Busted

Not a great day at Alpha Cross #1 for this guy.   Felt great in warm ups,  the course was a good one for me,  lots of twisty bits,  lots of accelerations.  Was thinking I had a good shot at finally getting back in the points....    

Well,  500 Meters into the Beer Drinking Dad's League race,  after a good start and moving up past a bunch of people in the first couple of "technical" sections,  I jumped underneath 2 more folks on a gravelly hairpin,     came out of the saddle,  hit the gas,  only to hear a very loud "POP" and feel my chain break.   THAT will slow you down.  With a couple of K around to the pit,  and a wait to get a chain fixed,  there was really nothing to do but turn around & hang it up.   Had JUST put the new SRAM Force drivetrain on,  and must have not seated a pin well on the new high-zoot KMC chain my bike pimp had talked me into.  

Todd (who will be providing my bike transport and PRO level support for Nationals at Bend.....) put me back together.  Since I had planned to race the 35+ Open as a second race anyway,  I just got an extra warm up,  and reported to the back of the 35+ open call-ups.  

Wow,  what a difference racing with the "Big Kids" is.  Been Quite a while since I had the pleasure of having the "Fast Dads" show me JUST how slow I am.    Bu the first run-up,  I was pretty locked into a 4-day death match for DFL.   The 4 of us held down the back for a couple of laps,  when I decided I needed to "bridge up" to the next guys I could barely see up the road.  My feeble attempt merely broke our back group into 2 parts,  leaving me to go back & forth with one other old guy for 3rd to last.  After what seemed like about a hundred laps of the 2 of us going at each other,  wile a blazing 50 meters in front of the other 2,  I sat in a lap,  "rested up" and launched my big move to try and secure 4th to last.  Of course I was not able to shake my friend,  and he just countered my big move and gapped me for good with about 2 laps to go.   Luckily for me,  John Cariveau came to save me from another lap of suffering,  lapping me with about half a lap left on their last lap.  Man those guys are FAST.  Humbling. Kirk rode well for 10th in the big boys today.   Armin hit his top 10 in the 35+ 4s too.  At least some of the homies did well today.

Anyway,  nothing for the 35+ 4s today,  only one race (At least I did not fade out so bad this week...) and a lot of disappointment.   Leaves me with only the "I coulda been a Contendah" thing for this week. Next week.......

Should have video form the 35+ 4 and 35+ open from Lisa tomorrow.