Yesterday I entered the road race here for some training and it turned out to be tougher than I thought. I had been at the DH course in the morning and after 3 practice runs and some photo's with Bill Freeman who is here to shoot Hans & I, I did my qualifier run. It went pretty smooth and I ended first, but there were some riders with good times not far behind.
I headed back to the festival base center, chilled for an hour, met my team I was riding with, then it was out onto the scorching hot road for 41km or mainly hills. The race stated off scary with some near crashes, so after 5 min I thought I better get near the front to avoid any stupid crashes from happening. After about 10 minutes the pace picked up, a bit sooner than I would have liked since I was not even warmed up yet, but I had to try my best. After about 20min one guy on my team got in a small break of about 5 or 7, so I then just kept near the front of the group I was in which consisted of about 20. Pretty much the entire race I didn't push the issue since we had a guy in the lead group, but the heat, humidity, and hills were getting to me. I was hurting towards the end, and we actually got to within about 20-30seconds of the leaders, but I had nothing, nor was I going to try and bridge the gap. Going into the last two climbs it was 4 of us in the second group and I just sucked wheel to the finish since I had no idea where I was going or how long and hard it would be to the finish. I was completely spent at the end, but pretty happy to end up 9th or 10th.
Today was the DH and of course it was not very organized, starting about 90min past when it was suppose too. Needless to say there was a lot of sitting around in the heat and I was not too prepared with water or food for that long of a morning. My run started off shaky with a few bobbles, but I got it under control and had a smooth run from there, ending with the fastest time of 1min 28 sec. Second place was only a second behind, third about 5 seconds back. Course was tight through the bamboo with some real sandy turns, little room for mistakes.
All and all it had been good so far.
More to come soon,
Lopes
Photos courtesy of Bill Freeman