Whirlybird Cross and Bryn Athyn

This time I had a plan, I was going to stage well, go out hard, and then hang on for dear life. Well, I had a great spot on the starting line, but the official decided to do call ups based on last year results. I didn't protest, the official can do that at his discretion, but I really hoped that no top 5 finisher from last year was returning to race the C again.

So no one got called up, and we all mashed up at the start again, but this time I was stuck farther back. I tried to go out fast and get some positions, but without muscling people out of my way. That's an aggressive side of racing that I haven't been able to embrace yet. No problem, 40 minutes is plenty of time to move up. I quickly set my sights on a rider up ahead in white and red. I never got close enough to identify the jersey, but for almost the entire race, I chased from 3-15 seconds back. He was moving up swiftly, and we were both passing people, but I just couldn't close the gap to him. Every time I got close, I would lose a bunch of time at a barrier or by taking a poor line through a set of tight turns.

I definitely pushed myself harder on this race, just check out this awesome photo by Anthony Skorochod.



Some Guy's Racing dude on a mountain bike won it.







Just in case you missed it:



Yeah.

I'll leave the post on that note, I managed to eek out a 10th place finish (that's my fourth 10th place finish this season, still trying to break into the single digits...). I definitely need to practice my barrier skills, I'm particularly slow on the remount.

Time for some instructional videos and practice, much practice.