Monday, January 14, 2013

OBRA State Champs 2012


            The week coming up to the race, I was sick, Kaylee was sick, and Mils was sick.  It was just a common cold, but it sucked.  Can’t breath out of my nose, head stuffed up, burning nasal cavity, Alka-Seltzer, Nyquil, IBprophin, enough drugs to kill a donkey… The day of the race was the 1st day that I felt healthy enough to get on a bike… Should I risk my health and a back slide into the abyss of cold symptoms?
            Off course, psshhhaaah, how could I not.
            So I pull up to the start line as a solid B, I feel like I have paid my dues and am someone that should be looked at as a hard person to beat.  It is a small field (compared to the Portland races) I feel like I will be happy with a mid pack finish.  My best so far is a 11th so I’m not planning anything spectacular.
            Pull up clear my sinuses, hawk a few leuggies, cough a couple times, and take off my coat.  We take off, a 50m sprint into a 90 degree left turn, on worn down grass exposing slick mud, into a set of two barriers.  I just happened to be lucky enough to be on the outside right going into that corner.  Everyone stacked up and slowed down on the muddy corner afraid of the inevitable wipe out if they hit it too fast, I took the wide side where the grass wasn’t worn yet. I had traction!  I was able to fly around the corner with barely any breaking.  I went from 10th to 2nd in a single surge of my legs.  Jumped the barriers and I was on my bike again.  The guy behind me was shouting for me to hurry up, while the guy ahead was starting to pull away, so I did.  I knew that if I could hold off the others before I hit the muddy single track, I would be set up to do well this race.  I buried myself, down and back up a dip in the wide-open gravel road and the sharp left into the heavy sloppy mud of the single track.  No one is going to pass me here.  I was actually able to make up some ground on the guy in front of me on the mountain bike style trail.  I’ve been getting much better at it by mountain biking in the off-season. We pop out, and have an open flat in some grass, slight right around a pump house or something.  Drop down into a ditch then up the far side and swing a big 180 left around a big oak tree. Drop back down into the ditch and follow it 40m where we jump a barrier and sprint up some steep steppes onto another flat. I’m close on the heels of the guy ahead, but I can still hear the cavalry stampeding towards me…  back on the bike and around a play structure, down onto a quick section of cement.  We jump back out onto some gravel a few twists and turns later we corner around a covered wagon, and head out into some grass again.  We have a 90m out and back with a big sweeping right 180 in the middle (looks like a lollypop), I can see everyone for the 1st time as I come around the corner.  I’m right on the guy in 1sts heels, and I have a few guys right on my heels with a string of stragglers behind me.  We have a long, maybe 200m flowy gravel road with mud in the low areas great place to pass, or be passed… I crank hard and hold my position.  We coast around a 90-degree right on some semi slick mud, into a minor hill.  I know that just ahead is a terrible set of three S turns, which I suck at.  So I use this as my opportunity to gut myself and sprint up the hill into 1st.  I just edge the other guy out going into the 1st 180 turn.  We cruse through the next 3 then onto another gravel road.  I know that being in 1st this early can almost be as bad as being stuck behind a big group.  I don’t want to let people leach off the slipstream my 6’4” frame makes for everyone behind me. So I burry myself again, I keep my head down.  Down around the corner and over the barrier, down as I road around the lake of a puddle on the edge of the cornfield.  Down as I trudged through the long deep straight stretch of mud, down as I road up and over the road.  Down as I cornered around the go cart track and back onto the grass, I sneak a peak and see its down to one guy on my heals everyone else is fading. I’m ok with this.  I let up a little, but I pull the other guy out and around in the last out and back, before we finish our 1st lap.
             Crossing the finish line, I’m tired of being the mast for this guys ship, so as we hit the gravel I tell him to jump in front and take a pull so we can gap these guys… well that was the last time I was within 6’ of him…  he took off and I missed out… I spent the next 4 laps doing everything I could to close the gap, and keep the gap on the guy in 3rd… Marty was good about letting me know where I was compared to the other guys… the leader had up to 17 sec on me but the last lap I finally closed a little bit and dropped it down to 7 sec…  it sucked.  But I learned something.  If you don’t know who is behind you and how they race, don’t let them in front of you, make them work for it.  But all and all, I was ecstatic with getting second in my third B race.  Next year I will hopefully get force upgraded to A’s on a Steomper, but not until the last race if possible. Sandbagger?

Speaking of sandbaggers, Kaylee crushed the women’s C race, she probably would have crushed the B race too.  State champ in the C’s for her, on to the B’s next year.