Pat Blair: BCA Cyclocorss... First Race Of The Season!

Oh man! I was really worried that all of the 100mi MTB races that I have been doing lately would seriously delude my top end speed needed for cross racing. That being said, I was not at my best but I also was not too bad at today's BCA Cyclocross race.

This was my first race riding Stan's No Tubes tubeless rims with Vittoria TNT tires. It was awesome! I had 100% control. I felt just as good as I have on any of the best tubulars. There is no going back now.

Pre race food was a turkey sandwich and 1 PROBAR Nutty Banana Boom (awesome flavor!!!). Always eat a ton 2hrs before the race. Any close to the race than 2hrs and the food does not have enough time to digest. 2hrs gives just enough time to get the food ready to be used, in my experience.

This was the 1st of the Sportif Cross Cup Series of races. I am a Cat 1 and they don't have a series for us, but they still let us race against the Cat 2s and 3s and we get scored against them... we just don't count towards any series.

At the gun I found myself in a decent position and I saw Nick Taylor get a 5 second gap immediately! Whew! I worked my way into 2nd position with a ton on guys right on my tail and with Nick slowly adding the seconds to his growing lead.

I chased hard but Nick kept growing his lead and I was starting to fade... at about 1/2 way through the race Greg Capelle caught up with me and I worked with him for about 1 lap. This gave me time to recover/relax... With about 3 laps to go I attacked Greg and went to bridge the 24 second gap to Nick.

On the last lap I caught Nick and then I attacked him. Unfortunately for me Nick was not out of gas and he matched my attack. Then on a technical downhill section my chain dropped for a few seconds... it was just enough for him to get a little gap.