Saturday was Sunset Park in Middletown. Nice course with alot of technical stuff in it with a nice amount of road and also technical climbs. Got a pretty decent start, felt good over the barriers and over the run up and was over my limit for a while, but that's a cross race. Got settled into a rythym and had a pretty decent race finishing 35th. in a UCI Cat.2 race with nearly 70 racers. Great day.
Tony's race was FAST. He finished 12th. in a loaded field with a lot of fast guys in the top 10, I would say there were nearly 60 in his field also. He said he felt good, he rode strong and looked good the whole race.
Very good day on Saturday. Racing and watching the other races and the Pro's is a good day anytime. Went back to the Manchester after everything was done, got some pizza and beer, cooled down, watched some UFC and relaxed, fell asleep and dreamed of pleasant things to come.
Sunday was UCI Cat.1 Harbin Park in Fairfield. This was another story, a bad dream actually, for me, anyway. Lined up about 4 rows back, got a good start and was feeling good until the first downhill sandtrap. This is where it all get's blurry for me. I was flying into the pit, as was everyone else when all of a sudden WHAM, and I mean WHAM! I went down head first and did a summersault or 2, shoot for all I know it could have even been 3, no, Lynn said it was more like 1 1/2, in-between laughs. Anyway I picked my bike and myself up and took off after the guys that had passed me. Got a couple hundred yards out and tried to shift and it wasn't happening, my shifter was full of sand and my rear derailleur wasn't working. I jumped off the bike, banged my shifter around and found that my chain was off the rear derailleur, put that back on and off I go. I get around the sharp right hander by the staging area and go to downshift and my shifter is totally not working. I have Sram shifters and the inside lever was bent almost straight out and sticking on the outside of the brake lever! I jump off and try to bang on it a little to get it to work but that's not happening either. Oh well, my race is over!! I try to hang in there and pick a few riders off and have 4 gears to do it with. I eventually catch up to Derek and he and I pull each other along for 3 laps or so, catching a few, and eventually finish a lap down. The group was just too far ahead and too strong for us to catch being that far back. There certainly was some confusion at the end with the official also. It seemed like he pulled alot of riders and dnf'd alot of riders that were not lapped. I'm thinking he did it due to time constraints, doesn't make it right though.
Tony on the other hand had another very good race. He ended up 10th. in the Mens 3 field and the first Ohio rider in a 60 man field, 22 riders from Ohio, Nice job T.
Tony had a great weekend and is getting stronger. All the young riders are doing very well. Robert Sroka had a Great weekend too. He won at Sunset and had a 3rd., only due to a mechanical, or he would have won on Sunday at Harbin. Drew B. and Eric M. both had great races as well. It's great to see so many from our area competing in these large races and doing good. Keep up the good work guys, you are the future of this sport!
Julie had back to back wins this weekend and is a house a fire right now, keep up the strong riding. Julie is winning everything she enters!
This weekend is another 2 race weekend with Spin on Saturday and Orrville on Sunday.
See you there.
3 comments:
We did what we could and did not go out without giving it a good fight to the very end. Good racing man.
Nice job racing this weekend, Bill. I went down like a sack of potatoes in the sand when another rider that was running the pit came over into me and in the barricades I went. I was lucky though and no mechanicals from it. Great seeing everyone and nice job Tony.
Sounds like another week-end of awesome action. Great pics. Too bad they don't televise you guys. Maybe we need to get Nick a video camera for us arm-chair racers.
Good job all!
Dad S.
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