Saturday, December 15, 2007

Winter Wonderland U23 Race

We arrived yesterday in Kansas City around 4pm. We had just enough day light to walk a couple sections of the course. It looked extremely sloppy. Brian got us a really nice hotel in downtown Kansas City. Although a little out of your league. You have to pay for everything and they have garage parking, but the price is right so it works out just fine. This morning started early with a 6:45 wake up call. I had breakfast in bed it was great. Nothing like a bagel and danish for breakfast. First thing I did when I got up was look out the window and check for snow. To my satisfaction there was about 2 inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down. We thought it would be better to get kitted up at the hotel because it was so cold outside. It was a very sketchy drive to the race. Most of the roads had not been plowed at 8am. I had a little fun in my car going around corners which I always love.
Race Time: Cold, Cold, Cold, man was it cold. I thought we were never going to start. Staging seemed to take forever. I was freezing my balls off. I had a great starting position in the 3rd row. Start went alright for me, even though I could not get clipped in. I was chasing hard up the right hand side of the road section and bang, hit a pot hole and flatted. However I did not figure out I had a flat until half way through my 2nd lap, because I was running such low psi. My fingers were hurting me more then anything today. They were frozen solid. I went into the first turn sitting 10th wheel which I was happy with. Everything just went down hill from there. Once I figured out my front tire was flat I yelled at Ryan to get in the pit and get my pit bike ready. For never doing a bike exchange, we killed it. I only lost a little bit of time. After my bike exchange I started falling off. I fell all the way back to 25th position. I was having so much trouble riding through the hard frozen mud. After hearing Ryan and Pam scream my ear off I got in the groove and started picking people off. I felt like I was flying. I wish I would have felt like that all race. I chased and chased all the way back up to 14th positon. Isaac was 13th and I came so close to catching him on the last lap. I just could not put in a big enough sprint on the road to get him. The race is over. I am finally starting to get warm and dry. The plan is to take a nap and spend some time wrenching on the bikes to get them ready for tomorrows Collegiete race. Cheers.

The Subaru with the cross bikes on top.

Highway shot.

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