Swanson River City Shootout: Race Report

The Swanson River City Shootout was the first race in the Nebraska Lottery Psycowpath Series. This series of races are my A races of the season. This is the major local XC series here in NE. The race was held at Swanson Park in Bellevue and it is a awesome venue to race. Fast and Flowy with a good amount of climbing and technical sections.

The whole family was headed up today for this race and my daughter raced in the kids race. She was very excited to be racing her bike and when she got out there she was the only girl. They took off and she had a tough time getting going. She was in to big of a gear and got off slow and then had a tough time getting up the hill. They only did one real short lap around the front grass section of the course. It was a blast for me to see her on her bike with a number plate slapped on the front. In the end she finished in front of some of the other boys and all of the women racers and fans where really cheering her on. It was a lot of fun for all of us.

Alexis Pre-Race and during the race pushing her huge gear making her dad proud.

Ryan and I chillin' out before the race.

My race got off shortly after noon. I'm not sure how many racers there were in my category but I think the number was somewhere around 25-30. When we got on the start line I didn't get in the front like I wanted and got pushed to the second row. When the gun went off I got caught up behind some other racers and rubbed tires almost went down and ended up getting pushed back to the middle. Right before we hit the hole shot to head into single track a rider made a super aggressive move and almost took me out and him and another rider got in front of me and of course they almost immediately slowed down going up the first climb. I kept on their wheel trying to find a place to get around them but the course is really twisty and I couldn't. I finally made it around them after having to yell at them several times to let me through. At this point I could no longer see the leaders and just tried to push and push and push to try to catch up.
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This is right at the start and you can see(look for yellow shoes) how many riders are in front of me.

I was never able to catch back up with the leaders. I don't think that I finished to far behind them. In the end I finished in 7th place. I kept getting slowed down by racers that were doing the marathon race and the singlespeed riders. I don't think I've ever had a race where I've had to constantly work through traffic. I also noticed that when I get behind and get to the point where I'm riding alone like I was today I tend to slow a bit and don't push as hard as I should. I need to mentally work through that.

Finishing lap 2 with Lexi ready to hand off a bottle.

The good thing about this race though is that I think I got my pre race nutrition down. I didn't have the usual stomach problems like I've had in the past. I do think though that I need to take in a gel during the race. I had a several points in the race where I felt a bit run down and I think that I would have a bit more energy if I had taken in some more calories. It seemed today that about 2/3 rd's the way through each lap is when I would start to run out of gas.

My feelings on this race are pretty mixed. I think/know I could have and should have done better. I'm just sitting now thinking and trying to take away from this race what I need to do or change in training or tactics to get better results.

Know I need to start thinking about the next race which is race number 2 in the series next Saturday. I'm taking a early recovery spin with Ryan who had his first race in Cat 2 this season. Time to rest. Later.

Harp