Whitewater

Am I glad to get that race behind me. Pop quiz time. Question: what do you get when you take a seldom used field, mow a strip through it and add a few inches of rain? Answer: a suffer fest for the hardy souls who show up to try to race through it.

I have to admit, that was the hardest race I've ever done. It was a fairly short loop mowed through a field with some barriers here and there. On a dry day, it probably would have been good for 10+ fast laps but add all the rain and it turned 70% of the course to mud. Wheel sucking, energy sapping, ooey gooey mud. When the 4's race was in progress some Trocaderos and I were standing around talking about how slow they were going. Little did we know, from our vantage point at the finish line, just how quickly we were to find out WHY they were going so slow.

My race went off at 11:45 after the 4's and the juniors had already raced. The course was by then beyond reason. I rode the first 4 laps entirely, more than once getting passed by somebody running. That's pretty sad. On the 5th lap, I ran the whole back section of the course just to try to give my legs a break. The mud was so deep that stopping pedaling for even a moment forced you to either dismount or fall over so there was no place to ever give my legs a rest from the 40rpm grind in my lowest gear. I was happy as hell to get lapped by the 3's leader with 3 to go as I then only had 1 to go next time through the start/finish. I'm not too proud to say that.

In my last post, I said I was starting to feel better as the fall progresses. My goal was/is to start placing top 10 in my field so I made my goal today by finishing 9th loser. I am looking forward to Camrock tomorrow and usually I like a 2nd race in a weekend but today was so brutal that I hope I have the legs to do well tomorrow too. The only consolation is that everyone else today had to race the same thing as me.

Congratulation to The Boy for winning his age again today. That kid sure gets alot of bling for his efforts. Of course I heard that his dad sells it all on ebay to make up for his entry fees....