Minuteman Road Club

Brutal course and brutal heat. Mini Green Mountain with lots of up, and then lots of down. Virtually featureless other than that. Front row start, hole shot, led the entire first lap with Chandler on my wheel. This resulted in a physiological on the second lap, paying the price for a big effort on the first lap and going deep into the Pain Cave. Dropped the chain 3 times on the second & third lap. This mechanical dovetailed nicely with my physiological to put me deep into a psychological. After 3 laps, I was expecting 3 on the laps cards, but saw 2. This minimized my psychological a bit. Not that it mattered much. I was in 8th (I think) with big gaps in front and behind me, but I chased anyway. Closed the gap, but not enough.

After my monster lead-out on the first lap, Chandler hung on for the win. He somehow got to the race with no vehicle, won a 6-pack of High & Mighty, doesn't drink and needed a ride home. I had a vehicle, was thirsty and wasn't in a hurry...so that all dovetailed nicely too.

Hoping for a better performance tomorrow at Quad.

Better things at Quad. It takes race #1 to work out the mechanical bugs!

This was my straight Cat3 race (Blunt Park was 3/4), so I was anxious to see how I'd fare with the big kids.

The course was as Doug described: lots of "up," punctuated by some downhills with sweeping corners. The lack of anything technical was a little boring, but good for the day because BOB was late getting started, then tried to get things back on time by cutting out the pre-ride period between races. So I was only able to preride 1/2 the course by sneaking on during one of the other races (there were not many guys, so the course marshalls told me to).

No Cxresults points used for staging, so it was sort of a cluster at the start, but I got on the front row. It'll probably be a while before I see that again. Had an OK start - not great, but enough to be in the first few guys - heading into the uphill, which I had not preridden before. On the first really steep turn, which I suspect most of us didn't know was coming, the first guy slowed dramatically, causing the guy in front of me to touch his wheel and have to unclip. I tried to get around, but got bumped and had to unclip, then had a guy fall onto my bike from behind me, so I had to wait for him to get up. Once we'd untangled from that clusterf---, I was now about third from last. OK, lets do this!

So I rode pretty well, passing at least some guys, but as the race went on, the spaces in between people got bigger and bigger. I ended up on Tim Durrin's wheel, who I know primarily as one of Chris Pare's nemeses. So it couldn't be THAT bad. Except that it became clear after a while that he was on a lousy day. I came around as he was starting to slow, as there was a guy behind us slowly gaining. I think when I did, Durrin realized that it wasn't Chris with him, but some scrub from Chris' team , and he suddenly kicked it into gear at the top of the hill (after letting me lead up that section - rookie mistake!).

I then had a minor breakdown that was half a "physiological" and half a "mental." The guy behind us (now me) caught me the next time up the hill, and I couldn't hold his wheel, but I managed to get things together in the end to finish 17th of 30 starters (24 finishers). Nothing fabulous, but I did beat the race predictor, and that was a friggin' hard course.