Oxbow Recap

Yesterday was just a great day for racing. The weather was about as perfect as it could be. There was some wind, but it wouldn't be a spring day in MN without wind=) I chose to "illegally" race the A (Cat 1-3) race which was 3 laps of a 17-18 mile course that is 90% gravel with almost no flat areas...just constant rolling terrain. My license says I am a Cat 5, but I was pretty sure that I could hack it with most of the A's, and I was just there to get a good workout anyway. The bike of choice was my Trek 9.9 with 1.5" slicks - I also put 125 PSI in the fork just to make things nice and rigid... Paul Hanson and I were the only ones on mountain bikes in the A field=) When the race started, there wasn't really a nice roll out like last year, it was a straight on attack by the eventual winner from the time the official said go. For the entire first lap, I was 90-95% the entire time, painful. The only time I got any respite was on the climbs. In fact, at one point, after the first large descent, I was going 100% for about 5 minutes...that is tough this early in the season...or at any time of the season. By the second lap, there was a lead group of 4 (Swanson, Hareland, Hall, some UWM kid) and a group of 2 (Miner and some Birchwood dude) and then my group of 5-6. By the end of the third lap, we had picked up the second group and became the chase group. Our group somewhat splintered on the 3rd Oxenburg (again from last post, a steep hill with a max grade in the low 20%'s) climb where we lost Justin Rienhart and another Birchwood guy. For some reason, the pressure increased again in the 3rd lap after a slightly more relaxed second half of the second lap. About 1/3 of the way through the 3rd lap, we picked up Jeff Hall who had fallen off the lead group...he joined our group. Then about 10 minutes later, we pulled in Doug Swanson, who had also lost contact with the leaders. Doug was pretty spent and wasn't able to latch on. We continued to roll at a decent pace, and I continued to rest on the climbs....seriously, the downhills were so tough cause of my 44-11 as my biggest gear, and my small 26" wheels. Anyway, it is good that the climbing legs are there. With about 6 miles to go, one of the birchwood guys on a road bike started to doing a fishtail in loose gravel (very typical and it was happening all day). Jeff Hall caught his wheel and went down right in front of me....I skidded trying to decide if I should bunnyhop him or go around him...I had just enough contrl to swerve around him, but I hit something hard with my bottom bracket...I really hope I didn't hurt him. He got up ok and finished the race anyway. So soon after that I started putting in some attacks. On my second attack, I dropped Jeff off the group and the group was suffering...problem was that a downhill was coming, so they were going to catch me there anyway=( I continued and put in about 4 attacks total when I felt the pace was dropping...no marbles. Then Miner and a Birch guy took off. It as too late when I reallized it and neither Dan Swanson or the Birchwood guy had an answer for the attack. So the 3 of us road home together...but home was at the top of the Oxenburg. Dan put in a super strong attack on the last climb and dropped us..I was impressed! Must be all the "secret training." I pulled ahead of the Birchwood guys who cracked WIDE open and told me "That is it, that is all I got!" So I finished 6th out of maybe 20-25 riders. Not to bad for a Cat 5 mountain biker=) Here is how I looked on the last climb...
In the B race, my brother Ben showed his good form and took both KOM (king of the mountains) prizes - given to first rider up the hill each lap. Check out the gap he had on the field for the first KOM sprint, and notice that he is on a mountain bike...he is learning quickly=)
He finished 5th in the B race and Sam Oftedahl almost pulled out the win with a 2nd place finish. Nice work guys...

Next weekend is the UW Platteville TT for me. Time to race on some dirt=)