Eco Cross Race Report



Dammit!  I posted this video to vimeo on Monday and then totally forgot to give it any kind of race report justice or bloggage.  GO GO GO!

So for the first time in my life I had Veteran's Day off (thanks Steve) and there was a HOLIDAY BIKE RACE to attend.  Awesome!  The fact that it was 90 minutes away and the 1/2/3 race started at 10am was but a minor hurdle... until I set my alarm for 5:45.  What am I, a Cat 4?

I met up with Jeff Elie in Medford and we rocked down to the cape to resume our mediocre elite rider vs elite mediocre rider battle from Canton.  The course was jungle cross at it's "best," super short laps, tons of effective singletrack, weirdly tight 180s -- basically Ice Weasels 1.0 -- but it doesn't matter because TWENTY FIVE dudes are here at 10am to race bikes on a FRIDAY!

The race itself was pretty straightforward, as jungle-cross basically turns into a time trial for an hour.  Mark the Shark was going super slow on lap one so I freaked out and passed him.  He did not freak out at any point in time, but he did MERCILESSLY CRUSH MY SOUL on lap three once he was properly warmed up.

Old pro power is even scarier than old man power.

I got an early jump on Das Wilcox and held him at 10 seconds behind me for the first 20 minutes or so.  Unfortuantely, I'm a fader and he's a surger, so this was bound to fall apart at some time.  I had the standard bad-lap-because-the-lap-cards-say-8 and he blew by me in standard Wilcoxish fashion.

I was able to rally somewhat, mainly due to the prospect of not one, but TWO fading Keough's coming backward.  But then Nick crashed out before I could get to him, and Jesse crashed out spectacularly (see 7:00 into the video), and next thing I know I've got no one ahead of me but ye olde Wilcox.

Dammit.

I kept heckling Dave to wait for me (thanks, out-and-back sections) but a 15-second gap is so much harder to close than it looks... and Dave wasn't waiting.  I think?  In any case, I was over a minute up on Jeff (AHEM!) so I had the option to mail it in... but instead I buried myself in the vain hope of Wilcox'ing the Wilcox.  Which of course didn't work, but at least it kept him honest.

I rolled across the line in 7th, eight seconds down on Dave.  And it turns out that they paid the top six!  Which saved me the trouble of "finding the prize money" so I could rush home.  Perfect....

Comments

Duphily said…
So you ready for ski season or what? We need to find a Sunday race this winter so we can go mano-o-mano for old times sake. Also, I need to figure out this Birkie situation.
11/19/2011 8:16 AM
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