I wasn’t exactly sure where the start line was and realized that I was in the wrong place, so I figured it out and rode to the start. In the men’s 4 race, start position is solely based on when you registered, I was 655, numbers started at 600 and went up to just about 700, so a decent sized field. They still weren’t to my number yet but since I was late getting there I was pretty close to the back of the field. The official was lining everyone up by number, but about the time he reached 645 he just said, ok, the rest of you just line up somewhere behind them, so I was stuck quite a few rows back from where I should have been.

Then off we went. It was packed to the first turn, I couldn’t really get around anyone. To me it seemed that the front half took off and the back half was moving a bit slower. Once things spread out a bit where you could really start passing the front half of the race was well out in front. I really didn’t have any idea what to expect so I just tried to pick off people in front of me when I could and make sure I didn’t drop my bike and look like an idiot. The thing I had the hardest time with was getting by people in the technical sections. I seemed to gain the most ground on people in front of me when the course started to turn around trees, or whatever obstacle was in our way, but those sections were tough to get by.

When things thinned out a bit there was a group I pretty much spent the whole race with and the 4-5 of us would pass each other a few times out there, then one by one we thinned out, some pulled ahead some dropped back. In the last lap or two there seemed to quite a few people that had burned themselves out by that point so saving something for that last lap is probably a good idea.

Passed by the finish line for the bell lap and surprisingly I hadn’t been passed by the leaders, I was sure that I would get lapped, so I count that as a victory on my part. I ended up finishing 55th out of 95 or so that started, extremely happy with that result. It’s funny when I looked at my Garmin I raced for 42 minutes and went a total of 8 miles with an average HR of 169; probably the more painful but fun 8 miles I have put in on a bike.

After the race I went to pick up the family and watched some of the later races drinking beer and eating BBQ, does it get much better than that?. My kids were disappointed when we told them it was time to go; there must have been 20-30 kids on the playground after my race.

Very much looking forward to the next race, doing DCCX on Nov 24th in DC, I think I am starting even further back in that race but learned a bit in this race so I can hopefully put that knowledge to use and move up a bit more.


Get to the start line on time? Other than that, very happy with this race.

Drank beer and ate BBQ


lungs?


Cross is fun.