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| LCR pizzazz |
It seems I started 2013 off the way I ended the previous year. Another second place finish! Nothing to hang my head over, but certainly uneventful, and came with little glory. It was, however, a great training mission on a very picturesque course.
When the shotgon went pow, off we went. I was not in the groove. I was hurting. I was breathing harder than I had in months. I was not making my way to the front either. I felt slow and was a bit surprised by the pace. It seemed my busy year had left me in a bad place so I decided to focus on managing my body and doing my own thing. The course was wide enough for my Silverado, so passing would not be a problem if I found my mojo later.
I began to feel better and started making some passes but was fighting some over inflated tires so I stopped to let out some air. Pretty much every position I gained was lost during my trailside deflation, but once I got back on the bike I quickly starting working my way back up. With each pass, there were fewer tracks to follow but the lead group was gone. There were plenty of long hard climbs in the first half of the trail that caused some pain. Others seemed to feel the pain too cuz I was gaining ground on the climbs. The trail soon mellowed a bit and I must have been slacking because I got passed by a few riders. The second was Joe Kjeer. I decided being passes wasn't fun so I switched out of my mode and went his pace. I stayed on him and we chatted a bit until I decided to hammer down on a section of trail that was primarily downhill. As I began to push a bit I started feeling better and finished out lap one strong.
Lap 2 was a whole new race. The entire field of 1 and 2 lap racers had softened the trail and opened up a whole new challenge. The trail surface looked like a herd of buffalo had roamed on all the uphills from all that had pushed their bikes, and the rest of the course was rutting up nicely. I love the ruts, but the buffalo tracks were challenging. I fought it on every climb until I decided to stop and deflate my tires to mush. This was great on the climbs and ruts, but killed my speed in the easy stuff. It was a tradeoff that worked. I began moving forward. The nicely deteriorated course was suiting me. I began pushing hard on the downhills and even took one high speed tumble. I played leap frog for 2nd place with eventual winner and LCR rider Jeff Colbert when he would stop and fix his leaky rear tire. He clearly had me in sheer power and I had nothing for him when he was on and putting it down. Nearing the end of the race, it even looked like I had a shot at winning. I led for a bit after passing Chad C. but soon found Colbert breathing down my neck. At this point, I did not have enough left to match his pace and had to watch him pull away for the win. I put it into cruise mode and made my way to the finish, even taking time to grab a cookie at the last feed station. It was a fine cookie too.
