Ogden Fair?

This week's cyclocross race was at the Ogden fair grounds. I thought it would be fun to put the powertap wheel on and see what the power would look like. It was all over the map.

Honestly, I expected the power to look about like this, but I was surprised how low the average power was, especially considering how high my HR was. I have noticed in the past that on the MTB the HR/power ratio is higher than on the road, and apparently it is even more true for CX. What some people call it the "VI for variability index" would have been very high.

Scott and Ian raced. I sort of regret letting them sign up. They came in last and second to last. That doesn't bother me, but it seemed to bother them. They've both commented on it since. I think Ian was the youngest in the race, and they are both pretty small. It was really hard for them to get their bikes over the barriers. On the big one in the picture (stolen from GCConnection, BTW), Ian lifted his bike up, and then sort of dropped it over the other side. He then climbed over and picked it up. This was after he had fallen on one of the other barriers and scraped his chin on his handlebars, which hurt enough that he wanted to quit until someone convinced him he was the only Jr. single-speed rider so he was actually winning. We'll see. I was happy to see them out riding hard, and I hope they do another one, but they may have decided they're done with CX racing for this year.

I felt pretty good for my race. Drafting was a significant factor in this race, and you can see the line that formed at the start in the picture. This did thin out a bit pretty quickly, but you can see Art in the back and we raced in a group of 3-5 people the whole race. Art came by near the end when Bart lapped us. At this point I was initially not sure he was in our group.

At that point I was following Ohran, and thought he'd chase, but he didn't (they're teammates, so he shouldn't have, but I wasn't thinking of that). After a lap or two of that I realized I could either follow Ohran try to beat him at the end and maybe get 4th, or I could try to close the gap to Art and look for 3rd, but risk falling back.

So I went for 3rd, but couldn't close the gap to Art, and Ohran and Darren (I think was his name) were in my draft. When I tired, Ohran countered and dropped me, with Darren also going by. I also failed to realize when Bart lapped us that we suddenly had one less lap to complete. Maybe I could have gotten one or both back, probably not both, but I didn't really try thinking we had one more.

So I don't know if I got out-powered, but I surely got out raced and they deserved to beat me. I learned a few lessons to remembe, and it really was great weather, a nice course, and super-fun racing.