The season. Bike racing season. OVER. It was a long one and quite frankly, it lasted too long. First race March 5, last race 8.5 months later, roughly 47 races in-between with a few taking the better part of entire days. After a big diet and effort push to Leadville, my interest and energy waned heading into cross season. Despite some great early results, I didn’t have as much fun as I should have, completely ran out of steam, and barely made it through, BUT MADE IT THROUGH I DID. All in all, I probably only “skipped” three races due to burnout. That’s not so bad.
I found my way onto the podium 13 times of which three were on the top rung. An unprecedented year.
Let’s work our way back through the seasons, shall we?
Cross
It went well. Turning 35 allowed me to race in the 35+/old man category. I ran away with a few Cat 3 races, earned a leader’s jersey, and was bumped to Cat 2 following three wins and a few other respectable finishes. Despite only getting a handful of races into the early season series, I still finished second overall, although I didn’t qualify for final standings due to lack of results. In order to truly “win” in a lot of bike racing overall competitors you need the perfect balance of finishing well, but not too well to upgrade – think 8th every race. Funny thing.
Following my upgrade to Cat 2 I was faced with racing Open 2/3 (45 minutes) or Masters 1/2 (60 minutes with the big dawgs). I opted for the former in all but one race and finished mid pack. No longer capable of finishing at the top and really feeling the mental fatigue, I kind of let my training and diet go, and more or less slogged through the rest of the season. It wasn’t particularly enjoyable, but a lesson learned; ~50 races is too many.
Next year I’ll likely focus on smaller races as I think I get more enjoyment out of spectating the larger ones than racing them. Will still likely keep in the Open 2/3 category too as the one race I did in Masters 1/2 had me battling for close to last place, that’s no fun, and neither is racing last in the schedule of events; my ~1ish starts allow me to sleep in, race, and then chill/spectate for a couple of hours.
Mountain
I’ve previously written about this in a multitude of posts. I progressed leaps and bounds here mostly by a) doing it and b) getting a fantastic new bicycle.
Next year I’ll find myself in Cat 1 for Short Track so that’ll be entertaining. Also planning to do the big local races, Tahoe, and Leadville if I can get in.
Track
I tried it. It’s scary as hell, but fun as hell. I want more of it. Lots of room to improve skills here so a worthy option for focus next year.
Road
This proved to be a tricky road year for me. I came out of a great off-season feeling crazy strong, but it’s the only discipline I don’t feel I really saw huge improvement in. My placing were more comfortable than years past, but I felt an upgrade was inevitable and it didn’t happen.
Next year I’m going to focus on that upgrade. It needs to happen as it’ll likely be the only one I get for a long while.
For now, I’m going to get back to enjoying aimless outdoor riding when weather permits, and when it doesn’t I equally look forward to spending a lot of time on the trainer catching up on Netflix and reading. It’s gonna be real nice.
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