First, on Saturday we had the Stark Velo cross race. It was held at the Kent State Stark campus, and dang did the course rule. It was really wide open, long, with more fun off camber steep stuff than you can shake a stick at.
Rain seemed to be looming overhead all day, but luckily by the start of the B race, was nowhere to be found. That lasted for all of about 1 lap, and we were soon stuck in some sort of moonsoon type thing.
I ended up getting the holeshot and the legs were feeling good. I opened a gap on the second place dude of about 20 seconds and was feeling pretty good. Lo and behold all good things must come to an end. Someone in a Stark Velo kit rolled onto the course and called out, "This is the last lap guys, we're callin it!"
Well hot damn I better speed up.
I ended up finishing in first. It was my first 'cross win, and I'm absolutely thrilled, but it sucks it had to come in a 25 minute race. A lot can happen in 20 minutes for sure. Mother nature is a fickle mistress I do suppose. Big ups to Robert for finishing 5th too, he's been on fire lately.
Today was the OMBC race at West Branch. I got my start riding at WB, so it holds a pretty fond place in my heart. Rumors were that the rain that hit us at Stark didn't really affect WB much.
So off we were. I was first into the double track and ended up fighting off second place all the way into the singletrack. Lucky for me I had the home field advantage and was able to open up a gap on the Rock Gorge trail. It was pretty much smooth sailin' from there, as I tried to keep my pace up and make sure that I didn't make any dumb mistakes...
But we are talking about me here, so dumb mistakes were made. When totally gassed on the second lap, they included: falling on a bridge, crashing probably three times on roots, taking turns to hot and sliding out, etc etc.
Nonetheless the mistakes weren't too catastrophic and I was able to take first. Hopefully I can put some MTB snaps on here when they surface on the tubes.
Not a bad way to spend a weekend off...
