LARPD Cyclocross 12/13/08

I'm going to keep this to a race report and philosophize later. The C race was 30 minutes as usual. The course was almost exactly the same as the last except with much less barriers (boo) and a set of stairs included. The stairs suck since things get bottlenecked and you can't gain any positions. Seems kind of pointless, really. Bring the barriers back! That said. The stairs kicked my ass!

I started much easier and on the outside this time and found it to be a much lower adreneline experience. After the first three turns and into the first barriers I was passing instead of being passed. By the end of the first lap I was racing with three other guys and that was about it. By halfway through the second lap, there weren't anymore changes in position though I had a guy in my sights for the next two and a half laps to the finish I just couldn't close the gap. I was having a really hard time recovering and just having a hard time riding hard and pushing and going at max in general.

I was actually feeling kind of crappy and a little discouraged at the end since it seemed I was pretty severely in the back marker brigade. I stopped at the truck, put on leg warmers, grabbed my wallet and set out for about an hour cool down ride (after a quick stop at the 7 for a pow bar).

I tried to get my morale back up during my ride and sort of succeded and by the time I was heading back I was concentrating on what a horribly uncomfortable road-ride my mt. bike delivers right up my seat more than anything else. Quick change to regular clothes in the parking lot and a jog over to check the results followed. I immediately looked to the very bottom of the list of 35 (same as last week) names and didn't see mine. "Uh oh, they missed me" I thought as I scanned up the list. But there I was at 22nd place. Mind you 22 out of 35 kind of sucks but that was pretty good improvement from the last race so it turned my frown around pretty good and I'm feeling good.

Well, my brain is good. Last night I started getting the tell-tale lymph node soarness and, sure enough, I woke up this morning with a sore throat and big-time congestion. That explains the legs-of-clay I had yesterday, at least. I hope this thing clears up before next Saturday's race.