Saturday, cat 4 Men.
I was late to staging at North Hampton. Since then I've been prompt. After the announcer had called out the first two rows I started to get nervous that my name wasn't called. There weren't 20 other Cat 4 sandbaggers registered for this race with better cross results rankings. Did I miss my name? After he called a couple more rows, with people I knew I should be ahead of I started to panic. I must have missed him calling my name. I went up to ask, and he said, nope, you're in the next row. After taking my place in the 6th row, (and listening to the murmuring around me) it finally dawned, this was RANDOM order. Others were upset by it, but I kind of liked it. It certainly took the pressure off to be starting more than 1/2 way back. I passed about 20 riders before we hit the first turn, got hung up at a couple choke points, but really had no trouble moving up. The course is pretty wide open, with lots of long power stretches. Mike Baker caught up to me (he started near the back) and I grabbed on to his wheel figuring he'd take me the rest of the way up to the front. This plan was going pretty well until I touched my breaks prepping for a turn and locked up the rear wheel and went down. Don't ask, it's a long story, but I was borrowing someone's 404's. They said I didn't need to switch to the yellow break pads, the wheels would just squeal a bit, and after they got dirty they would be just like aluminum rims. Well, nothing was getting very dirty, and as the race went on they got grabbier and grabbier. I went down 2 more times and lost a lot of confidence. Mike Baker's group pulled away, and I settled in to finish 12th overall, 6th in the 35+.
Sunday, cat 4 Men.
It was cold, but I'd coated my legs pretty well with the Mad Alchemy embro I won at Night Weasels. After warming up I decided to go bare legged since anything else felt too warm. The cold didn't bother me at all during the race. RANDOM order again, and in my mind I was all set for a start towards the back. I had my go-pro strapped to the bike and wanted to get video of me passing a lot of people.
Not gonna happen. I got called up for the first row along with Brad Smith from Geekhouse bikes. Brad took the hole shot and never looked back, I hung onto the back of his group, passing various people as they blew up at that pace until I was in 6th. From that point, my GoPro video was of me being passed rather than doing the passing. I hit the deck once on the downhill turn before the barriers and lost a couple spots between getting up and then getting the chain back on. In the last lap I held off a group of 4 that were trying to chase me down and finished 10th overall, 5th in the 35+.