CBR Daylight Saving Time Criterium
(This race was on Sunday, Mar 8th. Another late report due to business travel.
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Masters 40+ 1/2/3
The schedule for this monthly series of races changed this month when the promoter ADDED a 55+/60+ race. After last year's "boycott" by some 55+/60+ racers, the promoter dropped the category for the first two months since he was losing money. Not sure what made him change his mind but he did. The only problem was that he put the race as the next-to-last race of the day, so my first race was the 60 minute 40+ race. Not the ideal way to warm up for the 40 minute 55+ race.
There were 123(!) entrants but I think some of them were no-shows. Basically, I wanted to find a good wheel and stay on it. Did that and finished in the pack -- 61st out of 85 finishers. Oh and it was a 1 hour, 27.8 MPH warm up.
Masters 55+/60+ 1/2/3/4
The promoter said that if we wanted him to have further races for this age group, we needed at least 30 total entrants. We did better than that -- 42 55+ and 11 60+. This race started slow and after 3 or 4 laps of dawdling around at something less than 25 MPH put in a half-hearted attack just to get people moving. I didn't want to go super hard this early in the race. Someone went with me but he didn't want to pull through so the pack caught us pretty quickly but that did get things moving. I followed a couple of other moves but I waited until lap cards to try something big. I saw some guys from some of the big teams moving up the side of the pack just as we were getting two-to-go. There were three of us but the second guy didn't want to work and by turn 3 we were caught. Stayed in the pack for the finish and went fast enough to keep from getting run over from behind. 32nd out of 38 finishers with a 25.3 MPH average for the 40 minute race.
Other than the local Tuesday twilight races, I'm not sure when I'll do a weekend race next as my regular business travel is messing up my training. As noted elsewhere, I am pretty sure that I will bring my rain bike up to Everett but it will be hard to get much quality training in given my work situation when I am there. Also, I missed the first Tuesday race last week and I am going to miss this Tuesday's race because I have another (local) commitment. Since I'll be in Everett the week after next, my first opportunity to race on Tuesday will be the 4th race of the series.
Of course all of my "woes" are first-world problems. I really am glad that I still have a job that I generally like and can train reasonably while I'm home.