Tranquility Tire Tantrum-Race Report

Today was the fifth race in the Nebraksa Psycowpath series and it was a race where I wasn't quite sure how I would do. I've talked some about how I just haven't felt very good this week. When I got up this morning I felt better than I did in the previous couple days but still not the best. My goal for this race was to focus on my nutrition and make some changes so that I could get through a race without dry heaving or feel like I'm going to almost the whole time I race. I also wanted to work on my pre race warm up routine.

So my new race day diet that I tried today was a breakfast sandwich and some coffee( I could never go without my coffee). About 4 hours before the race was an energy bar. 2 Hours before was a sobe energy drink and a bag of energy chews and then a gel 1 hour before the start.

I rode to Omaha with Rob who was racing the beginner race so I ended up getting to the park very early for my race which I really like. I never felt rushed and was able to take any lap with Millhouse and Ryan so that I could see the course since I've never been there before. And then shortly before my race started I went out and followed T6 team mate Robbwho was racing the 3 hour race. Following him at a good race pace was really helpful in my warming up process. I probably ended up stopping my warm up a bit early. Next time I may try to keep going until a bit closer to my race

When the race started I felt good going down a long service road before hitting the dusty singletrack. I only stayed with the leaders for about the first mile and then I just felt like I lost a bit of something and some of the leaders pulled away from me. As I continued to go through the first lap I found myself alone on the course and I think this hurt me a bit in the end cause i think I slowed down a bit during that time. I did continue to hydrate very well which was another goal. Towards the end of the lap I was back up with a couple of guys that had passed me earlier and was starting to feel a lot better. At the cross finish line I got a rolling bottle change with the help of Rob and his son RJ. Big Thanks guys.

I felt good going into the second lap and was riding pretty good and everything was flowing. I got into the lead of a group of guys and we set a great pace through a very tight long section in the trees of the track. As we continued through we ended breaking up on the climb towards the end of the lap.

As the third lap started I started to have a bit of a stomach twinge and was worried that my issues were starting up later than I'm used to but it never really became anything major but never went away either. I think now that I probably needed to take a gel and it would have helped me in the end.

On the last lap I was still good and was on the hunt for a couple of rabbits. I needed to see someone in front of me to really make myself push through the end. I found a couple of guys and started to work on catching them. I flowed through the course pretty well and was catching and passing people. I'm not sure if they were in my category or not but I didn't really care either. About a mile and half from the finish I saw way up in the distance a rider that I knew was in my category and set to work on catching him. As I hit the final set of climbs I did start to feel like I was losing some of my power and kept pushing to catch the rider but after I made up some ground on the climbs and with a large descending seciton right at the end of the race which doesn't play into my strengths I could not catch him but I did finish the race feeling ok and having accomplished what I set out to do and straighten out my nutrition plan.

I ended up finishing 8th out of 16 riders. I'm not overly excited about the end results but I did feel like I had a good race and with the rough week I've had and the way I've felt I'm happy with finishing in the middle and not at the end.

Congrats to Ryan on his 2nd place finish in the beginner open category.

That's about all I got for now. I'm going to go watch more of the Olympics and continue my recovery plan of sitting on the couch to get ready for my recovery spin through wilderness park in the morning.

Harp