This weekend I did another Sat/Sun double race weekend. Saturday race was in Yorktown, IN which for all practical purposes is Muncie, so I had to go it.
The e-lite race had just 4 people in it.
One of us 4 is a pro road racer and a good CXer. One was someone I didn't know (or a ? in other words) and the other was my teammate Josh, who grew up about 1 mile from the venue and spent his entire childhood riding BMX bikes and such at the venue. With just 4 starters my motivation to go 100% was low. I don't really know why, but it was. And when we started pro road guy and ? took off like Meatloaf (Bat out of Hell, get it?) my mojo sank a little more.
The official cut our race down to 45min due to there only being 4 of us and the race was not too terribly likely to play out over an hour anyway. I was fine w/ that because I was racing the next day.
So whatever, I rode hard, but not full-on and got last place. Dead last. First time ever. But since it was paying 5 places, I still got paid 4th place $$!The down side was that just prior to the start I noticed that my left front brake caliper was bent. It most likely happened in one crash or another a couple of weeks ago and has probably gotten worse/noticeable from use. The brake wouldn't center and when I got down to look at it I noticed stress marks, which are not comforting to see on aluminum bits. I was just hoping it would make it through the weekend w/ no problems and it did.
Sunday was the classic Louisville race Storm the Greens. Quite a contrast to Saturday's 4 man field; I think we had over 50. I had to get to the venue very early to be there in time for Lindsay's race (which she won) and it was cold in the early morning. Like 30degrees cold I think. So I just kind of sat in the car for a while to try to stay somewhat warm. Aside from being cold, the ground had frosted heavily which meant the track would go from firm, to wet, to kind of wet, to firm over the course of the day.
Plus they added in this killer big-ass mud puddle just for good measure (bad measure?).
The course had a few long, flat, straight "hammer" sections, but otherwise suited me pretty well. Problem was the long, flat, straight hammer sections suited some other guys well that were much slower than me everywhere else. So while I'm struggling to hang on to them on the straights, I'm running over them in the tech sections. It took a while, but I was eventually able to get a gap over the people around me most of the race and catch a few guys that were ahead of me most of the race. I rode well and felt pretty good. I finished only 17th, and had to fight for it. It was fun though; and overall an awesome course at the venue of the 2013 World Championships.There is now a 2 week break in OVCX races. There are still big regional races though. In fact, there are 5 very big races over the next 2 weeks. This coming weekend is a big 3 day UCI race weekend in Cincinnati, but we're only going to go Sunday. Then the following weekend are the USGP races in Louisville. We'll go for both days of these. It is really cool to watch the country's top pros race. We're lucky enough to have them racing within a short-ish driving distance two weeks in a row here! Plus we get to race on the same course earlier in the day. Cool. I always look forward to these races.
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