Closing the Deal

I crashed at Chez Wah up in the high country this weekend for the Dillon and Copper races. Dillon was a fun little course that had four 90 degree turns before the final 100 meters to the finish. The race was really to the first of those corners coming out of the final stretch. I hesitated and missed the boat. I knew where I should have made the move, but didn't react. The guy who did held his gap all the way to the finish. 5th place earned me some socks, a water bottle, a rain jacket, and a big hairy ogre waiting at the finish line wanting to kick my ass for my supposed elbow that knocked him over in a straight away. The guy swerved into me, we bumped, he went down, and I think needed someone to blame for it. What an ass.

Copper was a super fun course with a pave' section that starts about 30 meters from the start/finish. The section gets pretty narrow with a pretty tight s turn before going up a slight grade where it makes a hard right onto a road and back down and around. I literally sat on the back the whole race and finessed myself through all the corners as efficiently as possible. It was relatively breezy so I was confident nobody was going off the front for a significant amount of time. With 5 to go, I started to move up. A RockyMounts guy went off the front with 3 to go, and as far as I could tell everything behind me blew up. I was sandwiched with 2 Twin Peaks and 2 Spine and Sport guys chasing. We caught the leader just before the bell lap and I was sitting 3rd wheel. As soon as we hit the pave' there was hesitation as the guy in front popped, and his teammate hesitated. There was no second guessing today. I upshifted and buried myself. After having my tires skip through pave' s turns and up the hill, I found myself on the backside. I had no doubt that I was by myself at this point, so I was just thinking its really a matter of how big of a gap I had put in. It turned out to be 80-90 meters. This race was mine. Coming around the last corner, the course turns upward for the last stretch, and I was spent. As I neared the finish, I turned and the chase had closed fast, but it wasn't enough. Unforturnately, I was too spent to put my arms up in the air and celebrate in proper fashion. I earned my first win.

It was super important for me to get the win in the 4's before the upgrade. I think it'll be a valuable piece of experience for me in the 3's. There's nothing wrong with 3rd, 4th, or 5th, but I feel like its exponentially harder to win. Closing the deal is what its all about.