Mike's Bike: Putney XC and Holiday Farm Wednesday Race

This past weekend was the Putney XC race. For a full race report check out the new Competitive Edge Racing Blog at http://compedgeracing.blogspot.com/ . I will periodically be sending you over here to read race reports, but feel free to keep tabs on it, it will be over on the left hand side of my blog. The race went great, and I managed to come in 4th place in a strong field of riders!

After the excitement of Putney I decided I would make the trip over to Holiday Farm in Dalton, MA, where they have a Wednesday night race. There used to be this great Wednesday night series locally called the Bachelor St Time Trial, however this year it does seem to happening, and a fun more casual race on Wednesday was always a lot of fun. So when I had the opportunity to head over and check out this race, I was in.

Nate, Robin (Nate's very helpful girl friend), and my self made the 1.5 hour journey today, it was was the nicest weather we have had in a while. It was about 75 degrees with some slight cloud cover, which was a great relief from the 90 degrees and humidity we have been fighting recently. As we suited up the atmosphere was great, pretty casual and to my surprise the kids race had what looked like 10 or so kids. For todays race I was hoping to ride at about 90% of race pace, because the race on Sunday was pretty tough. As we lined up there looked to be about 40-50 people there, with about 15-20 in the "3 lap" field (which was the longest). As the gun went off one guy really went for it, so for the first 5 minutes the pace was pretty high, and with trying to keep it at 90% of race pace, I was trying to be as smooth as possible. The pace slowed a bit at the top of the hill, so I jumped in front to keep things in check. At the end of the first lap there was about 4 of us together, including Nate. At this point I had recovered nicely from a downhill and went for a sprint to mix it up, however as soon as I did this the course marking got a bit confusing and I had to slam on my brakes! After the four of us determined where to go, it was back to racing. As we went through the second lap I stayed up front, and had a small gap on the others. But as we came around for the third lap I put a little more pressure on these guys and was able to put more time in. I crossed the line first, and Nate battled it up for a nice 4th place finish.

Overall it was a great time, with awesome weather, a really fun course, and to my surprise I had pretty good legs and thus was able to keep myself to my original goal or not going too hard. Another awesome Wednesday race series, I suggest you check it out!