Manions weekend

Road season is over, dude.

This weekend our cycling team hosted a Saturday / Sunday cross race, Manions Cross. It was totally and completely bad ass. The team pitched in big time and I think we designed a killer course and put on great event. Big thanks to Dan-O the team prez for doing the bulk of the work. Well done sir.

Manions is hilly and this year it was also curvey. The bone dry ground made it even more difficult as the course turned into an extremely dusty and slippery surface after just a few laps. Saturday went one direction and Sunday went the other. I did the 3/4 race both days.

Saturday i started towards the back and had a really hard time passing on the curvey course. I bided my time and watched as the leaders rode away from me. Eventually i rode up to 5th and 4th was close but i bobbled twice after mr. stitches (a huge ditch that was hard to even jump over) and finished 5th. I'm not sure if i would of caught him but it would have been fun to try. Dam those bobbles, they make a world of difference. Ether way I'll take it.

Are my race recap's getting a little stale? They're starting to feel like bland regurgitations.

The rest of the team did great with Mark the Brit making a fine return to racing by finishing 4th in the cat 4 race as well as several folks participating in their first ever cyclo-cross race. I think they liked it.

Got there Sunday (today) and was a little nervous because i pulled a groin muscle during saturdays race. After some warming up and stretching i realized it wasn't as bad as i thought so we were all systems go. My starting spot was much better and i was probably sitting 8th with half a lap gone by. I made my way up to 5th and then very briefly 4th, but he passed me almost immediately and was faster than me thru all the turney stuff so once again i settled for 5th on the day, out of about 30. I'm stoked about these results!

I'm pretty sure i'm way stronger now than at this time last year, i just hope i can keep going up and then peak at Jinglecross. I'm going to peak all over Iowa City. I'm going to peek so hard.

The 'man among men' award for the weekend has to go to Andrew Lyles who did two races Saturday and three races Sunday... and the Sunday races were basically back to back to back. Nice work dude but be sure to rest up after that. You deserve it.

Final thoughts on the weekend...

Bikes are fun and people are cool!