Thursday, September 09, 2010

Races!!

Most reasonable people like to relax on Labor Day weekend, drink beer, and watch a bunch of war planes do fancy things over our fair city.

I decided to do two races within seventeen hours of each other, the first one being a 60 minute cyclocross race starting at 4:00 p.m., the second requiring a 5:45 a.m. alarm and a two-hour drive.

The cross race was (surprisingly) dry and fast and fun. I sucked considerably less than I did last year, which I must attribute to my new bicycle. That would really be the one way to justify the expense. My favorite observation from the cross race was a (short lived) verbal altercation between my teammate and another racer documented here, as well as a (short lived) verbal altercation between myself and someone who may actually suck worse than I do at riding singletrack. He decided he needed to pass me right before, of course, the singletrack. Both (short lived) verbal altercations ended in polite apologies and mutual understandings. It was like we were in Canada.

Sunday's Tour de Tamarck road race followed the script from last year...much attrition over the six hills, then teammate Zak and I trying (unsuccessfully) to get away on the last lap. It was fun, although I nearly got caught up in a wreck that occurred right behind me and was close enough that someone's handlebar jabbed my thigh.

Here is a photo of me trying to pretend that I can ride well in the sand on Saturday:


Question of the day: Does the fact that many cyclocross racers incessantly talk about how awesome cyclocross is add to or detract from the sport's awesomeness level, which is already quite high?



1 comment:

steevo said...

Detract. I am sick of reading about cyclocross on facebook already and there has been one single race. ugh.