Ugh

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.









This was the only exciting part of the course
Once 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.

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.