Winter Park Race #1 Race Report

   This season I'm racing the Epic Single Track series in Winter Park. This season I'm going to give a little race report after each race. The series kicked off last Saturday with the Excel Hill Climb.  We climbed from the base of Winter park to the top of Mary Jane.

   This is also my first race in the expert class. Here is my shiny new expert number plate:

404 seems lucky enough

   Around the start everyone was riding around warming up. The starting hill was a bit steeper than the rest of the course and everyone was eager to get over this part and into the meat of the climb

Warming up

   Here is a shot of the profile from Strava, pretty straightforward. Not a lot of places to rest in there.

Race profile

   ... as well as the map. The switchbacks were the steeper parts. There was one flat-ish spot about 4 miles in that was a good place to recover.

The route

   Last season this race went well and I took 4/11.  This season that was not the case.

It's going to be a long season.

   I rode about 30 seconds per mile slower this year compared to last. On the way up seeing my class ride away form me I found myself bargaining, "Hill climbs aren't my thing." "I didn't have enough time to warm up." "I'll regroup and catch them in a bit." things like that. The truth is that I should have grabbed the wheel of the last person to pass me and hung on until I bonked. Could I have ridden 5 minutes faster? Probably not, but I wasn't tired enough afterwards to feel good about this race.

   In any case, the foundation of my plan to lull the rest of the class into a false sense of security is well laid.

EDIT:
   Nothing like a bad finish Saturday to get you motivated to ride hard Monday: