Blahhh

I think the title describes my whole weekend. It was the provincials on Saturday and the National championships on Sunday up in Kamloops. I will give the rough scetch of both races.
Saturday- Drove up to Kamloops the day of the race. Nina and I had somewhere to be on Friday night and I did not really want to be away home from for 2 nights. I got to the loop in about 3:20 so it was not too bad a drive. Got there with tons of time to sign up, warm up and pre ride. The course was okay, not really my bag, but still a good challenging course. I got a 3rd row call up. The race was open to everyone who was there for the weekend to race Nationals. Not sure how they did the call ups, but given that it is BC's provincials I think they should have done the call ups for BC guys first. However, third row was fine. This was all racers over the age of 30. I got a good start, however we were all foiled when Meno rolled a tubular early and caused a bit of a back log early. I got around it clean, but had to scrub all my speed and sprint again to get going. The course featrued 2 beach sections and I ran really well on Saturday. I made a lot of hard passes and was overall pretty happy with that part. I was riding in 13th place at one point and came around a 180 after the barriers and washsed my front tire. down I went. I was up quick but not before 4 guys went by me. I was not able to regain those spots except maybe one. I managed to beat and stay within 30 seconds of a really good group. Guys that i don't normally ride with. Cressman beat me for the first time in a few years. He took advantage of my slide out and his superior running skills. He put me in the pain cave on that f-cking sandy run up. I had good power all day, but was just pretty good in all the corners. Man there were a lot of those. I really was staring a top 10 in the face but ended up with a crappy 17th I think. You get what you deserve in cross.
After the Saturdays race I did the proper cool down. The proper eating. The proper stretching. The proper sleeping. Guess what? It helped, but the race the day before took away all my snap. I felt good on the warm up and for any other day my legs felt good. Guys were gunning hard and I was not up for the task. I got a bit of a sub standard start, but actually made it up early. Nowak stacked it this time ( what is with these Frontrunners guys crashing in the first 500 meters of the race?) Got riding with some good guys, but did not have the snap to stay with them as they made forward progress. I just could not get it going. I was faster through all the lines, but overall I was riding slower. Even if I was riding the same, I was for sure running slower. At one point i made my way within about 10 seconds of a group of some strong guys. I was right there and felt that if I could get to them that I could move close to the top ten. I came into one of the dismounts, but bobbled it a bit and gave up about 5 seconds and they must have surged because it ballooned to 20 seconds. I tried to shut it down, but they were racing and I was suffering. My back was hurting and my general energy was getting lower. At one point I came around a corner too hot and went under the marking tape. This would have put me to about 10 seconds of the group in front, by cutting the course that is. I thought about just cutting this little section, but could not do it and burned a 180 back under the tape and back on the course. I finished about the same as I did the day before in a smaller field.
I knew doing a double day would be hard and I knew that having Nationals on the second day meant that I should have just done the one day. Just from a tactical standpoint it would have made more sense. I would have been fresher than 95% of the field and that alone would have made me better. If I could have combined my first days speed power and fitness with the second days overall cornering and bike handeling I would have been pretty stellar.
It is another double weekend this weekend. As of today I don't really care. I am stiff and tired. I was sick all last week and didn't ride and I am not sure how much I will ride this week. Then I may shut it down in about 3 weeks as all of the BC races will be done. Could go to Seattle, but with the new baby coming I want to get some stuff sorted out.
Well that is it for now. Congrats to Kelly Jones for getting 5th in the elite womens race, I hope this gets her to Worlds!

thanks for reading

Brent