Raced a few times up in Utah so far this year. Racing cx natz and doing rock cobbler kinda put a damper on my early block of racing. However, still getting kinda bummed on most of the guys that are cat 2 on my team just want to race masters and the one guy who cannot race masters recently had his 2nd kid. Living where there’s no racing takes it’s toll when there’s real life stuff at home that you need to take care of. Racing this weekend again in Utah and I’ll talk to him about what we want to do for the season. I really like going out to races like Dana Point, Redlands, MBGP, etc. and getting beat up on, but I also want to feel like I’m not going to just get destroyed. I’d rather destroy myself for a purpose. as for the masters dues, yeah they are hard races, but I’d rather pull top 20 in a stacked P12 field than top 5 in a 45+ field. But I also don’t really have a choice.
Come guest ride for us 
I should be a 2 soon so I can join you
just got my cat1 license and baby. time to hang up the sidis?
Congrats on cat 1! Sort of a long term goal of mine. I tell myself if/when kids come, I’ll switch to a track/crit focus so I can get by on 6-8 hours a week and get a bit more swole in the gym so I don’t have to be so dang skinny.
Super amped up for Valley of the Sun. Almost too much so. Got a really bad crick in my neck while unloading groceries two days ago, then started getting a sore throat last night and just generally being super anxious and not being able to distract myself. This morning was feeling kinda sick until I had some garlic and vitamin c and then some coffee, and finally work & podcast to have something to focus on.
I should go well at the TT if I don’t get more sick-y. Managed a 29 mph lap of Fiesta at a little bit over my power target for the TT, with everything but the rear disc. Also got a couple of teammates that have good TT abilities, so it should be really interesting.
That’s hauling. Your body can get hypersensitive to perceived illnesses when you are amped about something. I used to get what I termed “anxiety dreams” where you’d get lost during the event or forget your shoes or something. Have a good one!
Won the tt by 5 seconds, tomorrow and Sunday should be interesting
HY!
BabbyMatt, congrats on the VOS overall. That’s a way to end your career as a 3.
also, welcome to the big league.
Thanks guys! Winning this was huge for me.
Went into the RR with a 5 second lead over 2nd, but had 4 teammates with me to help keep things in control. Everyone past the top 5 was a minute plus down on the GC, so our goal was to mark the 3 guys that were under a minute (5th was our guy), and to not worry about anything else as much but to try to keep them on a leash of less than a minute. First couple laps, a local pro-triathlete kept trying to get away, but we’d jump on it every time. A break went early with no GC threats, and I had one of my guys counter one of the tri guy’s attacks, which led our guy to bridge up to the break. We knew to keep the lead under a minute, but it could have potentially moved him up in GC as well, as he was 7th in the TT. Tri guy and 6th on GC both managed to get away from us because a truck got in front of us right after they attacked, but we kept it cool and slowly brought them back over the course of a lap, meanwhile letting the strong dude tire himself out up there, while our guy did some soft pulls.
We brought it back before the 4th time up the climb, then it was pretty chill, I battled it out and got the KOM for an extra 3 second buffer, but one non-threat launched a counter down the descent. A couple more guys would slip off every now and then until it was a break of 7 guys or so on the last lap, but we knew we just had to keep it at a minute or less to be safe. Unfortunately we didn’t count on someone attacking from the break and gaining more time, so it was a bit of a close call when we heard the winner was further up the road than we thought. Fortunately he was still 13 seconds back at the finish. On the final climb, our sprinter (who’s a smaller dude) lit it up and shelled half the field, including the closest GC threats, and gave us an extra 25-30 seconds on each of them.
Coming into the crit we felt pretty safe but there were lots of guys eager to get away, and I was completely willing to burn matches to keep that from happening. 2nd place could win the sprint and still not move up in GC, the only threat was if he took a flyer and got a 5s gap to the field + the time bonus for 1st, so I made sure to primarily mark him myself. We managed to keep it together, but with all the attacking and chasing it was fast af. Average speed was 27.6 mph. Once we got to the final corner I knew it was a done deal so I just sprinted to make sure I got the same time as the pack, and our main sprinter got 3rd after doing a bunch of work.
Overall super fun!
Still need 1 point for my upgrade because it was only 40 deep this year, but I’m going to just help my teammates out for a couple of months to help them reach their goals before putting in for an upgrade, which should give me plenty of time to snag a point.
Thanks for the blow by blow!
man, great racing Matt. I had two guys there in your field. i didn’t see their TT times, but neither of them are great TT guys. I think we had one of our guys in the break in the RR and I think he got 4th in the crit? That course is always super fast and can get hairy at times. I think last year we averaged close to 29mph. That thing is one of my favorites. and good on you for not upgrading and helping out teammates. Be careful, though, because you can stay and do that for a lot longer if your guys aren’t up to the task.
Rad stuff Matt, glad to hear about the race in detail and how successful it went for you/the team. I’ll echo that it sounds like you handled everything super well - makes me confident that there really won’t be much acclimating to do once you get your upgrade in!
I raced the Cascadia Super G, yesterday. It was a 54 mi gravel race that was roughly 90% off-pavement. The climbs were pretty challenging and the decents were rowdy in some spots. There were a lot of pinch flats; I’m glad I was running tubeless.
They had us doing a mass start with all the categories combined, so it was a hammer-fest until the first major climb. I lucked out and latched onto some pro women who were going a much more manageable pace for me. My race file shows I was buried in the first 30 mins of the race. After that, I settled into a steady-state pace and picked people off on the climbs. I grabbed a few more places during the decents. You could tell who was a mountain biker on the downhills, based on how confident they were on the loose-over-hard roads.
I was feeling self-conscious that I left my fenders on, but the higher elevations were soggy from the leftover snow. I managed to stay pretty clean.
In the end, I’m happy with my fitness. I placed 9th in my category, even though I was an hour off the leader. I think I’ll be in good shape for my first enduro on April 21.
Dana Point Grand Prix yesterday. They had a combined 2/3 field, which was cool because I got to race with babbymatt. the race was pretty fast at right around 28mph and we may have been the only field that didn’t have a crash in it. there were plenty of near misses, though. I wish that we had more guys in the race; Matt’s team must have have 8 guys. We had a guy that crashed and destroyed his bike in the 30+3/4 and the other guys that are cat2 finished up their master’s race right before our start. I’m just starting to get my legs back and was able to pull my teammate/sprinter as close to the front as possible with 3 to go. Made some okay moves and used lines that a lot of people didn’t want to take, even though they were much faster.
anyways, on to Redlands next weekend.
I think that was the first time we actually got to be in the same field! Our team wanted to control the front, so I was trying to get up there and pull as much as possible. I made a dummy mistake though, about 35 mins in. I was like 95% sure that I had a flat tire, so I stopped so as not to crash myself or anyone else out. Of course, no flat. And you don’t get a free lap for being a dummy. Should have just moved to the back of the pack first.
Anyway, just glad that I was able to be at the front of a race like this for once, as I’m usually just stuck in that mid-pack churn all day. Good to race and chat with you a bit, crabbi. Sorry I couldn’t stay longer and have a beer or something, Marci wanted to get home.
We had I believe 10 in this race, and our sprinter got 3rd overall, 2nd in the cat 2. Then he somehow was allowed to do the P1 race (I think because he has an international license) and got 9th, so that’s pretty legit. The guy that went solo at the end and won I got 2nd to at the Easter crit, so now I don’t feel so bad.
Also, my upgrade went through !
Btw I thought P1’s were supposed to be safer… 7 mins in:
half the fucking field got caught behind that.
also, 2 laps to go my buddy from salt lake got caught behind a crash in turn 1 from a kid that took wayyyyy too wide of a line and went into the curb. like, he had room to cut it, but just went out and then tried to gain spots that weren’t there.
I will say I’m not too big of a fan of the cat2/3 field at big events like this. stuff like CBR? cool and also I can race p12 later in the day.
Wait I lied we did an ontario together last year