cross weekend - a wubya and 2nd

Doubled down with many of my fellow killa-Bs this past weekend in the MABRA cyclocross series. Saturday was the Tacchino (Italian for turkey) cross race in the sleepy town of Leesburg. Nice area – I was surprised. Then I realized I had raced out here two years ago when the race fields were smaller and slower. Oh, how times change. The race started fast, attacks were going off, and eventually there was just a half-dozen of us pulling away from the rest of the field. More attacks within our group and then after a long, gradual uphill dubbed “Mount Ida” I came around the lead rider – Miles Smith. I wasn’t intending anything other then to stay on the gas and hopefully shed some guys in our group that couldn’t keep responding. Well it worked better than I expected. I slowly just road away from everyone. The gap fluctuated slightly, but mostly increased as the race continued. I would look back and see John Brewer and Brian Fouche chasing, but each time they’d be a little farther away. I think they were battling each other at that point and perhaps not working together to chase me. I don’t know for sure. I got time gaps from my crew of Judd, Sonja, Drew, and Steph. I had cheered Judd on earlier to a kick-ass 4th place in the C race and taught the other 3 some good works of encouragement. Like: “stay on the gas”, “close that gap”, “settle in” – those sorts of things. What I heard during my race was some conglomeration of these things, such as: “peddle on the gas”, “settle the gap”, and the like. This had me cracking up, as best I could manage without choking on my own drool and snot. Nothing makes you look worse than cross racing. You are at your limit the entire time, so awareness to the loss of bodily functions is secondary.

Unfortunately, I saw Rob Campbell (NCVC), a partner in cross racing arms, down on the side of the course about mid-way through the race getting assistance. From what I heard later he bumped with Miles and hit the deck…braking his collarbone. Damn! I never really thought about getting hurt in cross. I mean, road yes. Mountain, certainly. But not cross – guess I’m wrong. He is in red/white driving the pace early in the race.

Some other pix from the race…

Dave Crouse, Joe Foley, me, and a CB rider(?) taking a hill…

Sunday was the Race Pace cross race west of Baltimore. I didn’t have high expectations since my legs felt like junk after yesterday’s effort and a recovery consisting of drinking beer, eating chicken, and stuffing my face with ice-cream. We had some of our friends and their kids over for dinner so there was no lounging around. Well, the I had a crappy start and got pin-balled back to about 10th place even though I started on the 1st row. I crawled my way back up to the lead group as guys were getting shed. Eventually, John, Todd Hessel, and I separated ourselves from another chase group of Brian, Evan Fader, Miles, and some others. We stuck together for several laps, then Todd hit the deck on the a muddy slippery section (Again, the potential of getting hurt – damn) – luckily he didn’t get hurt, but he did lose contact with John and I. So we duked it out until the end of the race. I would open a gap in the technical sections only to have John chase back on in the flat-power sections. I sort of resigned myself to not winning since I couldn’t drop him – a bad mental mistake. I had the lead going up the final paved climb before a fast grassy descent to the finish. Whoever hit the crest of the hill first was certain to win. Problem is, I didn’t come to this realization until John went by me at the top. Damn! Schooled. Oh well…what a fun race. So we exchanged places. 1st for me Saturday, 2nd Sunday. Opposite for him. Good stuff. Next race is another MAC race this Saturday.

Judd raced the Cs again Sunday and confirmed he is filling bags of sand when he whooped ass and won. Here’s some pix of him suffering – or, putting the suffer on others. If that ass-clown gets his act together I will get some pix of me racing some day.

Here’s Judd making his move at the front

….then dropping his competition.

note: I poached some ofthese pix from Joe P…thanks!

~ by Indy on November 8, 2006.