Colavita Cup

Yesterday was the Colavita Cup cross race. Besides being an absolutely great day it was also the fifth race of the year our team has put on. Cathedral Crits (2), Manions cross (2). and now this one. I'm impressed. 

As usual the entire team chipped in to pull it off (we have good people on this team) but I think special thanks goes to Britton K and Kris P. They designed the course and Kris hauled his riding lawn mower all the way from lees summit to Shawnee, twice.

It's always a good thing to have a venue for cross but it can be challenging when it's virgin land with tall grass, sticks, ditches, etc. You never know what you're going to find underneath. 

Thankfully Britton has the balls to design a hard course over crazy terrain (he just doesn't care what other people think) and because of that we got a course that was pretty unique for the area. Very technical compared to most races and a great addition to the calendar.

I was out there around 8am for set up and hung around to watch the first race before heading home to eat and do the race prep. Lately I've been riding the rollers in our basement for a pre warm up, warm up. No word yet on whether the apparently elevated levels or radon are helping, hurting, or having no effect on my fitness.

Got back with enough time to do a warm up lap and then some. Ideally I'd like to ride the entire course a few times and hit a few sections even more, but that never happens. As a result of my last minute pre laps I lined up on the last row. Big field, 20.

I think it's great our race is tied to today's Boulevard Cup, people know Boulevard Cup and they show up, and i bet we got some of the overflow.

Anyway...

This was a terrible course to for lining up at the back. No place to pass. I felt pretty good as soon as they said go but knew the race was leaving without me while I sat in practically last thru the first 1/4 lap. 

Did a little aggressive passing to improve a spot or 2 but for the most part the bulk of the race was already gone. Not that I would have been a part of it anyway but like I've said here many times before, no room for error for a slow guy in the open race.

Andrew L and Brett C were close for a while and gave me something to chase but in the end I had to settle for 15th out of 19 finishers.

I felt like I was riding better than that but I didn't give myself the best chance for success today. Plus the field was pretty strong. 

No matter, I had a blast and am totally psyched for today's Boulevard Cup race.

Took a lot of photos, enjoy.