This is my favorite bike race of the year, but I guess I don't go to many since it is a hard uphill climb from the bottom of the road to Tony Grove up to the parking lot at the lake. After wraping things up at the Cross Country camp with a 1000 Meter steeplechase that I did not take seriously at all, I was doubting wether to go to this race or not. I ended up feeling better after some rest and I felt like taking a shot at it.
I arrived and I quckly saw plenty of talent in the field. USU cyclist Kodey and another stellar cyclist in Tanner were the two main people I was most worried about. Considering how tired I was, my original plan was to just stay in the group and finish in a sprint with everyone else. So we all lined up and I started in the back according to plan and Kodey was there too. The race starts and I began riding towards the end of a group. I was feeling amazingly better than I thought I would after camp and so I quickly attack and leave my current group to join the equally size lead group with about seven or ten riders. This group stayed in tact until about three miles into the race. I was keeping an eye on Tanner who leading the group and knew he was just itching to take off. He took off while he was leading the pack to my surprise and I wasn't quite sure how to react. But then I saw Kodey who was responding to the attack with an attack of his own. While he was passing everyone to the top, Something just made me go and I quickly pulled left and got behind him. It didn't take us long to catch Tanner and pretty soon it was just the three of us, or so I thought. Up ahead was a Cat 1 rider who rides for the cycling team, Competitive Cyclist. He had a good lead on us but didn't seem to be getting too much farther than that. Tanner and Kodey were taking turns leading and when it was almost my turn I purposefully started fading away. This made Tanner go to the front and lead, I quickly caught up making, giving myself some extra time to plan out an attack. When Tanner was done leading and started going towards the back I pulled right and just pounded the pedals, trying to take advantage of Tanner being tired. He had beat me the last time and I was worried more about him than kodey, who I have beaten twice in this same race. I dug deep and just kept my attack going with my intentions of having one of the them become weary and want to chase after me instead of working together. I never looked back and made the Cat 1 rider ahead of me my target, hoping to work together with him. I kept pounding but he slowly slipped away from sight and I knew I was going to have to finish it alone. I was less than 400 meter away from the finsih still holding my position and to my surprise Kodey was just right behind me. I tried to sprint but I was already at my limit. He slowly passed me and cheered me on and ended up finishing ahead of me by two seconds.
After the race Kodey told me he had left Tanner shortly after I attacked. He followed my wheel and slowly was catching me. He shortly began vomiting like crazy, which strangely made me feel better about my race because it showed he had pushed himself hard to pass me at the end. Tanner was about 30 seconds behing us. All in all, this was my most excicting race of the year yet due to all the strategy involved compared to my other racees. I will definitely will look forward to next year. | 