Washington County Fair Complex Crusades #7.

Washington County Fair Complex Crusades #7.

            I Hate this race.  Last year it was the 1^st race I was feeling good, ballsy, about myself racing cross.  I crashed 3 times, shouldering into a guy who was better at it then me, cornered too hard in some saw dust, tripped over a barrier, and finished 54^th out of 60 something…  I hate this race…

            Well this year started out even worse.  We (Kaylee, Elise, 14 month old Mils and me) pull into the parking lot; unload our bikes, and some stuff.  I close the trunk, and Kaylee and I hear a weird popping sound… It was the bungee that held the bikes on, it got trapped against the back glass and the trunk lid, and cracked… thousands of spider webbing cracks…  @#&%! So I open the door and feel it, it seems solid, I say F it we will deal with it after the race. I close the door and walk around to the trunk, just as Elise is closing the last door, creating a height pressure in the car and POP… the very middle of the window pops out… did I mention that its raining… and its Sunday…  and we are in Hillsboro… and the only glass shop that answers after 10 calls tells me the earliest they can fix it is tomorrow morning… which we all work.  This sucks… I give the girls the choice… to race, and head home after dark with a crumbling window in the rain, or to head home now, 4 hour round trip for nothing.

            We race… Well I hang out with the Mils while I wait for my sister to get there to watch her while I race.  Mils just chills in the backpack like a good little Wee.

            I finally get on the bike, with 30 minutes till the race…  I do my best to warm up in time.  I get to the start line and we get staged only to find out that we are running late.  So we hang out and get cold in the rain and mud, waiting… then the single speeder go… so we wait… for 3 more minutes…

            And we’re off… a slight right into a 3 or 400m trudge though all different depths of mud and then a set of barriers.  I got stuck in the mud and dropped to 2^nd to last place.  I do my best to fight back into it, but I don’t have the heart.  We careen around corners and though some barns.  Over grass and through a coral full of mud.  Over a wooden stair set and through a 30’ off camber mud run…  I was not into it…  Until… I saw Hayes Kenny… that’s right the second to last lap I ran into the back of that kid and caught him.  I raced him at Rainer, fighting tooth and nail, when we were both C’s. He beat me in the end there, I had beaten him at the Barton park race, but this was a new day.  I knew he would want to beat me too, so I started ridding hard.  I kept ahead of him until we came into the last lap.  He passed me in the long mud trudge.  I tried to keep up but he passed another guy I got stuck behind… by the time I was around the guy Hayes had a good gap on me.  I fought hard to catch up… I slowly caught up till I was on his ass… I knew we only had three more corners till we finished so I went for it… just before I made my move, he saw me… and pushed… I missed it; he edged me out around the corner.  I knew he was a better sprinter, so I was screwed, going into one corner after the other sprinting out of each one, he pulled just far enough away that he took it… got 18^th and I got 20^th… yeah he passed another guy at the finish for the win… or as far as I was concerned the win.  I got last he got 1^st.  Maybe next year we will battle at the front of the B’s like we did in the C’s this year.  My hat goes off to you Hayes, hopefully for the last time.