on the first half of the course. When we hit the second half it started with a long climb to the tune of about 20 minutes, and interestingly this is where I hit my stride. I started making up some ground and passing riders in my class as well as others that had previously passed me. I kept rocking along on this second half of the course, I passed a few riders from my class and then caught another one a few miles from the finish with one solid climb left to go. I locked onto him as my last target and plotted the rest of the race to cross the line ahead of him. I knew I was going faster than him since I'd caught him, but I didn't want to pass him too early and expend too much energy, giving him a chance to lock on my wheel and pass me back. So I sat behind him until just before the last climb was over and then I made my move. I punched it to the top and flew down to the finish line. I wound up putting over a minute on him in that last mile or two, and I crossed the finish line with plenty of energy left over. Unfortunately, I finished only about 20 seconds behind the 10th place finisher, and 9th was less than a minute ahead of me. Had I continued my strong pace and passed that rider earlier, I would surely have caught 10th and maybe even 9th for a much more satisfying finish. But I didn't, so I have to settle for 11th.
I think maybe I need to work on my mental game a little? At Warda when I got dropped on that last climb I let myself explode when I may could have pushed harder to the finish alone to retain 4th place, or would have continued at the same pace if I just could have held onto that wheel and had a shot at 3rd. But once I got dropped and was by myself I couldn't push anymore. Was that mental or had I just hit my physical limit? I don't know. At this race I let the flat hang over my head too long which prevented me from getting back up to race pace. The flat should have only taken 4~5 minutes to change and I should have been back underway, but the impact on my race was much larger than that.
Well hopefully Double Lake will be a good race for me, I would like to get one more solid finish this series as a Sport racer before making the big jump this fall. I still also have X-Bar to race as well, but I'm banking on Double Lake right now as it is a local race that I did reasonably well at last year.
Oh I almost forgot to mention that just a few days before the race I woke up at 6AM Wednesday morning and didn't go to sleep until 8:30PM Thursday night. Yes that is 38.5 hours of straight being awake. I got called back into work Wednesday night to finish a test that took until 9AM Thursday morning, and then I chose to just keep on working the rest of the day Thursday. I did get Friday off, but I didn't get much sleep past 7:30AM or so. Only having a few days to recover from this episode may have had an impact on my racing, as I was sure feeling the tiredness Saturday during the preride. But I did what I had to do for work and then did what I could at the race so there's not much else to do about it.
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