Racing to not be last: a very honest season report
Eleven races into the season feels like the right moment to write this down, mostly before I start remembering it more generously than it happened.
The short version: I finished ten of eleven, I was pack fill in seven of them, I got second at a Tuesday night crit that I have no business claiming as a result, and I learned more from the one DNF than from any of the finishes.
Where I actually sit
Somewhere in the back third of a Cat 3 field, and comfortably mid-pack in Div B online. That was hard to type and it is genuinely useful to know. For two years I raced with a vague sense that I was underperforming some hidden potential. Eleven data points later the picture is simpler: I’m about as fast as my training says I am, and the gap to the front isn’t fitness, it’s positioning.
Being dropped is a skill problem far more often than it is a watts problem, and skill problems are cheaper to fix.
The second place is worth explaining, because it flatters me. Twelve riders, half of them showed up straight off a hard block, and the win went up the road at 4 km with two of us left arguing about who would chase. I didn’t chase. I won the argument and lost the race. Second.
What the DNF taught me
Round one of the enduro series, chain off on lap two, and the honest bit is that I’d noticed the shifting was off on the warm-up and decided it would settle. It did not settle. Twenty minutes of pre-race attention would have bought me a finish.
So: bikes get checked the night before now, not the morning of. It is the least interesting lesson of the season and it is the one that will save me the most places.
What I’m changing
- Race twice a month rather than whenever the calendar allows. Consistency beats freshness at my level.
- Spend the first ten minutes of every race moving up, not “settling in”.
- Stop treating training races as training. Either race them or ride them.
Cykelvasan in August is the last real target. The goal is unchanged and I’m keeping it: not last.