CCCX #3 – Fort Ord Race Report – Savvy Bike Coaching by Zen Turtle

Still not feeling 100% recovered from Old Pueblo, decided to give it a go.

Wasn’t too motivated in the morning, but thankfully Lorri was set on going and racing: enthusiasm is contagious.

The Whoop was not too reassuring with a 49% recovered rating, despite a good night of sleep and a really light week, while TrainingPeaks was giving a full tree light.

Nice temps, grippy dirt and no rain helped. Classic CCCX fast course, minimal climbing and just a few punchers.

Start was a bit hectic, guy in front of be unclipped and cartwheeled, hammered to catch up the group. I find it always hard to have a mass start where I’m not sure who’s in my group, but at the hole shot into the single track I was already a dozen spots off the lead.

The group opened up quickly but I managed to stay with a small group of 4-5 riders for the first couple laps.

After that we got swamped into the lead group of the Cat2 45+, which caught us starting one minute back.

Suffered the first lap then legs came online and felt gradually better: managed to keep power steady around 300W (right below FTP), opening it up on the short punch climbs and ended up with ~290W NP for the day.

My main goal for the day was to finish strong, don’t get lapped by the Pros and possibly not DFL, all of which where attained. Yay!

I like that they now added your laps and standing per-lap, overall I had a less than stellar start but felt stronger as the laps went by… another 10 laps and I would have caught up with the leaders 😉

Ended up in 8th place out of 16, almost 11 minutes behind the winner, but when the winner is an MTB olympian named Don Myrah, I feel pretty good about it.