Hillsboro Race Report

What a great event! First time for me at Hillsboro and I will defiantly be back. The course is just awesome. Rough and narrow roads, low lying areas that look like they could flood with 1 inch of rain, flying rocks from all the gravel, wind: it had all the makings of a roubaix (Image if it rained). Some of the roads reminded me of this.

I got started off well, feeling good staying up front for most of the 1st lap. A couple guys broke away near the end of the 1st lap. The group decided it was time to bring them back as the 2nd lap started so the pace started to pick up considerably. With a few miles to go into our 2nd lap I did a quick head count to see how many of the 100 racers were left. Looked like about half the field had been dropped by this point.

As we finished up the 2nd lap coming through town I got gapped from the main field. To get back on I had to fight a head wind which took alot out of me. As we made the turn for the final 22 mile lap I began to "dangle" off the back. Getting gaped again, catching back on, getting gapped, catching back on.... you get the idea. At about the 50 mile mark of the race I cracked and fell off.....

From what I could tell by looking at the group ahead the pace must have picked up even more as groups of guys were beginning to fall off left and right. Three others joined me which was nice as they helped me get through the stiff head winds. Eventually I was so toasted that I dropped from these guys and just set my own pace as I cross the line in 51st place.

Full results listed here.

Overall a good day, feel good about the effort I put out for that kind of distance.

Here are some shots the Kurt took over at Action Images. I picked out some that I thought showed the course well. Kurt does a great job of documenting the race scene around here!

You can check out all the photos he took here.