That's the face of a completely satisfied racer standing at the top of the podium. This week I went to the race with the target of not letting Ido, the guy in second, out of my sights. I made this mistake last week and paid for it in the end. The course was really windy although not as windy as Jason's ride by the looks of it. We left on Thursday, actually missed half a day of work so this month I might get into a bit of trouble for all the time off. What can you do, its a passion and I'm finding my addiction rather hard to appease. So after a three and a half hour ride to the south we were greeted by icy winds that cut through every layer of clothing I had on. Took us about ten minutes to prep and then we were off to see what this quite little part of Israel had to offer. I have to say that I was really surprised becasue the track was not at all technical and lacked those killer hills to really test the competitors.Yesterday woke up to a beautiful day although the wind had decided to stay for the race. Arrived early because the Elite and Expert riders were taking off quite a bit before us and I wanted to support the other team members. just before the start they decided to increase the number of laps for the riders so the had an extra twenty five minutes to ride making the race a little more difficult. Unfortunately they decided to keep the number of laps down to two for the sport category. We took off a little late because of the extra time it took for the other race to conclude but then we were under way and head-on into the wind.
I decided on a tactical race becasue there was no point wasting energy pedaling down the hill when I could sit on someone else and let him do the work. If you look at the size of his legs then you would feel that sorry for him. Another mistake I made last week was trying to push the big gears instead of spinning at a higher cadence. These two lesson's stood me in good stead as I made my way around and there was honestly nothing between us over the line. I decided to push a bit to see if he still had legs and we got to the start of the downhill together but again I let him take the wind. By the half way mark I decided that I needed to make a move soon becasue I did not want to wait to the finish straight which was a fast decline. With about two km to go I dropped my gears onto a smaller cog in the back and accelerated up the hill. I caught him completely unaware and was able to put in a descent gap. My legs were screaming at me as we weaved through the single track to the last hill. I still had a fifty meter gap so decided that if I could make it to the top in front I would take it. I pushed it really hard all the way keeping the lead without giving an inch.
Over the top of the last climb my legs were now full of lactic acid and burning must I knew that now I had to push it all the way to the finish. After shifting to the big plate and shift all the way down at the back I go up and started pushing. By the time we got to the finish straight he had made up some time but I held it to the end for my first overall victory of the season and also the category win. I'll try get some more photo's but didn't see many people braving the windy conditions.
