Race pics from yesterday!

There are a lot of pics, but some of them came out pretty cool.  Shooting races is a lot of fun, so when I eventually get tired of "show up and throw up", I'll have a back up hobby.  I ended up taking my first top 10, placing 7th out of 22 riders.  That seems kind of surreal and doesn't make sense to me, but I do have a habit of losing all concept of space and time when I'm racing.  I guess if the judges think I came in 7th, that's good enough for me.  This season, to me, wasn't about finishing, it was about learning as much as I can so when next CX season roles around, and I have a good amount of base fitness to augment my experience, then I can throw down and see where the dice fall.  Hup hup!



The race itself was fairly cold, but I dressed to impress and stayed pretty warm.  I wouldn't have minded a wind vest at times because once you were heading toward the finish line you were coming straight into a chilly wind that penetrated whatever layers you had on.  Everyone crashed while racing.  The course had primarily two lines left by the snow blower, and a rutted, icy median.  It was really hard holding your line on top of that, and you really had to engage your entire body to hold the bike straight.  Surprisingly, either my tire choice was excellent or I'm just super awesome (haha) but I didn't have any traction problems.  I went down probably 5 times though, due to me coming off the line and hitting the eight inches of snow and either laying the bike down, rolling in the snow, going over-the-bars, or a combination of all three.

I had a great/fun sprint finish as I was coming around the last bend and was keenly aware of someone on my tail.  I didn't care how fast the rider was nor who he was, I wasn't going to get passed at the line.  I held the rider off at the line, so that was very cool.  Nothing like a nice ending to the last race of the year!

Dan Oldehoeft (on my team) had an absolutely amazing race.  He was fighting saddle issues from the get go, and assisted a fallen rider who had knocked himself out, and still placed in the top 3.  Kudos to him for being a terrific racer and a terrific human for helping out on a "man down" situation.

It was terrific fun for me to hang out with Nathan, Aubree, Adam, Britton, Joe, and Dan at the race, and even though something flew up my nose and totally trashed my sinuses, I had a great time.  I'm glad I joined Team Colavita/Parisi Coffee, and look forward to a great 2010 campaign.