Friday's race was at Devou Park in the lovely Covington, Kentucky.
As predicted, the area took a hard hit of rain, and was pretty dang wet. Seeing the course get progressively worse as the cat 4 field started finishing up, I knew I was in for trouble.
Staging was pretty surreal, and I realized that I had by far the worst position possible... last row. Now I know I need to register as soon as I can.
So off we were in a stacked Men's Cat 2/3 field.
After a surge up the starting road section, I may have been about half way into the 50-person field. We were abruptly dumped into some sloppy peanut butter mud.
It looked like a scene from a war movie, bodies flying left and right, yelling and cursing coming from all sides. I'm not too phased by riding mud, so I was able to pick my lines well enough to stay upright.
That lasted for about 2 minutes, as the mud caused the first of many falls as I washed out. I went to put my foot down to save it, and what do you know... that slid out too. I was promptly ran over by the guy behind me. Sorry dude :-)
Quickly getting up and riding with a crooked seatpost, I knew it wouldn't work out too well for the rest of the race so I had to stop and straighten it out. A few well placed whacks with the fist and I was back in business.
This was plain and simple cross suffering at its finest. My game plan consisted of working as hard as I could to bridge the gap up to the lead group who weren't bottlenecked by the shitstorm that happened in the first few laps. Slowly but surely I ended up working my way up to a respectable seventh place. I'll take it. Hopefully I can snag some pictures of the random areas of suffering and elaborate a bit more on my technique for riding them, which mostly consisted of riding as far as I could, falling then getting up and running the rest of the section.
Great job to Tony Marut teammate extraordinaire who was able to kick some ass and end up with a fourth place finish. mustache extraordinaire Scott was also able to work his way up from a lousy start and finish in the top half.
Phew okay on to Saturday.
Scott and I showed up with maybe an hour to spare in Middletown. The course was fast, excluding the back-to-back sandpits and one quick muddy section. It really suited a guy who was able to put down some power. I am not able to put down too much power, so I had to bury myself deep in the pain cave to be able to hang.
Once again the last row start was pretty terrible, but I was able to work my way up to probably the top 15 or 20 by the first turn. After that it was pretty much keeping myself at the edge of barfing for 45 minutes.
The quote of the weekend goes a little something like this, "You know Johnny wasn't having a good time because he wasn't smiling."
Generally I have a bit of a grin on my face when I ride just because, hell, riding a bike is awesome and I'm having a great time. Not this time, I had my mean face on.
So mean face intact, I busted my butt the entire race. Greg Fletcher and I settled into a groove and rode together from about lap 3 on. That is until he attacked on the uphill start area on the last lap. I saw him go and I just didn't have the juice in my legs to grab onto his wheel. Man he is strong. So after all is said and done I finished up strong a spot or two behind Greg, nice and comfy somewhere in the top ten, mayyyyyyybe close to the top five.
Here's where the fun starts...
One thing I know about racing, is that before you leave it's always a good idea to check the results, just incase things get a little wacky and a protest needs to be filed.
Lo-and-behold, I stuck around until about 5 o'clock and the 2/3 results still weren't posted.
He what do you know, the results still aren't posted online and I learn from Scott that the results got all sorts of fucked up. I was marked as a DNF, and everyone else's results were all screwed up.
I don't really care too much about finishing and placing, and I understand that mistakes happen, but man that's a rough thing to hear. I spent a shit ton of money this weekend on travel and registration, and worked like a dog to do well in my race. Somewhere down the line some wires got short circuited in the officiating and I got marked as a DNF. Bleh... I guess it happens.
On a more positive note, good job to everyone that raced this weekend. Julie, Rudy, Robert (who kicked ass in men's 2/3!), Bill, Scott x 2, Nate x 2, Matt Weeks, Brett Davis, etc etc. Everyone that raced further reiterates that Northeast Ohio is a cycling powerhouse ;-)
So after all that shitstorm occurs, I've got a mountain bike race on Sunday at Mohican State Park. Wooo!
I roll down in typical last minute fashion and get to the line about 5 minutes before the gun with no warm up and stressed because of my last-minuteness. That's something I may need to work on.
Off we went. I lucked out and was able to win the race with a time of 2:18, in spite of myself. I raced pretty stupidly dropping my bottles a couple of times, a few dumb crashes, and somehow had the mechanical problem of my wheel coming loose a few times and my piece of shit multitool (Serfas Zipper; never buy one) imploding in my bag. My legs also felt pretty much like blocks of wood the entire time, and they never really got too loose. Oh well.
Congrats to Steve Twining, who was able to beat the seemingly unbeatable Dave Walker in a sprint finish for first. Hell yes Steve!
Phew that's about it. I've got to stay busy even as the weather gets crappier to stay up with cross and get ready for Iceman.
1 comment:
I'm lovin' the pictures. Can't wait for your race Sunday... If you end up making it on time. heh
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