Cross Crusade P.I.R.: Spectacular legs

Apparently a week spent at elevation and a week not riding a bike does wonders for one's fitness.  Who would have thought.

photo courtesy of Matt Haughey

Today's race was awesome, except for a few mishaps I rode a perfect races.  That is if you don't count the last place call up, thrown chain, crash and subsequent bent shifter and thrown chain.  Oh, and the flat on the last lap.  Don't count that one either.  Yep, first time I've ever flatted during a race, either road or cx.  Well, I guess it has to happen sometime.

All this aside, my legs were awesome today.  I went through the first corner second to last.  78 people in front of me.  There was hardly any chance to move up in the first lap so it was simply a matter of biding my time.  Things cleared up by the second lap and I opened up the throttle.  This wasn't a very technical course so it was simply a matter of keeping up a hard, steady effort and surging on the road sections.  I did this and I was slaying it.  I threw my chain about lap 4 or so and lost a lap's worth of work but it was by no means the end of my race.  I kept moving up and knew today was a good day to break into the top 20.  At that point I decided it would be a really good idea to take an off-camber turn a little too hot and make friends with the course tape.  Bad idea.  By the time I got back on the bike I'd lost about 15 places.  I went right back to work.  At some point it becomes really boring passing people, crashing and then having to pass them all over again.  So I guess I'm going to stop crashing.  Going in to the last lap I was hanging around the low 30s.  With half a lap to go the flat came.  I ran the bike to the pit but as you know, unless you flat right in front of the pit your race is over.  I crossed the line 54th.

While I'm disappointed with my actual placing I'm pretty happy with how I rode.  Yes, I need to use a little more caution when cornering but I rode both aggressively and smart.  Given a decent call up and an incident-free race I know I can break into that top-20 if I have another day like I did today.  Oh well, it's just one more race to learn from.

I'll see if I can hunt down a picture of my awesome superman/stomach-ride remount when the bike took an unexpected hop.  Hey, at least the crowds liked it.