Today, I drove up to Yellow Springs, Ohio to race at the John Buyan cross race. I went up with Keither Morlen, a team-mate of mine on Bolla. We left Louisville around 7 and made the 3 hour drive up to the race, getting there with about an hour before the start of the race. Originally, I had signed up to do 2 races today, both the C and B races, but when we got there and I started to warm up, I wasn't really feeling like racing all that much, especially in the cold (today was the first day that it really felt like Fall - it was windy, sleeting a little bit, and about 40 degrees).
The organizers of the race grouped a bunch of races together, so I was also racing against the 35 plus and 45 plus racers (along with some juniors). So, total there were 75 people at the start line for this race. Unlike last week, my starting position this week was not that good, but I was able to sneak up one row in the starting grid. At the gun, we all took off, but unlike Keith, I did not get that good of a start, as my shoe did not clip in quickly. I finally got clipped in and took off after the field. I was probably in about 20th place at this time. I was not happy with this situation because I knew that the leaders would get away from me quickly and I would be stuck behind a bunch of other racers at the barriers and the sand pits on the race, which did happen the first lap (the course today was well laid out and had some unique feature to it, such as log barriers and some short stretches of single-tracke - kind of like mountainbike racing).
At the end of the first lap, I had worked my way up to about 15th or so, and I started to pick up speed and pass other racers as I caught up to them. I kept trading positions with a couple of others who were working their way through the race also. At the end of the 2nd lap, I was probably in about 10th, and I could see the main chase group about 20 seconds ahead of me. I really gunned it through some of the straight sections to try and make up time on that group, and by the end of the 3rd lap, I had caught that group. I hung on the tail of this group for a little while before passing some of them in the sand pit (most people tried to ride through the sand, but I chose to run it, and that usually proved to be just as fast, especially since a lot of the other racers crashed towards the end of the pits).
There were now about 4 of us chasing the leader who was about 30 seconds ahead of us. Most of these other guys were not in my race, but one other Cat. 4 racer was hanging with the group. At the start of the last lap we were still all together, and I knew that I wanted to try to drop the other guy in my race, so I started to pick up the pace again. I wasn't able to drop the guy, though I was the dictating the pace (which is a good thing to be able to do in a race). Eventually, though the guy did me a favor when he got bogged down in the sand on the last pit, and I got a lead on him that he would not be able to overcome.
I ended up finishing second in my race and 6th overall. Keith also had the best race of his season and finished 9th in our race.
In the end I stuck with my decision not to do a second race because I was cold and wanted to get home sooner. As for finishing second, I won a mountain bike tire, which is pretty useless to me, as I do not have a mountainbike any more. However, I ended up trading with the winner for a cross tire. But that still does not answer the question of why would you only give away 1 tire? Maybe the organizers want us all to take up unicycles.
I don't have any pictures from my race, but I did take this one of Morgan Webb, a local masters racer, bunny hopping the barriers during his race.
