Monday, November 2, 2009

Whiteboy wants to dance!



I haven't slept in two days but am pretty fired up! First off, I want to thank anyone reading this that is out there ringing a bell and calling my name, throwing beer at me or telling me to "go faster you fucking pussy!" To steal a little something from Chariots of Fire, "it puts wind on my heels!"

So Sat night recovery didn't go so hot as road rash and being all jacked up kept me up most of the night. By Sunday morning I was tired but the legs felt good. I overhauled my bike and hoped the course would still be a chocolate mousse mixed with peanut butter and grass mess. Instead I showed up to find a dry pretty fast track with some demanding, very bumpy straights, as well as a bunch of really rutted 180's and a little mud.

I didn't think it was a great course for me but I remained optimistic and took off. I stayed in the top 10 for the first lap and then charged up the left of the muddy section and jumped out in front. I still want to race CX races like I do on the MTB but when people don't get out of sight they chase that much harder. I established a decent gap for a few laps and then started to bog down ad cut my losses and jumped back into a strong lead group with Nate, Josh, Shot, Stothman, and Grman. I was sitting on 4th wheel when Josh and Shot made a little move and couldn't respond until the gap was too big.

Nate, Grman and I rode around for awhile with Josh and shot dangling but Nate was obviously not working with Josh off the front and I had hit a mid race funk. I was repeatedly getting gaped off and struggling to maintain contact. We passed Shot who was walking his bike after the backside barriers which raised the pace just a bit. I think it was on the next lap that Grman had a mishap on the barriers so I sat up and let him tag back on but as soon as he did Nate attacked and I had to respond as Nate and Josh together is game over. Nate was making really good pace and when I would pull the chase of Grman and Jay would close so I tried to bargain with Nate to do the work and promised I wouldn't pull any funny business. Jay ended up working himself back up to us, through us and then out in front of us only to snap his derailleur off. After a really rough season with three good starts that were crushed by race ending mechanicals, I knew that feeling and would have rather gone head to head but Nate and I pushed on.

With about 4 to go I guess I managed to crawl out of the funk and offered to take a pull coming through the start finish and was powering down the back straight when I realized Nate was gone. People started giving me splits of 30 second to Josh who was getting closer and closer. With 2 to go I had him inside 20 seconds and coming through on the last lap people were yelling 12 seconds. I opened it up and go really close on the 180 off the pavement onto the grass after the backside barriers which is apparently when he decided to demoralize me.

Crossing th line in 2cd for the second day in a row with what I consider to be about 85% of what I got as far as fitness goes, makes me pretty damn happy. I have some serious desire to train now and think that I might be able to hit a fitness peak that I left sitting in the tank at the end of last CX season. I'm going to miss racing next weekend as we are heading to Asheville to ride dirt bikes for a week, which should be some more good stimulus and then we'll be coming down the home stretch as people ramp up for States and Nationals.

"Ohhh, what a beautiful buzz, what a beautiful buzz!"

6 comments:

Casey Ryback said...

dude you are seriously crushing the fuck out this fucking shit. You're beating some seriously fast dudes and fucking shit!

FUCK!

Davey B said...

fuck yess! fuck it! it's fucking awesome!

Butthead said...

Can I toss in a "FUCK YEAH"

Skeet Skeet said...

FUCK N SHIT.... How about that?
Nice work Dave, you killed it.

Barry B said...

Very cool Dave. Keep on making them look bad!

Anonymous said...

Good write up on your race. Love the video!!