Lincoln CX

As the only racer from the team, I tried to give us decent representation. Both days I was racing master's 40+ (having upgraded to cat 2 last week, I didn't see much point in racing the open class-maybe next year). Day 1 went well. It was a very strong field, with half of the racers from KC, and many of the better ones making the trip. Had the best start I've ever had in a cross race, and stayed with the leaders. After 2 laps, things started shaking out. Tom Price started to pull away from the field (how shocking-he only just won the 45+ at the USGP Mercer Cup in NJ last weekend), Steve Songer was about 15 seconds behind, and I was another 5-10 behind Steve, with his teammate Andy Lucas sitting on my wheel (Andy's been injured and had a sub-par fall, which is why I could keep up). Team tactics normally don't play a role in cx, but occasionally they do, and this was one of those times. I got no help from Andy to catch Steve, so I tried mightily to do it on my own. Got closer a couple of times, but never quite close enough to close it. As I expected, Andy jumped me at the beginning of the bell lap, got a 3-5 second gap, and stayed away for third, while I ended up fourth. Nonetheless, I was happy with the result-it showed that I can hang with the fast masters and compete for podium spots in KC.

Today was just as much fun. Troy, Craig and company came up with another great variant of the course-quite hard, but really fun to ride, flowing beautifully. Another excellent start, I slotted into the front, and had only one person jump ahead, Josh Taylor up from KC. Jim Winklepleck, Dan Hansen and Kevin Burke were on my tail. After the third lap, I dropped the three behind me and yo-yoed between 1 second and 5 seconds behind Josh. Finally with two to go, I saw that he was tiring, so I made a significant effort to latch on at the beginning of the bell lap, and caught his wheel. Just as we were moving off the pavement, I surged and dropped him, opening a 5 second gap. To make it more interesting, with about 1/3 of a lap to go, I had my back tire wash out on a technical section and lost my momentum, so he closed the gap. I didn't feel too bad, so I was pretty sure that I could take him in a sprint. On a tight off-camber S, he tried a risky pass, got by me, but went in too hot and ended up in the tape. I took off and won by about 5 seconds. I hate winning that way, but we both had bobbles in the end taking chances, so things evened out, I guess. BTW, Josh is a real class act and it was great racing against him (see his account here). So a 1st and a 4th this weekend against pretty good competition, and the masters state cx championship. It was a good weekend.