Mentally I just couldn’t get into this race properly. I struggled right off the bat going into the first climb and felt like I barely hung on which shook my confidence a bit. In hindsight I think everyone was suffering as the pace consistently let up as soon as we crested any of the short climbs throughout the race. When I look at the stats for that part of the race neither my heart rate or power were particulary high so it may just have been an issue with taking longer and longer to warm up these days. By the third lap I felt relatively comfortable going up the same climb at a similar pace.
I stayed mid pack or so for the entire race and don’t feel I impacted the race in any way (unlike the previous week). On the last lap I moved up a little but struggled with motivation and confidence to fight for the front. I ended up 9th in the sprint, finishing mid pack but pretty dissapointed with myself for not trying to do more during the race itself. I clearly had more left at the end and could have done better.
My team mates took 4th and 7th just ahead of me and I should have been able to help one of them do better.
Oh well, longer brevet next weekend before back to my next race at Racnsdale. Hopefully I’ll be more mentally fired up to influence it in some way.