The Giant Cup

On Sunday I participated in the Giant Cup.  It had both mountain bike and road racing and I got to participate in both.  The 40km cross country mtb race started in the morning and did not go as I had hoped it would.

I had ridden really well at the 100km race and thought I had a good shot to do well here too.  The race started with 5km of flat roads and then gradually started going up hill.  I was feeling pretty good and 3 riders had attacked off the front, so I decided to try to bridge up to them.  Unfortunately I quickly blew up and basically had no power.  Also at this point the road got a lot steeper.  I quickly realized I just wasn't having a good day and basically rode in steady to the finish.  It was a nice course (which had almost a 20km gradual downhill in it but I was just lacking the power to race well.   I think I was still tired from the 100km race last week.

I hoped I could perform better in the road race and I decided that no matter what happened I would stay in the pack and just try to do my best in the field sprint.  The road race was a little bit weird because if you didn't do the mtb race in the morning they wanted you to ride a 30km parade through Chuncheon where the race was being held.  However a few of the racers didn't think they would check who participated in the parade very carefully and some of them showed up late or not at all for it.  All of those who did that were allowed to race in the road race but wouldn't be scored for placings.  This included some of the strongest riders in the race.

The race was 5 laps of 9km each on a hilly circuit with a big down hill and then 150 meters of gradual uphil to the finish.  Also everyone was racing together but the results would be done by age group.  I was in the men 20-30 year old group.  The race started with a few attacks and on the second lap one finally got away.  It contained 4 riders but two of them couldn't count towards the results because they were late for the parade.  There was one other rider from my age group in this break but I stuck to my plan and just sat in thinking that maybe the pack would real them in.  They had a little over a 30 second gap most of the race but the pack never really got organized and it stayed away until the end.  The break had my friends Brad and Elmer in it but they were the two riders who couldn't score because of the parade.

I moved up and got ready for the field sprint and I ended up opening it up with about 250m to go and holding off the rest of the field.  It felt great to win a field sprint and I ended up placing second in my age group with the result.  My teammate Yeon Deok was right behind me and he took 3rd in our age group.

I was really happy to make up for not riding very well in the mountain bike race by having a good ride in the road race.  This week I'm trying to rest up because I have two more races this weekend.  Saturday is a 40km road race and Sunday is a 40km mountain bike race.  Here are a few pictures from the race too.