Yesterday I had my final road race of the season. The DMZ race in Hwacheon and like the name says the race was held basically right next to the border between North and South Korea. It's a really beatiful and tough course and the race was split into 2 parts. The first part was basically a hill climb and the second part has a long steep climb and a lot of flat. They don't time the descent and the race is on net timing meaning when you cross the start line your time starts and when you crossed the finish line it stopped but there were 2 start and stop points so that the descent was basically neutralized. Not really an ideal or totally fair format for a bike race but the course is pretty hard so it usually doesn't change the results too much. I rode well and stayed with the lead group up the climb and on the second part of the course. I lost a few seconds to 2 guys from my age group on teh first climb and despite a few attacks couldn't shake the winner of my age group. My good friend Brad Williams won our group and I ended up getting second. The second climb was very steep and we dropped one of the guys who beat me up the first climb on it so I made up the initial few seconds I lost on him. The weather was pretty bad about 50 degrees and raining for most of the race but once you got going it wasn't so bad. My teammate Minseok let me borrow his rain jacket and it was definitely a life saver in the race.
I also got 2 flat tires over the weekend. At the end of my ride Saturday my front tire went flat (luckily it happened really close to my house) and on Sunday my tire was flat when I took it off the bike rack after the race. I must have gotten a slow leak somewhere on the course. I thought it felt a little soft during the race. I was really lucky it didn't go totally flat during the race! I got 30kg of rice for my second place and I'm happy with how the race went overall. The course is really beatiful too. I have one last race this weekend. A 20 mile mountain bike race about an hour north east of my house. I wish the season was a little bit longer actually. I'm feeling a lot better now that I've basically finished my MBA applications and no longer have a cold. I'll post about the race next week.
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3 comments:
Thank you so much for this post. This was my very first bike race in my life, and having looked at the results on the website, I could not make sense of the timing. Now it makes sense: they only timed the ascents.
I hadn't been over 10-15k on a bike since arriving in Seoul 8 months ago, and never over 30 in my life. So glad to see you write this course was hard! It sure felt like it.
+Congrats on your second place finish!
I just read 떠돌이's (yolfama85) blog about your first place finish! Congratulations. There was a commenter who said he has your photos. Just thought I pass it on just in case.
http://kimhc82.blog.me/40144543210
Jeong
This is the reason why you must always bring a spare tyre with you. Also remember that if you get a flat while on the road, pull your car as far away from traffic as possible .
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