I made the trip to Akron today for the first Winter Trophy Series event. My Redline had a season ending injury at Boughton farm and it's in the shop right now getting an overhaul, so I was stuck riding the 30 pound MTB, which sucked. The course was perfect today for high speeds on a 'cross bike. I probably could have ridden my litespeed with the 28 mm tires.
The course was quite long, mostly flat with lots of turns and one off camber spiral. The surface was mostly frozen with hard packed snow and very few stretches of bare slightly squishy grass, but not any mud.
From the start, it was painfully clear that I was in slo-mo. There was one rider about 30 seconds ahead of me that I had a prayer of catching, but I was going a couple miles per hour slower than the rest of the field. I dug deep for the first three laps to try to close the gap and managed to cut it down to about 20 seconds, but it opened again after that.
From there, I was trying to make it as far as possible without getting lapped. With 2 laps to go, I caught sight of Robert land-sharking up on me, and I turned it up to brain melting pace to try to hang on to the last lap. I somehow snagged my handlebar through the off camber section and crashed. Robert was nice enough to ask how I was. For a slow crash, it hurt, but I was fine. In one of those things that only happens in a race and that you couldn't do on purpose if you tried 100 times, my brake cable was caught in the loop of the stake, and I couldn't get it out of there with my lobster claw gloves. It seemed to take forever to get my gloves off and get the bike loose, but really, it was probably less than a minute.
By the time I was underway, the next group of riders was closing in. Shit. I lost a little mojo in the crash, but I did everything I could to keep the gap. They passed me on one of the slower sections of the course, but really opened the gap on the fast section. I was cranking at full power and they still pulled away, so I didn't feel too bad about being so slow today.
It was a great workout. Since the course was flat there were very few places where you could take it easy.
Also, no bike cleanup after the race!
If I get my 'cross bike back in time, and the conditions are similar, I'll probably do the second race in the series. Shawn Adams and the folks who helped setup the course deserve a lot of credit for getting that work done in such cold conditions.
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