The ocup season started in Niagara with cowbell. A course I am generally terrible at, with lots of tight off-camber turns and few rest points or areas to put sustained power down. But it had been a couple of years since I made this one.
We got there early enough for a couple of pre-laps and caught up with Kevin Scheerer, who was officiating for the day. The course was incredibly dry aside from early morning dew and had more corners than I remember with less straights.
I figured I’d be in a tough place, but the OCA had changed the categories again, so it was hard to know which race to choose. I went with Masters, that started at the same time as Cat B. The new classifications allow some of the faster masters to race twice in a day. Given my past results here the goal was to not get lapped by Chris Pollett from London who often races with the Cat A guys.
My start from second row was reasonable but there really wasn’t many passing opportunities for the first 800m. Kevin Gibson was a couple of places in front of me, for that first km, thankfully Devin informed me of this several times. Things then started to sort themselves out, and I was in a small group with Ryan F from LCW; he is far fitter than me but made a lot of mistakes the first lap, and was running a lot that others were riding.
Things stayed the same for lap 2, at which point the board said 3 to go. I figured that I could just about last this pace for 5 laps, that would have me finishing around 45minutes. I made a couple of mistakes in lap 4 and then saw the board still said 3 laps to go. My back was starting to complain and I knew at that point I was in trouble so i had to let a couple of wheels go infront of me, hoping they would either fade or make mistakes.
I came through the bell lap, let Kev S know he was cruel, and finished it out to come 7th by the end. with around a 1/3rd of a lap in hand from getting lapped.
I first raced an Ocup in 2016; this is year 10, the first year where I have had a resemblance of fitness and the ability to use it in races. In the past, I’ve lost 1.5-2 minutes a lap on some of those in my race at Cowbell; this year, I cut that down to 30 seconds.
@MarkW was braver taking the cat B race finishing 8th. @KevRidesGravel found out the hard way tubular tires don’t age well. Whilst Devin came in 3rd in the U15 race.
