Monday, August 26, 2013

College life and biking racing

After a long summer of being home and working, I am finally back at Ripon College. Its really nice to be back with everyone again and being able to meet some new people. Its been about 10 days since I've moved in and I've been enjoying every moment. Besides riding and racing, our team has been doing a lot of team bonding, which is always cool. We are building trails, playing mini golf and hanging out when we are not racing. Now that Its officially collegiate season, I'm racing for the Ripon College Cycling team. Almost our whole team has gone to the last 2 WORS races. The first race, Colectivo Classic, I lost 3 of my 5 bottles and got dehydrated. I then proceeded to get dropped and lost 4 spots from the first 2.5 laps. I ended up 22nd overall and 2nd in age group. Still good considering my other results in WORS were just a couple spots ahead of this one. I'm still showing consistent results with the beginning of the season. Then after a good week of fun and hard training, along came the Reforestation Ramble. WORS number 9 for the series and probably my last one for the year, so I had to make it count. After a solid warm up I was feeling just like always, nervous and ready to race. I lined up 3rd row and after Don's long GO, I clipped in took 2 pedal strokes and got knocked almost off my bike and faded to the back of the field. I quickly jumped onto the pedals and got going. I easily managed to work my way back up to the top 15 and was sitting comfortably in the front group. The massive field worked its way around into the first single track section when we got split up. I had no idea where I was. I knew it couldn't be to bad seeing how 2-3 people who usually beat me, were in my group. For that first lap, we were really giving it and a few people fell off. Our group was now down to 4 people. I took the lead at the start of lap 2, where I held a fast but comfortable pace through the first sections of single track and open flats.  Nobody got dropped yet, but I could see that one person was hurting. I pulled off and sat in when Rick Mezo attacked. I chased and managed to hang on with Mike M from LAPT. After 1/2 a lap we managed to push it hard enough to pop Mike off the back. Now Rick and I were taking pulls. We hit the 3rd lap, I took the front and pulled for a long time, then let Rick take over. Then when he got to the front he slowed up. He was hurting, so I attacked on a hill and got a gap. I held a hard pace to the finish, which landed me a spot on the overall podium. I finished 9th overall and 1st in age group. This is now the 2nd time I've cracked the top 10. Now that I've tasted it, I want more and hope to have a great collegiate season. 

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