Chainbiter CX

Alternate title: last place needs love too.

I have to admit I didn't really have high hopes for placing well in this one. I'm sleep-deprived, overreached if not overtrained, not riding my bike, and mildly burned out on biking. But, I bought this damn UCI license, so I gotta do some more UCI races. GRRRR to being cheap and needing to justify purchases!

Going into this race, I just wanted to suffer. I wanted a good hard race pace effort that would put me at redline and make me hurt. Bingo! It was finally more like cross weather, although the torrential downpours never materialized, and I was a little disappointed about that. But the chilliness meant I finally got to whip out some nordie tights, gotta get those sponsors their air time; there ain't nobody around to clog the view when you're caboosing it! Yeah, so you know you're going to have a great race when you're getting gapped in the sprint for the hole shot, in this case a clusterfuck over a curb that a lot of the women were running over. Then into some sand, and whaddaya know, someone bites it and this genius here couldn't anticipate that happening and get off the bike early. Anyway, the early shenanigans didn't matter, because when we hit that false flat past the pits I found myself in dead last so fast it was like a kick in the gut, I wheezed and muscled my bike in my easiest gear all the way around the turn and them bombed the off camber to catch back on. Lost more time after that because, you know, we had to ride our bikes and I don't seem to be any good at that nowadays.

The first lap was the only interesting one by race report standards, because after that I was soloing it in second to last, desperately holding off that DFL spot. I quickly learned that my strengths lay in the second sand pit and the runup, other than that I just moved backwards. So, I rode my bike, I ran with my bike, and I suffered like a sick dog being kicked by third-grade bullies. Which is all I really wanted, really. What a sick sport. I will admit, I was having entirely too much fun just railing anything remotely technical, I haven't a clue how that compared to my competitors because I didn't see anyone, although I was hoping Lynne Bessette would lap me and put me out of my misery, but no such luck.

Apparently at some point during the race, I got a clod of dirt or sand in my right eye, I've spent the last six hours or so with my eyes closed, and I still can't see shit out of that eye. I couldn't find my glasses in the mess I'd made of the front seat of the car until after the race. I sure hope this is a temporary problem, because I almost wrecked myself riding a cooldown with one eye, and I have a rollerski race to dominate tomorrow (like someone this tired will be dominating anything, HAH), and its hard to do this stuff with no depth perception. Now I know how pirates feel; maybe I should dress up as a pirate tomorrow and wear an eye patch.

Don't worry, next week is a rest week, and I'll sleep a lot. Then maybe you can read a positive race report. Or training report. Or just a report on what my favorite type of halloween candy is. Right now I'd say laffy taffy is leading by a good shot, they have the unfair advantage of having jokes on the labels! How do you beat that?? Why was the policeman in bed? Because he was an undercover cop!!! groan I should really get more sleep...