This weekend was the first round of the Indiana visits of the Ohio Valley Cyclocross Series. The Indy Double Weekend. Saturday was the race at the classic venue Brookside Park. It kind of rained on/off for a lot of the day making the course tricky. It wasn't muddy per se, and the sun came out and tacked it up quite a bit for our race.
I don't have a good explanation why, but I found myself completely buried at the start and I had to pass people the entire time. It was not ideal and I rode pretty well, but I could only pull out 11th.
Sunday was quite a contrast in terms of conditions. The first picture is from Saturday; nice and clean. The second is from Sunday; the muddiest race I've ever done.It was nasty. All day rain. Getting ready in the rain sucks. Starting a race in the rain sucks. Racing through inches of peanut-butter mud, that's just the way it goes sometimes. I wasn't feeling very good most of the day. My stomach was in knots the entire night before and I just wasn't feeling 'on' at all so I decided early on that I wasn't going to pre-ride the course; it was just too muddy to bother and I wasn't feeling good anyway. But I eventually changed my mind and went out for a lap prior to our start. It was clear to me that I would be racing against the course, not the other riders. I couldn't push hard, I just had to try to stay steady and not crash. One probably could have crashed 10-20 times per lap if he were not overly cautious as to what he was doing 100% of the time. It was one of those races you hear about where going slow is fast and going fast is crashing. I did crash once and cut up my knee some and get a little 'hipper', but nothing big. I lost two places as a result and couldn't get them back. I ended up 17th. Not what I'd hoped for, but in the money at least.
So overall I guess I can say it was a...memorable weekend. Not the best in terms of results, but got to hang out w/ a lot of good friends and despite not feeling great and horrid weather, had a good time.
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