End of the Local Season

This weekend marked the end of the local racing season for me. I headed up to the CSP course for the Raisin Hope Foundation Classic for lack of anything better to do. I wasn't sure how the legs would feel and also didn't really know how strong a showing there would be at this race with Niwot being State Crit Championships the next day. Brian and I were representing for the team and a medium sized field with some decent talent. Brian covered the first move, following Dan Porter up the road. They stayed in sight, but you can almost see the entire course from one spot anyways. Eventually they came back so I took it upon myself to put in a little dig to see what a counter would do . . . evidently not much.

Just beyond the halfway mark, things started to get exciting. A couple riders got up to road with and I tried to bridge the gap. I got halfway there and found I wasn't going to make it across alone. I sat up and got back in the group and recovered for a lap. When Sean Sullivan decided he was going to go across, I was in the right position to get on his wheel and take the mostly free ride. We ended up with about 15 of us in the front group, not really working all that well together, but the gap was big enough that we didn't get caught, but a few more were able to bridge. I tried to follow some moves, hoping to get in the one that resulted in our group splitting, but that didn't happen. In trying to follow Dan Porter towards the end of the race, I realized that my legs still felt a bit crispy. I didn't do a very good job of sticking with the wheels I needed to at the end and ended up 14th, but I was happy with the fact that I got in some good leg speed work and found my way to the business end of the race.

Sunday, I headed up to the hills to help Joey take down some trees on his property since it was the last slash collection day of the season. We took down a sizable pine at the front of his property which was amusing because we had to drop it towards the street, not knowing exactly how far it might go into the traffic lane. I manned the rope, he had the chainsaw, and Sarah ran traffic control. We pulled off a textbook operation for felling medium sized trees with a desired direction/landing spot. There wasn't too much to get out of the street, but a few cyclists shot us dirty looks as they had to avoid the pine needles in the road. Once the tree was chopped up and loaded, it was off to the slash collection. The volunteer at the lot got a kick out of the truck's musical horn, further reinforcing that it was a $60 well spent.