Glenwood Cat 4 Report

I guess it is up to me to report on the cat 4 race, since I was the only one to make it there. I’ll keep it a little shorter than Scott. In summary, it was raining at the start of the race, there was one crash in the middle of the race, and it was raining harder at the end of the race. It was a frustrating race. That pretty much sums it up.

I’ll throw in a few details for anyone who is interested. I started at the very back of the pack because I was thinking the race started at 9:30 until I checked at about 8:50 and had to scramble to get to the line. I’m not sure on the exact number of racers, but seemed like a pretty big field. I’ll guess it was about 65-70. It was very dicey going with lots surges and hard braking. The pace wasn’t particularly fast, so it was hard to move anywhere. It stretched out a bit a few times and I tried to move up, but just as I would start moving up it would slow down and bunch up and I’d have to hit the brakes to avoid hitting the pile in front of me. After a few tries, and my glasses getting increasingly foggy, I adjusted my goal to finish the race and avoid any crashes. I just rode the back of the pack for a good part of the race. One the 3nd lap there was a crash, which I was able to avoid and it provided an opportunity to move up in the pack. Shortly there after, I moved near the front. There were two teams with two guys near the front and I started marking a pair of guys, okay I admit I was following two guys from wines. One of them seemed to be doing some work at the front while the other guy just sat in, so I figured they might be trying to set him up. My plan was to sit on his wheel until they made the move. (I turned out to be wrong as the guy I was following faded at the end). I was in about 8th position going into the last sharp right turn before heading towards the finishing stretch. The smart thing to do would have been to move to the front at the corner. I was on the inside and there was a clear path, but after concentrating on just staying out of trouble for the whole race, it didn’t register in my brain what was coming up after the corner. I hesitated and some other riders moved up. It got strung out after the corner, but then bunched back up before the descent. I was boxed in, so it was too late to get into position for the final sprint. I knew it was going to get clogged up on the hill and decided not to charge into the mess with little chance of finishing in the top 10, so I held my position behind the guy in front of me and finished in the middle of the pack. All in all a frustrating day.