Bay Area Super Prestige #1

McLaren Park, San Francisco, or Daly City?

Sunday morning, up and ready, packing the car to head up to the first BASP of the season. Bay Area Super Prestige is put on by Tom Simpson and his Pilarcitos crew. These guys are great. They put on fun races with lots of good crowds. They have become the biggest series in the Bay at this point. Part of that went along with the virtual disappearance of the Surf City series, which is now back in action. The first Surf City is next Sunday, so I'll have a write up on that next week.

First, I didn't get out the door as early as I had hoped, so I barely made it to the race with an hour twenty to get ready. I managed to get in maybe 20 or 30 minutes of warm-up, which wasn't quite enough, but worked ok. The course was great! Starting with a short cut directly into a long steep run-up, then a slight climb into a dusty switchback descent, then a short climb, into a bumpy dusty descent, into a hard left hand turn onto a paved climb, hard right back onto dirt, climb, right sweeper, super dusty, soft descent that caused several crashes, short paved riser, right onto dirt, a couple sweepers into a longer sandy straight away, paved descent, grass, barriers, back through the start, right hand U turn, left, sweeping right, hairpin left, and muddy grass into the run-up again. Hard, fast, and fun!

I ended up three rows back at the starting line thanks to some confusion about the start and call ups. At the whistle we launched from the start and I was in a really good race head. I immediately started trying to move up the field. With only 200 meters to the run-up I didn't have much time to do that. I continued to push through the field, grabbing wheels and pushing them out of my way on the run, then remounting and pedaling hard to move up. I even threw a couple elbows to assert my positioning on that first switchback descent. I was having fun and racing with a smile. I managed to move up to somewhere between 10th and 15th place. I was able to race there for a while feeling happy about my position and pedaling hard to keep up my speed. Then, on that super soft and dusty descent at the top of the course, I took a spill. Well, I wasn't hurt enough to notice, but my handle bars got scooted to one side. So I rode with my bars crooked to the pit and straightened them out. Unfortunately, this caused me to drop back a good 15 or more positions. Doh! So I finally jumped back in the race and got to pedaling. I was able to bring back a few guys before getting lapped by the leaders as they finished their final lap.

Overall, I'm happy about the race. I rode hard and had fun. Now I'm motivated again to ride hard and race some more. I'm also really excited to see the return of the Surf City Series. Big ups to SCCCC for getting that up and running again!