Result: 3rd place
Equipment: BMC Fourstroke with Maxxis Aspen 2.2" tires
Type of race: XCM, 77 kilometers
The weather was great, trails were dry, and legs felt good. I'd switched from doing quite a lot of Zwift races during most of this spring to doing all my high intensity training outdoors on my mountainbike about 2 weeks before the race. Also the week leading up to the race I cut down on the high intensity training a bit. I did 40 minutes HIT on the Tuesday and 20 minutes of HIT on the Wednesday before the race. Race was on Saturday.
As the race started and we went up the first long climb it felt quite easy to hang with the lead up the asphalt part of the climb. This is often a good sign and in the heat of the moment you can fool yourself by thinking "The pace is not very high". But, yeah, the pace is high, the elite guys up front make sure it is, and if it feels comfortable to you that means you're having a good day.
As we turned left onto singletrack the field stretched out as the pace got higher. I held my place in the field, perhaps advancing a few positions, but things felt good.
I had three pals, who are usually a little bit faster than me, in the race: Lars Hansen, Robert Eliasson and Calle Nelson. The first two race in the same category as I do, M50, and Calle is in M40. It's always a good benchmark for me how well I place in relation to them. Up the first hill I didn't seen any of them but at the top I passed Robert who was looking a bit tired.
The fun thing with a race like Billingeracet is that I've done it so many times (first time was 2013) that I have so much Strava data to compare with. Here are my times at the starting climb over the years:
After the starting hill there was the usual mix of singletrack and gravel road section during the first loop, and even an asphalt section. I made a few mistakes here and those were my usual ones: I let gaps develop during the singletrack sections so that when I got out onto the gravel roads a gap had formed to my group and I had to spend a lot of energy catching up. This happened a few times and about an hour into the race I realized that I couldn't afford any more of these sprints to catch up. I would have to either hold on to the wheel in front of me during the singletrack or let go on the gravel roads and let the next group catch up.
The second loop went better and I managed to stay in my group most of the time. The last part of the race had a young guy pulling us along really really well and I was on his wheel (with perhaps 4-5 riders behind me) clinging on for dear life. This went on for something like 20 kilometers. I was just able to hang onto him but I also realized that as the race ended with a long climb at that time I would be smoked and would probably have to let him go.
As it turned out that's exactly what happened. Up the last climb I was really tired but managed to keep a good pace. I was looking at my power meter and mentally shouting at myself: "Not UNDER 300 watts!!"
One of the weird things about this race is that I didn't see a single M50 rider during the race after having passed Robert Eliasson early on. That meant that I had no idea about how well I had done after I crossed the finish line. It's not until a couple of minutes after finishing that I noticed that all three of my pals, Calle, Robert and Lars, cross the line after me, that I realized that perhaps I had done well.
After a while I found out that I had finished in third place. I had quite a few minutes up to second and first place but fourth, fifth and sixth were are within just a couple of minutes behind me. It was in other words lucky that I had kept going hard even after I was exhausted because just a little slower would have put me in sixth place instead of third.
Are the master classes getting harder?
Billingeracet 2016 when I came in second place (M40 category) is my best result in the Swedish Marathon Cup. It's interesting to compare that result to today's.
That year's overall 1st place, Matthias Wengelin, posted a time of 2h55m44s.
My time in 2016 was: 3h14m13 which means that I was18 minutes and 29 seconds behind.
This year's edition also had Matthias Wengelin in first place at 2h45m10s
My time was 3h06m01s, 20 minutes and 51s behind.
Similar distances from first place. This time only good enough for third in M50 (my time would've put me in 11th place in M40)
Post race data
Average power: 265W
Average heart rate: 166bpm
Max H/R: 181bpm
Weighted average power: 290W
https://www.strava.com/activities/7102067830/