It was a beautiful morning to ride and race bikes. A little rain earlier in the week had the course in perfect conditions: not dusty and loose; not peanut buttery and standing water. The temp was in the low to mid 40's (F) with partly cloudy skies. Winds were some of the biggest factors this year with steady 14mph winds out of the northwest. I believe this tempered the starting miles a bit as it both was more difficult to make any gains on a large starting field so the incentive to be up front working hard was diminished.
This was my first race this year so it's always a bit of an exploration on how hard and when to use matches. I knew I wanted to be closer to the front going into Shaw Rd. because of the sand (that's the road where we're off our bike and running), and for the most part, I was. However, I think I should have been up even further as a gap between the top 5 in my age group and the next 5 developed there that we never recovered. Based on some of the paces the group took the rest of the race, I know I would have had the legs to stay with a group that was pushing the entire race.
All-in-all, I know I'm not the best tactical gravel racer, but wanted to really get a feel for how my legs and conditioning were. I'm happy with where that's at and look forward to continuing to build and get myself ready for summer racing.
As for the video, I bought a battery extension for my GoPro9 over the offseason to capture these 3+ hour races on one camera. The camera stopped recording after 2:51 (I cut some of the staging area video so this video is slightly shorter than that) so I need to figure out if it stopped because I need a bigger video card or if I'm not setting something up properly between the camera and battery pack. Otherwise, it looks to have worked nicely.