New home state. New Team. First race of the year!

New home state. New Team. First race of the year!

(me in my new kit)

Avondale, AZ.

I've raced in AZ a lot in the Valley of the Sun Stage Race (VoS). This race is a season opener here in the desert that sees a lot of riders converge upon AZ to open their account for the year. I've had some success at VoS in both the pro 1/2 race and as a masters racer in years past. 

I've been very much anticipating the first race of the year here. And for lots of reasons. For one, I'm a year healthier with a year more riding in my legs. For another, I'm in a new home state and I've been curious about what racing on the local level here is like. 

Local racing did not disappoint this past weekend! As I combed over the racing calendar I saw that each race has a ton of different categories to race. More-so than in CO. While I was racing 40+ cat. 4 in CO, I decided to do the 35+ cat. 1-4 race here this past weekend. I had team-mates on my new team there, and I wanted to use it as a yardstick for my fitness. 

I'll confess I was worried that with it being an "open" race where there would be younger (than me) riders who were higher categories, I might be in over my head. Indeed, my plan was just to get that first pack finish. 

If you followed my racing last year, my first coming back from cancer, you'll know that a pack finish was a lofty goal last year, and one that took me a few races to reach. I was hoping that with a year of recovery and training under me, I'd be able to finish in the pack on the first one this year.

The race started fast and I held on for dear life until it settled down after 15 or 20minutes. There were a lot of attacks and this made it abundantly clear that I need to work on the repeated accelerations in my training. Still, I stayed in the wheels and kept my nose out of the wind while staying near the front of the race. 

With 8 to go I started working my way to the front to try and roll the dice in the sprint. I was on 5th wheel or going into the last lap. Halfway through the lap my team mate picked me up and led me towards the front. We were on the inside in the last turn and as we exited we were sort of stuck as he tried to find a way to the front between the pack and the curb. 

In the end it was a moot point as when the sprint started I was already at my max and I had nothing more to give. I just rolled in in the middle of the pack. 

I was (and am) disappointed at not getting a result. Guess I got kind of spoiled last year going top 5 in my last few races. Stepping back and looking at the race more objectively, it really was a big improvement. I raced at a higher level, was there to try and roll the dice in the sprint, and finished in the pack on my first outing. This is a HUGE improvement over where I started last year. 

So, I always say this but, we'll take it!

Lots more races to come! I'm on Instagram so if you want to follow along I'm at: hugh_maceachran.