11/20 Bubba 8 @ Upper Creve Couer, Masters, 2cd.

Touch and go with a slight fever, general fatigue and sore throat on Saturday but not enough to pull the plug, I was a little under the weather on race day but not feeling too bad physically, just fatigued. The course was fun and super hard, probably would have been a blast by the time the A race rolled around and the lines were set. Someone raked the walnuts and leaves out of the first corner prior to our start, which was probably life saving. We were racing with Kukla again and Harre was 30 seconds back with the 50 plus, which makes things more fun. 

We started out relatively slowly again, which was fine by me, with Anthony in lead and Kukla and I in tow. I heard some carnage and Jon Bell was no where to be seen,  so assumed he got caught up in it. Unlike the weekend before at Faust, Kukla didn't let us ride away from him and the three of us navigated a pretty dicey course of leaves, sweet gum balls, off camber roots and more walnuts. Throughout the race they were raking and clearing but I never really felt like I was riding the lines right but somehow didn't make any big mistakes.

Jon Bell made a hard push to recover on the first lap and got pretty close but then the pace picked up a bit and it was just too much of a gap to recover from, apparently. We stayed a threesome for 2 laps and then Anthony pulled away a bit and I clung to Kukla and was suffering pretty good. I think I lost contact with Brian on the  last lap and was a good 20-30 seconds back from Anthony from about the half way point on. Slowly but surely Harre was laying waste behind us and passed me through the field and Kukla was able to latch on to him, if I remember correctly. 

Kukla stayed just out of reach with Harre ahead of him and I would guess Anthony finished a solid 30 seconds in front of me. All in all not a bad race, but also not a good race. I would have like to have been able to be a little more responsive to the changes in pace and have a better command of the course but it is what it is and that was a tough day at the races. Suck it up buttercup.