Cross Weather for a Cross Race

Sunday's race was finally the wet and cold weather everyone comes to expect for fall cross races. Not that I'm complaining, because the races have been dry and fast which is fine by me. It was a long and flat course. However, Johnny, Mike and the gang setup a great course with some tricky corners. My legs were still sore from Thursday's 3 miler so I wasn't expecting much except not to crash.

I took my usual back of the starting line next to Klages. 50 yards or so after the start the barriers were setup. I start, clip in pedal 10 seconds and then get off to run over the barriers. I get back on the bike and I'm in the top 3 or 4. What the heck? This never happens. We make it around to the off camber right hand bend and the leader crashes. No problem, I just had to take a wide line around him. I battled Sven and another guy for a lap or two. The pass me before start finish line and I get right back on them at the barriers. Well then they slowed down as we go through the course. I decided I had enough of that and passed them right back before the series of tight 180s. Apparently the Gateway guy didn't like that and yelled something. WTF? It is a race, I wanted to go faster through that section, and they course was plenty wide to pass. And by wide enough, it was at least as wide at a paved sidwalk. Is there some rule that you can only pass in 10 foot wide sections? If he didn't like getting repassed, then he should of gone faster in the twisty sections. Eventually I battled Matt James and just managed to stay ahead of him, but ended up behind a Dogfish rider who kept cutting the course every lap.

I was okay with my performance, but would of liked to beat that rider ahead of me. This week I did manage to stay on my wheels the whole race which always helps out.