Nice cross weather today, little drizzle, little sun, little overcast, & lots of wind. Everyone & I mean everyone showed for today's race. Must have been the potential for rain. Skip finally got rid of the veil & put on his cross kit(& had a fine ride). Cale gave the deer a week stay of execution & came out. A gravity challenged Super G made his season debut. JJ showed from the far north of Bolivar. M2 the mileage machine made an appearance on a ridged 7 spd MTB(to punish us all!). Even the legendary National Champion Brad Huff riding a single speed 29'er. Next week I think he needs to put knobs on the track bike & ride like a man. I'm guessing in all there was close to 30 people out to race with almost as many people cheering.
Rumors spread like wild fire before the start. A joking comment about me racing B's had everyone up in arms giving me sheet about being a sandbagger(I just wanted to make Skip feel @ home). But all was for nothing since I lined up with the A's. The pace @ the start was not too out of control so a BIG group went into the first turn. I'm not sure what course VanFasten was riding but it involved a left turn where everyone else went right. After sideswiping Super G & taking some grupetto heckling he quickly caught back on. For the first lap a group of 7 or 8 rode together. This was really fun though the barriers got a little crowded. After some singletrack in the woods & a leg sapping climb to the road section Super G decided to crash on the road section? Got me guess he felt the dirt would have soiled the fancy Tomac kit. I tried & tried to avoid his bike but after it chased me to the other side of the road I said F'it & rode over it. Sorry Jim.
This caused a little gap where I got left out behind Greeker & VanAsten. A lap later I sat up to let the chase group get me. The Huffster was in this group & decided to do a rolling handling check on me & stuck his front wheel into my pedal. I passed & stayed up(later on cooling down he tried it again so watch out when riding with Huff). It turned out to be the smartest thing I've done in awhile since I was able to recover & not fight the wind on my own. The group slowly shrank till it was just M2 & me closing in on VanAsten. As it turns out he was riding a slowly flatting tire. Getting little carried away chasing I came into a corner wayyyyyy too hot & my brakes finally decided to work & I was sliding @ about 20mph for 50 feet or so before I knew what hit me. That pretty much sealed my fate to fighting of VanAsten for 2nd while M2 powered away to never be seen again. One more lap I would have been toast & would have ended up 3rd.
Quick results: A's M2, Me, Van Fassten B's Sandbagger, ICC C's I think the Natural once again.
A the bottom of the fast descent where the 180 was before the wood chip pile.
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