I got to California on Friday morning so I was able to get two solid days of pre riding in, previewing the majority of the dirt and driving all the pavement sections. Last year I went as hard as I could for the first 3 hours to stay with the leaders and was absolutely blown for the second part of the race. I wanted to pace more conservatively this year but it would be important to balance that with the fight for position into the bottle necks. I raced my Aspero 5 with WTB Exposure 36s at 30 psi. With my technical skills I had no problem keeping pace on the dirt and the full slick helped save some watts on the asphalt.
The race started quickly with a two mile climb coming after less than five miles of racing. I entered the climb near the front of the group but when the attack started flying I found myself a ways back and made the decision to not sell out to try and close gaps to the front. This put me further back than I had hoped but at least the riders around me were motivated to chase. After the descent that included the first dirt section there was roughly 10 miles of road where groups could come back together. Exiting the dirt I chased back to the third group that was working hard to close the gap to the groups in front so I took a moment to rest before starting to roll turns in the group. The group wasn’t perfect but after a pretty hard ten minutes of chasing all three groups came together to form a group of about 25 riders a few miles before the crucial Lemontwistenberg section. Just before that section there’s a U turn at a stop light and despite police presence to direct traffic there were cars stopped at the light when we approached. I wasn’t in great position before this but it didn’t help that I went around the outside of the cars which lost me a few spots, so I entered around 20 wheels back. I made a couple passes on slower riders but missed the critical split of the front 12 riders by a few wheels. By the end of the ~5 miles of single track I found myself in the first chase group. We were working well together and I thought there was a chance we could catch on if the front group sat up but that didn’t happen, they kept on the gas the whole day. I stayed with that group till we hit the second long climb of the day up Highland Valley Rd. When we got to the steeper pitches Drew Dillman was setting a pace that was above my threshold and I made the decision to drop off the group to try and avoid blowing up this year. The race was more spread out than I expected and it took over half an hour before a group of four caught me. We rolled through the far part of the course past Ramona, our group split on the steep Palmoberg climb but no one pushed it over the top so it came back together for the long drag back towards lake Hodges and Double Peak. I tried to push the pace on the off road sectors but was hesitant to go all in because I knew I stood little chance of staying away solo in front of the group. On the highway towards the final climb the Australian national champion attacked, taking Nathan Sprat with him. I tried to bridge but couldn’t quite make it. I rode solo up Questhaven and Double Peak with a sizable gap to any riders behind me. I played it safe on the final dirt sector and made my way through the last few miles of pavement. I was pleasantly surprised to find out I was inside the top 20, finishing in 19th. This will be my only “major” gravel race of the year with lots of great racing in Colorado for the next few months, I have little reason to travel far. Happy to meet my goal of a top 20 and have the best nutrition and pacing strategy for any race I’ve done longer than 5 hours. Next for me is Grand Junction Rides and Vibes on the 10th of May.
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