Monday, November 14, 2011

HongCheon Race Report: Finally a Win!


The last race of the season went basically perfectly for me! It was a 20 mile mountain bike race with 3 climbs on fire roads. There were over 700 starters in the race! The start was good and I moved into about 5th wheel before the first climb started which was on a forest road and was fairly smooth. My teammate Ji Haeng moved to the front and upped the pace a bit and before I knew it he and I were out front alone. Ji Haeng is a former pro mountain biker and a very strong climber so I was happy just to hold his wheel. For the rest of the race we rode together slowly building a bigger gap. The scoring was done only off age groups and not by overall and Ji Haeng was in the age group above mine and also being teammates we had no incentive to race each other. I would pull the flats and downhills and Ji Haeng would pull the climbs. The second climb was the toughest as it was full of rocks making it hard to find a smooth line but we stayed together comfortably. Coming into the finish line we crossed the line hands in the air together! It was the perfect way to finish off the season. I finally got my first win of the season in the last race. It was great crossing the line together with my teammate as well who is one of the nicest people I've met in Korea. For winning my age group I got a Hanoo (Korean beef) set. It included steaks and bulgogi. Pretty good prize if you ask me. Our team ended up placing 4th in the team competition after one of my teammates crashed and one had a not so good day but overall it was still a great race for our team. Its always great to get a clear win in front of everyone which I don't get to do very often since I usually win out of field sprints. There is one more race in 2 weeks but I will be attending a good friend of mine's wedding here. Next week I will write a recap of the season on here.

2 comments:

Dave McClung said...

Nicely done!

Eric Bales said...

Nice to see you're still riding fat tires! Congrats on the win!