I love a good race, but that being said I hate a bad race. I have never done a road race (with the exception of a collegiate race on my SS CX bike), but saturday I went to the north side of the city for a crit that was masquerading as CX.
It was flat, hot and windy. I started in the very back row. The race started and every knuckle head in front of me decided to fall on each other. I just rode around them and was in the top 5 in about 8 seconds. The dude in front of me was muttering about cat 5s, and proceeded to lay it down about 15 seconds later. I am not Gods gift to bike handling, but these guys were making me look like a ROCK STAR! Dudes would just fall down.
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This was the only exciting part of the courseOnce we got past the technical section, it became apperent that wattage could overcome many shortcomings. I passed one dude like 3 times as he was picking himself up off the grass. However I was still losing a position per lap and finished like 12th out of 30?. With one lap to go one guy even offered to pull me. I could not stay on his wheel. It was pathetic. I had nothing.
In the 4 frames that preceded this I was actually holding my bike over my head. Its just how I run, Noah would not have approved.There was such a huge gap in the skill level in that field. There were some dudes out there in the 3's that would have been in the top half of the 1/2 race. Even finishing as far back as I did I still managed to lap a handful of riders.
It was a good experience, but I will never go to that venue again. I am beginning to realize how spoiled I was in KS and NE, with such great CX promoters and really well attended races. I also have an appreciation for promoters that get a great venue before getting the event permitted. You can't make chicken salad out of chicken poop.
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Then Sunday night we did a family ride. Its kind of nice when I pull the trailer, since it allows me to work as hard as I want, and it creates a huge draft for ali to sit if she wants to. She did get frisky and tried a break going up a climb, but I covered that move.