Parma CX

Opted out of racing in the blizzard and did a race across the river instead, it was also the state champs so I figure some good competition would be out. Kind of the same field as Cobb's Hill, but a few more good guys.

Headed out from De Cal's with his awesome parents in good time and arrived at Parma with plenty of time before outr 2:45 start so we shot the shit with watt and moote while watching McCarthur destroy the SS race and doing pretty good on a geared rig. Got changed into some some sweat pants and a lumberjack jacket for warm up, rode around some trails in the park with AD and did a few laps of the course before the start. Oh yeah, I also had two unfortunate incidents, I rolled a tubular and the other one I don't want to talk about.

The course could have been a little longer and maybe had a few more "cross" features, the stairs carved into the hill was pretty cool and so were the off-camber sections around a tree, both rideable but the second one was quicker to dismount and do a Tarzan swing around the tree. But other than those it was just a few turns, a couple straights, a couple barriers and some gravel. Our race ended up being 12 laps and the winner was most likely well under an hour, definitely the shortest cross course I've ever raced in my long career as a cross racer.

I got a call up so that was pretty sweet, lined up outside ride, I was feeling the hole shot today and actually got er. Motored through the little off camber turn before going up and had a tiny gap but shut down by the time I turned my head back. I got cut off by a few guys who really wanted to get out front for some reason and just kept moving backwards from there. Got dropped real quick by AD and Lance, then settled in train with Roden and Craig. We were working good at one point and closing in on Lance. I was getting a little tired and took the barriers for granted, hopped the first one and didn't even get the wheel up for the second one and over the bars I go, wasn't too bad though. Lost the 2 guys and couldn't get back to them by the end, oh well, it was fun. It was even snowing a little at one point.

Before the race I really wasn't feeling it, but after a massive coffee from McD's, riding some cool trails around the park and seeing a massive buck running through a corn field jumping about 6 feet in the air as he ran for the trees I was ready to go. I wasn't feeling too bad at the beginning at all, just couldn't seem to ride my bike. No matter how hard I was pushing I was just being too inefficient and steadily moving backwards, the train with Roden and Craig would have been awesome to stay on for the rest of the race, maybe we would have even reeled in Lance.

Huge thanks to Rob for the wheel after I rolled my tub, Moote was ready to pass one as well so that's just awesome. And of course to De Cals' parents for everything from the drive to an amazing post-race Italian feast. Our small group of Canadians did really well and had the best cheers by far. Maybe I'm going to put in more than 2 hours on my bike this week and hopefully have the form to battle it out for U23 Nationnal Champ, oh yeah, there might be a few other guys there that might be a little faster than me. Or alot faster and there's no chance in hell that I can beat them unless both their pit bike and race bike explode to pieces, whatever.