First 1st!

I am feeling pretty euphoric right now. On Saturday I got my first victory of the year.

This past weekend and week started out as a lot of weeks have with me trying to keep up with everything. And this week, I had to deal with losing my helmet and ulock somewhere between Tacoma and Portland. I made a bit of a dent in the dishes but that didn't last for long since I worked late on Thursday.

Friday night I decided I needed to alter my state of mind towards thinking about winning Saturday's bike race. So I downloaded this youtube video a repeatedly watched the finish like 7 times while thinking about tomorrow's race strategy.



Saturday the stress was added again when I realized that I had lost my OBRA Membership Card. I let it go and decided to pony up the extra for a one day license at registration.

I was quite excited since I had found a ride with someone to the races. This made the journey less lonely which was appreciated. I was in a good mood at the race site since it was sunny and the course was dry and very wide.

I warmed up with a few short sprints to get the body going and then rolled up right onto the line to start. The race was going well and some dude had shot off the front first lap. The group was making sure he didn't get too far away, but he did earn the first prime outright. The field caught him shortly after that.

The next prime came up and I decided to test out my legs. Nobody really chased me, but when I did see someone chasing I dropped down 2 gears and hammered it out for those hammer gels at stake. After this I was feeling good and got in the drops and kept going to see what would happen. Eventually the guy that blasted off the first lap bridged up to me and wanted to work with me. So we did just this and started riding away from the field with maybe 7 laps to go. At some point I thought I saw a group of 5 chasing us in short range. However, our gap kept widening and by the final lap we knew we had it. The final straightaway was really long. I had just let this guy take his turn pulling but about halfway down the straightaway I broke off to signal that it was on for 1st. We both sprinted hard for the line and neither of us knew who had got it.

Try to see for yourself who finished first in this race photo.

Both of us congratulated each other and were pretty stoked to have rode away like that. The guy I was working with told me "I'm from Salem, you better not have beaten me on my home turf!" in a half-jokingly way. I could only reply "what do I gotta do, it's a bike race?" At the finish line we were both trying to figure out who won and getting congratulated by a few people. Eventually, I made my way over to the result tent and was informed that I had in fact won the race. This was pretty awesome. There were no hard feelings for the guy in 2nd except that he had gotten 2nd. Such is bike racing.

After this I hung out with the guy who gave me a ride and then watched him race. It was like opposite race day at the Capitol Crit, the 4/5 field had a break that won, whereas both the 3s and 1/2s came down to a field sprint. And once I got back home I slept 9hours. Aw yeah. Also, I plugged in the result numbers and it now looks like I have earned 21 points in Cat 4. I'm going to see what my coach thinks about upgrading.

This next week my coach has me doing a rest week, but there are 2 races this coming weekend. I'm planning on doing IVRR and maybe even Banana Belt on Sunday.