Sunday, November 09, 2008

All is well in the world

Today's Plymouth South race proved that all is normal in the world... GCD is still fast, gravity still works, loose dirt is still slippery, and cross is still fun. About 40 lined up for the start of the 3/4's in the rare 20 wide format. It was actually a little concerning, but fortunately everyone handled it well... hell, even the 4's made the first corner without killing each other. I got off the line moderately well as did Gary and JimmE was out like a rocket. By a short way into lap one it was the lead 20 or so and then everyone else... trust me, I was the tail of that train and I looked back and there was a gap. The course was all kinds of good fun with a combo of fast packed dirt, wide open spongey athletic fields, and really tricky technical stuff. The best/worst part of the technical stuff was the 5 or 6 short punchey uphills that really made you hurt as the race went on. 2 were long-ish and the rest were just enough to kick you in the nuts. The kicker on some of the short ones were that if you didn't set them up right you were (annoyingly) running. Lap one was hot and I was working hard to stay on. Going into lap 2 things were sorting themselves out and I was trying to stay with/near Gary. First Gary went by Jim into the first ballfield and then I went around in a deperate attempt to 1) pull him, and 2) catch Gary. There would be none of it as I just watched him ride away (the dude can put out some WAAAAAAATTTTSSSSS). I eventually fell into a pack of anywhere from 3 to 5 and we proceeded to take turns mangling technical sections of the course and fouling up the whole group. My lowlight was nearly pulling a Reuter on the downhill with the stairs, but skidding to a stop just shy of the tree. Long story short after a number of bad words and lots of pain and drooling, I rolled home 11th. An acceptable day I guess, although I was AGAIN odd man out of 3 as 2 ahead of me sprinted it out for 9 & 10 and I just spectated. Super fun race regardless and next weekend we get to follow up with another uber-fun one. See you there...

2 comments:

solobreak said...

How come you are already at home writing blog entries instead of ordering up pitcher #8 at Harvard's?

trackrich said...

Sadly, had to drive myself home... the few brown ales I could enjoy were taaaaaaaaasty though :)

Was Putney a mud-bog? True mud was really minimal for us. Field were really spongey, but only one section of soupy mud.