The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Well, it was a tough day at the Washington Park cross races. When I have a good day, I stay with the back.. When I don't.. Here's an example of what unfolds.

The Good

Most of my mounts were much smoother than two weeks ago (which left TONS of room for improvement). All the costumage was wild. And the CX atmosphere was nice as usual. $1 brats topped it off as great. I ran into a good crew of bloggers and non-bloggers that didn't turn and run at the notion of sayin' "Hey" to JWM at the races.. Even if I am one of those "get lapped as a cat 4" guys. Skidmark gave me tips on getting the kids into bike racing. Rick listened to me engineer up several possible cheap ways to get a CX geared bike.. Several others too. That sums up the good.

The Bad

This could get kinda long.. So, I'll sum it up. I stuck with the other racers all the way up to the first hill (20-30 seconds into the race). Wherein I learned I should have ran it as my legs weren't ready to climb it on my gear choice. I spent the rest of the lap in visual sight of 2nd to last.. I was even catching him once in a while.. I was red-lined and trying to keep up. At the point of "maintain this and breakfast comes up", I decided to fall back a bit. It was over from there.. It's a nice long course, and it was a good while before I got lapped.. Still a tough day to swallow.

The Ugly

Well, I didn't toss breakfast.. so not much there. Some of the costumes were pretty wild. In comparison, last night I happened to be coming out of the Oriental Theater just before midnight Halloween weekend (think Rocky Horror Picture Show line).. WOW, nutz! And my without my camera. Minus 10,000 cool points for me. Plus, I now know I'm getting old. As I am so far from being in that line...


Ah.. and I stuck around long enough to see the cat 1-2 riders.. Wow! If you have the means, I highly recommend it.