This past weekend was the home road race for Cal Cycling. It was also my first race of the season and my first time racing the Mens B category. Unfortunately, I have not been spending much time on the bike, so rather than hoping to place well, I was hoping the races would motivate me to get back on the bike with a more consistent riding schedule. I also recently acquired a GoPro, and this weekend gave me a good opportunity to try my hand at creating a video…

As with every race weekend, we were up before the sun, and heading to the race site to get the course setup.

At 9:55am I was pedaling off for the first lap. The race started at a nice relaxed pace. I could tell my legs weren’t going to make it the full 40 miles, but it didn’t bother me… just meant I wasn’t going to have to make the climb up McEwan Rd FOUR times! So, I just chilled about mid-pack as we wound our way through the hills of Crockett, CA. Then, we made the turn onto McEwan. I counted two dropped chains (not mine of course) and then bid farewell to the pack as they cruised on up hill without me. After that it was a pretty uneventful ride… I completed two laps of the course then decided to call it quits in the hopes that I might have something left for the crit the following day.

Sunday was another early day. My race started at 10:25am and was to last 45 min. The race was fast from the start, and I quickly got dropped. There was a strong head wind blowing up Durant which made it feel like I was riding up hill around the entire block. After about 6 min of pain, the officials took pity on me and pulled me from the race. Since this was clearly not enough racing for one day, so I returned later that afternoon to race the Cat 3/4 race and managed to keep up for about 20 min before being pulled.

Despite not finishing any of the races, I had a pretty good time being back in a race, and so far it seems to have sparked me into riding again! Plus, I got some great shots with my GoPro and put together a little video.