Friendly rivals: 54 including Juan, Benoit, Mark from Pen Velo, former LGBRC Chris P
Got to the velodrome early and met the usual suspects. Chris D insisted on preriding the course on the bum leg. The first thing one notices due to the lack of recent signficant precipitation is that the course was hard and bumpy and stayed that way or the somewhat loose descents that would become more loose and more sandy as more traffic went over it. The laps were surprisingly short at a leisurely warmup pace as well. The longest incline was less than twenty seconds, and the course used the other six foot tall bumps for runups and descents and we ended each lap with a tour of the velodrome. Even though the course was mostly flat it was still hard to get a good rhythm as the bumps threw me all over the place and I could not stay seated except on the trip around the velodrome and out back to the course. I ended up going with 30 PSI in the front and 25 PSI in the back.
Went out conservatively and heard Benoit cajoling me towards the front but the other 52 folks up there were not cooperating during the crazy start so we would have to wait until the barriers or the runups to make any ground. The *big* runup was short enough that I convinced myself to sprint up it to try to make up ground, and to not let down the people gathered there to yell for us, this was where I passed the most people. I got passed mostly on the bumpy double track or the one descent that took one right into the tree trunk, pictured here:
Juan got a good start and it took me a while to reel him in - I am not sure if I should try to get a better start as I have blown up every time I have gone from the gun in a cross race. Maybe next time...
The best part of the day was the San Jose Bicycle Club's junior program season ending picnic. Andrew Lanier barbecued food and handed out prizes to all the kids.
30th out of 54
T: 38:47
C: 80
S: 20.2 kph
Pavg: 161
Pnorm: 187
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