Saturday, July 26, 2008

cyclocross dreaming!

As i stood at the start line of the chalk creek RR today, and was already dripping sweat before the race had even begun, i was longing for a nice, cool fall day of cyclocross. As the race progressed and it only got hotter, i dreamed of cool autumn temperatures, and the refreshing sting of snowflakes against my face. Mmmh! Cyclocross! I can't wait!


As for today's race. It's hard to get a break with 50 miles of rollers. A couple of us pushed it hard at the beginning and i think we were just about at the point of popping some people, but then we had to slow up and ride neutral for a small herd of cows a rancher was moving down the middle of the road. That pretty much neutralized the attacks and we rode as one big group for the rest of the race. I tried a few more attacks (as did a few other guys), but couldn't make anything stick, so we rode into the finish as one big group. I just knew i wanted to hit the final hard right before the last 1 km uphill ahead of the main group because i knew it would be ugly. It was for my teammate/cousin kevin. He got cutoff hard and went down.


I was at the head of the peloton coming down the last couple of clicks, somewhere i normally wouldn't have put myself, but i didn't mind knowing the corner was coming up. About 300 meters from the turn a few guys jumped and attacked, so i came around the corner in about 7th or 8th position, and pretty much held that for the last k up the hill, passing a few guys and getting passed by a few. I hoped to do better today, but at least i still have all the skin on my ass.

2 comments:

The B Clan said...

Hey Matt.

Long time no see - Many years to be precise. I was at a neighbors the other day and your dad's name came up via Jeb McCandless and so googling away came across yours and Seth's blogs. Hope all is well. It appears to be!

Regards,
Jason Bradley

my family can be harassed at http://www.bdogbradleys.blogspot.com/

angi bradley said...

cyclocross does not look fun... we did not know that they made snow bikes.