I guess it's time to finish this race report up since it happened over a week ago.....
After having a couple of days to digest the MWSR 2012, I'm still not sure how I feel about the whole thing. It was definitely epic, but on a different level than last year. If you need a re-cap of last years race you can find it here. Anyway, we had a pretty big crew from the team this year. I don't know all the details of the other guys. This is mainly my take on what happened in the cat 2 races. First thing first. I've been trying super hard not to get sick since early last week. Everybody in my house has been really sick as have several folks at work. I got a flu shot a few months back, so I wonder if that helped? Not sure, but I haven't felt good the past several days. I noticed last Tuesday I tried to do some intervals and my HR to power seemed a lot higher than normal so I took it a lot easier last week. I'm not making excuses as I don't think it altered my racing much if any, but it sure added to the misery of the first day's weather.
 |
| 4 bikes + extra wheels + all our gear |
I carpooled to the race with Rob. We outdid our packing job from the Tulsa Tough last year by getting all our stuff in his wagon. I think every time we had to unpack and re-pack, we got better and more efficient than the time before.
 |
| Mostly unpacked at our hotel |
Rob and I rolled around for about 10 minutes before the start of our crit. We were in a good spot near the start/finish line before our race started, but decided to gamble and take 1 practice lap to check out the course. Sure enough, by the time we got back around, there was a full crowd around the start line, so we were starting in the worst possible position for a rainy crit. Rob had his video camera on his bike. His race was a little different than mine. I moved up as quick as possible knowing the race would break up and probably half the guys would get pulled, and sure enough 2/3's of the original 60 riders got pulled.
I got into the main group of 20-25 riders in a couple of laps. It is much easier riding in the group once you're there.
Rob made it look easy getting back to the group, but it's REALLY hard to succesfully do it this way unless you're pretty strong. Anyway, there were a few crashes here and there. Rob got caught up in one, but got back in the mix after getting his bike issues sorted out. I felt pretty good the whole race. I tried to get into a couple of moves, but it seemed like the final selection of guys was content to just stay together and ride it out. I made the fatal error of getting shuffled too far to the back a little too close to the end of the race. I was trying to move up for the finish of the race, and over cooked the last corner and crashed with 3 laps to go. Pretty big bummer because Rob was right behind me and I killed both of our chances for some good results in the first stage. Rob ended up 19th and I got 20th.
Here is Robs video of about 10 minutes of the rainy crit:
The second stage TT was only a couple hours after the crit, so we rushed back to the hotel and got the bikes ready. Luckily, I had some tegaderm in my bag and got my road rash dealt with. Tegaderm is a crit racers best friend when you go down.
The TT went ok for me. Not what I wanted for sure. The conditions were pretty harsh. It felt like someone was spraying me in the face with an ice cold pressure washer on the downhills, as it was a good headwind and raining really hard. Semi tough to see where you were going at times, but everybody had to deal with it.
The weather on Sunday was better. Still pretty cool, but not bad. Definitely would not have been fun if it rained all day again. The road race was pretty uneventful. It wasn't too windy, so I was pretty sure the race would end up in a field sprint, and I guess it pretty much did. Well, at least for 2nd place. Caleb Fuchs seems to be at a different level than the rest of thr cat 2's. He basically got a flat with about 7 miles to go, got on a team mates bike, caught the group that was trying to capitalize on his mishap, kept on going and soloed in for the win and overall 1st in the GC.
Rob had his camera on and got the last 30 minutes of the race. You can see that version HERE.
The last 4 minute version is here:
I ended up 7th in the road race and Rob got 14th. Our decent results in the RR were enough to move Rob into 7th in the GC and I got 15th.
 |
| Road Race results |
 |
| I had a pretty sweet number |
I'm looking forward to the next race (at least for me). The Salt Creek criterium and the Tall Chief RR the 2nd weekend in March. We should have our full team in attendance and ready to rumble.
