Plymouth Festival of Pain, Day 1

[ddeitch]

Today's warm-up consisted of winning the holeshot to the bathroom stall with the door on it. Out the door, back on the bike, and straight to the cattle chute. I squeeze into no man's land, dead center. Gun goes off and the race........began occurring. When the official blows the whistle, it's customary to START MOVING. My little cluster seemed to stay put until the whistle blast had fully expired. At 10 seconds, a CXracing.com rider tried to pass between two riders who were in no mood to comply. Contact was made and he got shot out the back like a bar of soap. Right into my front tire. I survive. First corner comes, I get chopped. His rear skewer opens; we start yelling at him to stop and fix it which slows us to a soft crawl that continues all the way though the singletrack. "FIRST GUY TO HIT THRESHOLD IS A ROTTEN EGG." Nonplussed stares. I attacked up the sandy run up, picking up places and more dirty looks. The rest of the race felt like a day at work; punch the clock, hope that 5pm comes quickly and quietly.
1.I now know why halloween candy is not on the WADA list.
2.I heard the best defense to that "cat 4 pro" attitude: "Shut up, you're not that good."
3.This diesel engine needs a lighter chassis.

[pierso]

Another great race for me today.

I squeezed my way in for a front row start, had a great start, and was sitting somewhere around 8th for most of the first lap. The leaders seemed to sense carnage behind us and soft pedaled on and off in the beginning of the lap until we hit the back of the soccer field, and then the gas was on for the long straights. I held on to a group of a few guys and was barely hanging on to tenth until lap 2, when one of them pitted with some kind of mechanical and I peeked over my shoulder to find a pretty solid gap. Nice. The next 3 laps were pretty uneventful, one or two guys came back to me, and then at the sandy runup with 2 to go, the guys I had heard huffing and puffing on my wheel for a while rode by me. John Plump was there yelling to stay on the group as that was 10th place riding away, but I was cooked. I spent the last lap and a half riding through the dry heaves and finished in 11th.

That makes three "best races of the season" in a row for me. Looking forward to seeing what tomorrow brings.

[taudep]

It's true, Matt's racing is on the up and up.

I fully expect Matt's next week's CrossResults to look a whole lot like:

[RPerson]

Regardless of whether they had raced once, the kid just beat two of the biggest studs there are. Way to go Manny!

[Rob]

WOW! way to go Manny
a pretty easy victory again Mark and Kevin. that is just awesome!