Koppenburg!

I had first "cross-ish" race today.  Even though it was a road race, if that's what you would call it, it totally felt like cyclocross.  Yes, I am talking about the Koppenburg circuit race, named after the epic cobbled climb in Belgium.  The climb isn't cobbled, but there is like a 1 mile dirt road climb up to the steep, monster Koppenburg.  There is a middle line up the 200 meter climb that is the way to get up thanks to people driving there monster trucks up in the mud.  Enough explaining onto the race.  So I entered the Senior Men's race a field of about 70.  I was one of 4 juniors in the race all of the others older than me.  I lined up with the most awful start not being able to clip into my pedals as usual.  I get caught up in the middle of group narrowly avoiding just about a million crashes on the first lap.  The course is a 5.5 mile loop and we did 6 laps.  I was able to move up into like the top 5 or so right before the hill, which I knew i needed to do if I wanted to stay in the mix for the rest of the race.   I get to the hill and I hear that unmistakable noise, a crash.  But luckily enough it was right behind me giving the guys on the front with me a considerable gap.  We get up the hill with ease and by this point I seriously thought my lungs were going to stop working because I was working so hard.  Even though we were already going hard we just kept drilling it more because we got a break on the group by like 10 seconds and went.  We came through the start/finish and when I saw 5 to go I though to myself, "I can't do this."  But not soon after I had that thought I felt amazing and kept working to keep the gap.  The next few laps I felt better and I settled into a rhythm.  By the 4th lap a few guys had bridged to our break from the pack and there were 12 of us.  The middle laps of the race were pretty uneventful, just the usual ride the dirt, climb the hill routine.  Some riders in the race by this point also were getting pretty tired and didn't want to do any work.  I pulled most of the way on the dirt so I could avoid crashing if someone else went down then I could avoid it.  So I was stuck doing the "I don't want to pull someone pull through even though you aren't going to" thing with my hands on the tops of the bars.  So some tensions were coming up between me and other people in the race with some things I would rather not repeat on my blog.  So then it was the last lap and I knew I couldn't pull and had to save myself.  We got to the hill and I saw there were some lapped riders in front of us and I was going to try and pass them with the rest of the breakaway.  So I went over to the right line out of middle and I realized I was about to ride into a big hole and I did the cross dismount infront of a whole bunch of people and had to run the hill.  I tried to remount forgetting I was using Dura-Ace pedals not Egg Beaters.  So it took a couple tries to get back into my pedals.  I was kinda pissed because I thought I lost my race right there so I worked really hard and got back into the group. The colorado state TT champ went off the front and nobody could chase so he stayed at until the end when he got caught up by another guy who broke away and beat the champ.  I was in the group behind the the breakaway guys in the sprint.  The other guys in my group sprinted at 500 meters to go so there ended up being 2 sprints with the same guys.  When we were sprinting some guy was lapped and swerved in front of me on the course and i missed him by a few centimeters all the while losing my spot in the sprint and getting 7th.  Even though I didn't get the top 5 I wanted I'm still so excited because it is the best I have ever done in the 3's and my first road race in the 3's for that matter.  So that is my super-detailed race report about Koppenburg, I will have some pics up soon.  Kudos if you have the attention span to read that:P 

I'm in the 5280 kit if you didn't know

Me again in the light blue kit, I will be on Blacksheep Cycling for 'cross (the green kit at the back of the group)