Mission (and goals) accomplished!
Today's stage was only 26 miles. Except for being a bit sniffly, I felt pretty good at the start. ...until the guys in my class took off. I hung on for a while, but with 33 minutes on 4th and 20 minutes behind 2nd I decided the prudent thing would be to ride my pace like I'd been doing all week. We had a bit of gravel road, a sandy/rocky section then a long, fast double track descent. The day's only major climb signaled the 1/2 way point. We rode some pretty cool single track after that and then there were rocks. There were some newly cut single track side-of-mountain very loose rock switch back descents then through some more water and back to the sandy/rocky section. About 5 miles out we were back onto the open road and then onto the trails and around the lake for the last time at the Scout Camp. It felt great to finish!
Awards followed later that afternoon. I was 7th on the day, but more importantly I held onto my 3rd in GC. I got some cool schwag and Trans-Sylvania finisher awards.
Looking back at my pre-race goals I achieved every one of them. I learned a lot of things about what I needed to do to be more prepared and areas I needed to focus more on in training. I finished on the podium in stage 2 (the GC podium was a bonus!). I made some friends. I practiced good recovery techniques and managed to be smooth and focused enough to have only 1 crash and 1 mechanical (both on stage 5).
All-in-all it's been a very good week.
See you on the trails!
No comments:
Post a Comment