Sweet pain

Man, that was crazy. 100 guys lined up for a cross race and off goes the gun. I got shafted on the call up since I thought they would line up by reg number but when the mass of people surged forward I knew I was screwed. It actually helped tho since there was a pile up of about 20 guys and I was able to avoid it. The next 10 minutes were a blur of sprinting, pain and more pain.
The course was wide open but alot of sections were in deep grass that absolutely sucked any momentum I had. I was working the corners pretty well, even if the owner of Challenge tires told me after the race I had way too much pressure in my tires. No matter, I still got paid from dollar-hand ups. I grabbed $6 but lost one as I was just in front of two barriers on a run up.

Since I knew I was going to get lapped, I decided to gain whatever time I was losing by adding style points whenever possible. There was one section that was a perfect spot to air out a bit, so for the last 4 or so laps I was crossing up to the delight of the crowd. I sure hope I can find a few of those pics because that would be a hella-sweet blog pic.
So the final result is that I ended up getting pulled just over 50 minutes into the race, which is about 10-15 minutes longer than I expected to be in there. This was evident when at the start I saw no less that Thomas Frischknecht, Christoph Sauser - you know - current World MTB champ, Mud and Cowbells, plus the usual murderers such as Barry Wicks, Todd Wells, Ryan Trebon, J-Pow, current CX US National champ Tim Johnson. Oh, and Lance Armstrong showed up to boo's at the call up. Funny stuff.

With out a doubt, that was THE hardest race I've ever done. Period.

So Interbike is awesome so far, and I can only imagine it's going to get better!

-the ATM