Gabriel Keck: This is one
of my favorite courses of the season, and once again Reel Theaters didn't
disappoint! The course is always a fun mix of slaloming around trees,
punchy climbs, beach sand, and fast double track around the lake. The
race started in typical fashion with a couple hundred yards of pavement followed
by a hairpin turn onto grass to the first hill climb of the course. It
was a bit of a bump and grind around that first corner with Richard Feldman,
Remi, Tad, Cory, Ian, myself, and Andrew Harris going in hot. We quickly
got sorted out after the hairpin whilst hitting the first punchy climb.
Then Ian who was at the front crashes out in the first technical corner
coming off the hill. We sweep around him, and somewhere around here
Richard Feldman gets free of the pack and we only see glimpses of him for the
duration of the race. However, it becomes a bit of a throw down in the
chase group. Cory gets away by riding strong and smooth through the technical
part of the course but once on the doubletrack, the pack closes the gap.
I was able to make a move to the front of the chase group about halfway
through the fast double track section, and was then working with Tad and Harris
(who is coming on strong this season!) on the road section. After
drafting a bit, I moved to the front and put in an effort. As this was
just a lap into the 8 lap race, I wanted to stay with the chase group, but when
a gap opened, I decided to give it a go and see if I could get away.
At every
turn I saw that I was inching away from them, but Feldman was increasing his
gap on me. It soon became a race where I had no chance of closing ground
on 1st, but very worried that I would be caught by the chase group. At
this point I tried to relax and simply ride as smooth as I possibly could.
No hard braking into corners, no aggressive turns, just focusing on
keeping my heart rate down in the technical sections and giving it all I had on
the flats and hills. This helped the race go quickly, and soon it was
bell lap. I finished with Feldman nowhere in sight, but with Tad and
Harris close behind to round out the podium. Fun course, fun racing, and
good times racing out there with Cory, who will be bringing some of the Cross
Crusade fitness back to the local races!
I've had a
solid start to the cx season, and I think it has to do with my racing the Bogus
Basin Hill Climb race for the first time. It's one of the last road races
of the season, and for me, a little over an hour in duration, pretty much like
a cx race. Doing the Tuesday evening Bogus Basin training rides that lead
up to the race got the fitness dialed in. And I was then able to
maintaining this fitness with consistent mtn bike rides on Tues and Thurs
evenings plus a Bogus hill climb or Lost River Cycling (LRC) road ride on the
weekends. This took me into the cx season with a solid base of fitness.
This doesn't mean that cx racing is any less painful, it just means that
I feel I can recover more quickly from a hard effort or chase and then do it again...
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| Gabe calmly reeling in Harris |
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