Devin, Shawn, Tori and I carpooled up on Sunday morning, and got to Edmonton with only an hour to spare before the race. We prepped and did a short warmup.
This was my first race in elite, which I had looked forward to for a while. Off the start, I didn't feel like I was working hard, but I didn't feel fast. I knew I'd have to start slower to keep my legs from freezing up in protest. I rode the first lap behind Jeff Neilson, and by the second lap I started feeling more like I was racing. The course was dry and fast, which made for fun riding.
The fireman's climb and associated technical singletrack are where I felt best, as it was the longest sustained climb, so really the only part that felt very familiar to my TransRockies legs.
We caught Jon on the second lap heading into the singletrack, and I elected to leave him out front on the entry to the singletrack even if he was having an off day overall. Jeff blew by both of us for the first into the tight stuff, then got to hear our brakes at close range ; )
Plugged away at laps 3 and 4, not feeling much drain on my energy overall. Basically caught up to Devin on end of lap. 3, but got caught behind another rider on the tight singletrack after the road, and by the time we were out, my 5 second gap to Devin was more like 20 seconds. Plus he saw me approaching before, and decided he'd ratchet up his pace to leave me totally in the dust.
I skipped my last feed as we were only doing 5 laps rather than 6. On one of the climbs after the feed zone, I dropped my chain, and the time it took to get that sorted out allowed Jeff to come right back up behind me. We rode the remainder of the lap together, then sprinted for first into the Fireman's singletrack, complete with elbow jockeying and all. I went in first and coasted through the singletrack, then made some sort of foolish mistake before a large log, so I had to get clipped in before I could navigate it. Once we got out to the wide open, I realized that my dismount and hill run up before the log left me too breathless to counter Jeff's last attack.
Finished calmly in 10th, happy enough with that.
Tori said she really enjoyed the course, I'm glad she's having fun out there. She won some gold Nokon cables to go with her gold medal, and karma came my way after a donation so I ended up winning a Chris King headset. Two nice ingredients for the upcoming 'cross bike.
Dein finished 8th, and Shawn 6th... all of which was commemorated at BP's in Leduc afterwards.
Nice result in your first Eliete dude - well done.
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