Well this year’s Barry Roubaix was a lot different than the last time I did it. The sun was out, temps reached to the upper 70s, and the course was dry… really dry and dusty! It was a beautiful day for the race and great day to ride a bike. I road my SSCX with a smaller gear than last time and still got a good workout in.
I started off out of town latching onto any wheel I could. We hit the gravel and were going downhill at a good speed. Instead of tapping the brakes, I decided to try to pass someone on the right only to get sucked down into a track on the right side of the road. It took a couple of attempts, but I was able to get back on the road and someone even commented on my maneuver, “Nice save!”.
Then we hit the first of the three sisters. I was able to make it up the first two, but could only ride half-way up the third one. From there it was down and up, up and down and finally hit the lengthy pavement section. Going up with one gear took some work, but I was able to recover on the downhill section, even managed to get aero enough to pass people without pedaling!
The two-track section was open this year and man that was interesting. There was sand, rocks, and some serious ruts you couldn’t ride through! A little while after this section came “The Wall”, there was a group performing and kept me entertained as I pushed my bike to the top.
After a few more hills, I saw a pace group from the 62-mile race flying by. I jumped on after the last rider of about ten and held on for as long as I could. That was fun, we were easily doing mid-20’s on the gravel and I wanted to stick with them until we hit pavement, but I wasn’t able to keep up when we hit a hill a few minutes later.
Even though I improved my time by 30 minutes, the race still took me quite a long time to finish. If I do this race next year, I’m going to enter the single speed division for the 22-mile race. If I work my butt off, I might be able to get a podium spot! 🙂