Yesterday was a long day for me and I didn’t even race.  I think I made a good decision and decided to sit the race out.  I was pretty tweaked from the previous two days and thought the upside was limited compared to the potential downside of competing.

This was really unusual for me.  I can’t really think of a time where I overrode an emotional decision with an intellectual one, concerning competing.  And it was really tugging on me in the morning up until the start of the race.

The intellectual part for not racing was that I hit my left shoulder pretty hard on a wooden post the first lap the day before and it kept me up most of the night throbbing.  Plus my left hamstring and right achilles tendon were feeling “over used”.   Probably from slogging  through ankle deep mud for two hours the previous days.   That and a million guys were ripping off their rear derailleurs on Sunday once again, I decided to sit.

Obvious I wanted to race.  Building up to the start I could hardly stand it.

But this dissipated relatively early because of super bad luck by Logan Owen.  He was leading the race, barely a minute in and got twisted up in some mud and ended up going off-course into the ribbon.  He took a pretty hard fall.  This was right next to where I was standing.  We ran over to see if he was okay and he was holding his left shoulder. He seemed okay and said, as he was still laying on the ground, that he hit his left shoulder pretty hard the day before, on the same wooden post I hit, and it was still super tender.  He didn’t get back on his bike.

His bad luck, for some weird reason, eased my mind on my decision.  Strange how that is.  I very much doubt I would have fallen on my shoulder, but the risk was still there.

Anyway, standing around for 4 hours, sloggy through the same mud, outside of the course, was nearly as hard as racing.  I was wasted after.  The races were super good though.  The women’s race was exciting, as was the men’s.

Everyone was looking pretty beat from the two previous heavy days.  I don’t know, but 3 days of muddy racing might be too hard, even for trained athletes.  Katie Compton was riding pretty strongly, but was all over the course bike handling.  Stephen Hyde had the race completely under control until 1/2 a lap to go and he completely fell apart, opening up the door to Jamie Driscoll who passed him and won.  How disappointing for Hyde.  He was riding a super race. And he and Jamie had both skipped Friday night’s race.

The 6 hour drive back was painless.  We stopped outside Des Moines and met up with Michael Fatka.  I’d left my chainsaw up in Ames last month when I was helping him with his roof and he brought it down.  We had dinner at Panera, got some coffee and drove the last 3 hours.  We got back around 11:30pm, which was relatively early compared to some weekends.

I didn’t sleep so good last night again.  I think I’m going to wait it out a couple days to see how my shoulder heals.  I talked to Stacie and she said there isn’t much back there that really needs attention if it is broken.  I’m surprised it is getting worse still.

Okay, here are a bunch of photos from the last couple days, in no particular order.  There are some better photos by Dave McElwaine here at Velonews.

 

Yesterday didn’t go too well.  Actually, it wasn’t really that bad.  The result, or more accurately, the non-result was pretty depressing, but I had a pretty good day all around really.

I’m staying with some friends, Rod and Charlene Lake, who live south of White Rock Lake in Dallas.  I slept pretty great, their guest room is nearly a cave, and then Charlene made an incredible breakfast of eggs, pancakes, fruit, etc.

After that, I looked at the weather and realized I only had a couple hours to ride before it starting raining.  So I jumped on my bike and rode 30 miles.  I was just trying to get the cobwebs out from not riding for 2 days.

I got a little behind and didn’t leave for the race until after 2 and the course was only open for warmup from 2:30-3.  We were a little late and I got dressed fast and got out on the course.  I was heading first into the woods section, which had a few steep hills that were nearly impossible to walk up because of the rain.  Then I noticed my rear tire was flat.  Shit.  It was a FMB and I really didn’t want to get my other bike all muddy before the start.

So I really didn’t see all the course, but saw the general layout.  I got the last callup, very last guy.  This random thing isn’t working out so well for me this year so far.  I wasn’t that worried since there were only 33 guys there and a long road hill for the start.

I passed a bunch of guys at the start and got up to 17th early in the first lap.  Everyone was bobbling a bunch.  It was super slick, way slicker than Jinglecross.  Lots of clay I think.  I passed a couple more guys and was feeling pretty good so far.

In the woods section I lost some places.  I got the ribbon around my shifter on one hill and there was a big gap in front of me.   Toward the end of the first lap, there were some u-turns and I slid out on one.  I must have either bent my derailleur hanger or just clogged my pulleys up with mud and crud, because a few hundred meters later, my rear derailleur was ripped off.  Not really ripped off, but pulled back enough to jettison a pulley and make it unusable.

I tried to get the chain to ride over the one pulley and keep riding, but no luck.  I was so far away from a pit that it was useless to continue.

Pretty depressing really.  It was a Di2 Ultegra derailleur.  It very easily could have been a Dura-ace, which would have been worse.

So, I walked back to the pit, got Trudi and then headed to the bike wash.   All the power sprayers were pretty busy, so I just put the bikes into my van and drove to a car wash.

I had brought a new Di2 Dura-ace derailleur with me, and a hanger, so I fixed them when I got back to Rod’s house.  Other than that, my bikes were fine.

So, one down and one to go.  It is supposed to rain all morning and clear by the race start which is 4 again.  I hope to have a little better luck today.  I think I was going okay, but I’m not really sure.  I would really like a riding course, but that isn’t going to be the case today.  I has to still be muddy over there.  Probably worse since all the other classes are doing circles there all day.

Okay, that’s about it.  Jamie Driscoll won the race,  Allen Krughoff came back from an early first lap crash to finish 2nd just 35 seconds back.  Pretty good race for him.