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This past weekend I had senior prom on Saturday in San Francisco, followed by the NorCal Conference Championships the following day in Clear Lake. I knew it would be a balancing act due to the fact that I would be out late the night before the race. I ended up deciding to focus on having a great time at prom, deciding not to pre ride and just hoping for the best at the race
The night of prom I ended up staying out until after one o’clock in the morning even though I knew I would be waking up at six in the morning to drive out to the race venue which was over two hours away. Probably not the best decision but, hey, not gonna get another senior prom.
When my alarm went blaring off in the morning I was crushed. After less than four hours of sleep I was far from ready to drag myself out of bed. It took probably ten minutes but I finally got myself upstairs and “made” myself a bowl of cereal as my generous mother made me some waffles with sausage for my second breakfast I would eat when I got to the course.
Another problem arose when I went to grab my bike to put on the car, the tire was completely flat from the previous day’s ride. And when I put all the stuff in my car for the race I forgot to bring a spare tire to throw on so that left me scrambling to find something that I could use. Luckily my gracious high school coach let me pull a tire off of his bike to use for the race. Once this whole debacle was sorted out I played some frisbee to loosen up and stay awake then set up my bottles with one scoop Gu Grape Roctane powder for the first three of four laps and plain water for the final lap.
At this point it was about an hour before my start so it was time to warmup. I put my bike on the trainer and got into kit. My legs were feeling pretty dead during warmup and it was fairly hot so I was mostly spinning. I was also fighting to just keep my eyes open on the trainer and starting to get worried about the race. To keep myself awake I set a game plan for the race. My plan was to sit about second wheel for the first lap to learn the course a bit then put in a few attacks on lap two to wear people down. Finally I would go all in on lap three with a big attack on the climb right after the start finish and hopefully get a gap.
Eventually it was time to pull the bike off the trainer and line up for my first place call up - didn’t want to miss that. On the start line I chatted with my competitors and wished everyone good luck. I asked the race director how much time until the start and he took that as me wanted to go soon so he started counting us down.
FIVE! FOUR! THREE! TWO! ONE! GO! We were off. I sprinted all out to get the whole shot over Roberto Cribley of Berkeley High. It was at this moment that my plan went out the window. My legs were all of a sudden feeling strong and I pushed hard on the first lap, not quite burning matches or putting in attacks but just generally putting down some solid power. When I looked back about halfway through the course there was one guy dangling on my wheel, Rylan Loader of Salinas High, and everyone else was dropped. I put in one hard effort on the second half of the course and got a gap on Rylan. I went fairly slow through the descent just trying to learn where all the corners were and by the end of the lap I had a 45 second gap to second place.
The next two laps I rode a steady pace, mostly just having fun on the bike but not taking too many risks. I knew my gap was growing due to one section of the course where you could see about two minutes back behind you on some switchbacks. By the time I finished the section the second place rider still hadn’t come through on lap three. During these laps I also focused on nutrition, eating a gel and drinking plenty of water to prevent an untimely bonk.
On the fourth lap I decided to put a bit more effort in, sprinting up some of the climbs and taking a few more risks on the descents. There was a lot of lap traffic though which slowed me down a lot but I suppose it was good to get practice with passing on single track. I came through the last section of the course into the bumpy finish section and I knew I had the win in the bag. I came across the line still feeling fairly fresh, with a gap of three minutes and nineteen seconds to second place. This was my fourth NorCal win out of four NorCal starts meaning that I won the varsity overall for the South Conference.
I was super stoked on this finish especially considering how little sleep I got the night before. I was a little bit worried after my race at Sea Otter when I just wasn’t mentally able to suffer the way I knew I could and this is a big confidence booster going into the California State Championships in two weeks and the rest of the UCI season. I also want to give a big congratulations to Dylan Fryer for finishing off the North Conference overall on Saturday.