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Sunday, November 20, 2011

Mount Pleasant Winery Cyclocross Race

Somewhere in Augusta, Missouri there is a hillside that wants it's mud and grass back.


It's so typical of me to bail on a rainy, cold day of racing.  I mean, I don't have anything to prove anymore and I can take all of the jokes and jabs my racing peers give me when I don't show up for events like today.  However, I really, really like Mount Pleasant and I just turned my brain off and went to the race.

The cross race there is on a killer hillside.  The course winds back and forth, up and down, and even goes up a flight of stairs and through a wine bar!  Normally, it's fast, bumpy, and ripe for my mtb skills.  And I thought that today's muddy and wet conditions might also play into my hands.  It did, sort of.  But there was a slickness there today that I haven't witnessed in a decade or more.  Literally, pedaling in a straight line was no assurance of grip.  I had great pride while going up the final tricky incline that I had not fallen...then I fell.  It was a slow motion, frictionless fall and a slow motion, tractionless recovery.  Other than that, my bike, clothes, and shoes were covered in mud, and I couldn't shift anymore by the last lap and had to settle for 6th place.  Not that I could have caught Anthony Dust, with whom I had battled for laps and laps.

Ah, well.  It was the first muddy race of the year for me.  Only two more 'cross races to go, and I might just get by without anymore mud.  Then again, maybe not.

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