The next QCR MTB race on schedule was the famous Zikreet Rambler in the beautiful “Film city” peninsula with high dry cliffs, rocky hills, sandy roads and plenty of dirt tracks to play on. I volunteered again to help built and mark the course so some of the technical sections were creations of my twisted mind J I arrived on spot at 2am to be able to wake up at 6am and help putting flags and be 100% ready at the start line at 8am. This was quite rare that I was not doing anything on the last minute. I should try to do this more often, because I felt great…emptied, hydrated, motivated, excited!!
BANG!!! And 80 bikers started for a 32k course. I’m very bad race tactician. I just can’t go easy, stay with the lead, see how it goes and then attack. My strategy is different. I start right away with tempo “Finish the race and die” going basically 95% with little reserve for chasing somebody who is faster than me. I push on the other’s nerves by forcing them to keep up from the beginning, which few are used to, or see me disappear, which is kind of frustrating!! I always have the intention to change this, but it just never works and I push forward as hard as I can. “I can always slow down” I say, “Let’s see how far can I go!!”
This race was no difference. I started in the middle of the field, but quickly progressed to the front, where Davy was leading the pack. I overtook him and he tried to keep up for 1k more, but then he fell back. And I then was alone, in the lead, on my playground!! I helped to build the course and I did it twice before the race so I knew exactly where to go and could focus only on cycling. Initial short technical sections I overcame fearlessly with adrenaline in my eyes and the rest was just basically straight flat sandy and rocky track, which is exactly where is my biggest strength!!
So after 10k at the first checkpoint I had 6 minutes lead J And then there was the finish, 1:19:22. The scorekeepers were almost not yet ready for somebody’s arrival, so I had time to get my camping chair, camera and comfortably sit in the finish line to take pictures of the others. First of them arrived 13 minutes after me J
Racing is the best training and I felt I improved a lot in since my first race. Actually I improved to such position that the “Weekly QCR newsletter” was saying “…and JIRI won the MTB race…no surprise here”
1 comment:
Finally a comment from someone else but me, too bad it's a spam! :D
Post a Comment