Nor'easter
Posted: Sat Sep 24, 2011 4:43 pm
My daughter is driving me home from Burlington, so I'm relaxing in the passenger seat after what was a really hard race. I pre-rode the course at 8am, before the masses came through and turned it to muck. It was a sweet technical course with LOTS of turns, 2 sections of sand and very short straight-aways. It had obviously rained a lot overnight though, as there was lots of standing water on the course. I was muddy when I finished, but I was digging it.
Fast-forward 4 hrs, and hundreds of racer-laps later; there's virtually no grass left and 3/4 of the course is ankle deep mud. I know I'm prone to exaggeration, but there were literally only about 4 or 5 sections where you weren't just slogging through peanut butter.
I had a descent start, despite Kevin Hines screwing up his start in front of me; going sideways with his Ass on the toptube. The mud slog began about 100 meters later. It didn't take long for me to loose interest. I cared less and less as the race progressed. My bike got heavier and heavier, and performed worse and worse.
The barriers had a mud bog right in front of them, and it seemed as though your shoes completely sank into the mud as you dismounted to go over. Fun.
The amount of effort required to power through meter after meter of thick demoralizing mud was incredible. The course was flat as a pancake, yet I was in my smallest 3 gears nearly the whole race. Not a recipe for success for me.
I probably finished in the top 20 (out of 30+) and got a few points, but I didn't care enough to walk all the way back to see the results after getting cleaned up.
I will probably have to strip my bike and relube all bearings in the bb, derailleur, hubs, etc. I can hardly wait. Adam will need a pickup truck full of grass seed to get the park back to "presentable". Its completely destroyed. I'm guessing we won't be racing there next year...
Fast-forward 4 hrs, and hundreds of racer-laps later; there's virtually no grass left and 3/4 of the course is ankle deep mud. I know I'm prone to exaggeration, but there were literally only about 4 or 5 sections where you weren't just slogging through peanut butter.
I had a descent start, despite Kevin Hines screwing up his start in front of me; going sideways with his Ass on the toptube. The mud slog began about 100 meters later. It didn't take long for me to loose interest. I cared less and less as the race progressed. My bike got heavier and heavier, and performed worse and worse.
The barriers had a mud bog right in front of them, and it seemed as though your shoes completely sank into the mud as you dismounted to go over. Fun.
The amount of effort required to power through meter after meter of thick demoralizing mud was incredible. The course was flat as a pancake, yet I was in my smallest 3 gears nearly the whole race. Not a recipe for success for me.
I probably finished in the top 20 (out of 30+) and got a few points, but I didn't care enough to walk all the way back to see the results after getting cleaned up.
I will probably have to strip my bike and relube all bearings in the bb, derailleur, hubs, etc. I can hardly wait. Adam will need a pickup truck full of grass seed to get the park back to "presentable". Its completely destroyed. I'm guessing we won't be racing there next year...