Serpentine Fire

The Jeff Cup course turned out to be a lot of fun. Most of this was due to the rolling enclosure on the 10 mile loop, as in no yellow line rule. This is what bike racing should be like, but of course I don't get to do it too often. We did five laps. The officials were really on the ball too, and we had three or four moto refs for the masters. One lap they neutralized us because the 1/2/3 caught us (they must have been doing 20 minute laps) and they even got that part right.

Anyhow, the main climb on the course was not severe enough to eliminate anyone except the most unprepared non-climbers. I was doing it in the big ring with the chain crossed over into the 23. We had 115 registered, but only about 90 started, maybe less. The chilly temps and pre-race hailstorm might have had something to do with that, but other than wet roads, it wasn't all that uncomfortable. After the climb, this course featured some fun and exciting twisty downhills over good pavement. The quality of the riding was good too, until the last lap when we still had about 70 guys who all thought they could win.

With about 9k to go, I was trying to set myself up to move up out of a slow, tight 90 degree turn by taking it wide and fast, but a crash in the center slid out in front of me and I ended up parking it in the 14 and having to burn a match to jump back up to the group. A few k later a pair of guys tangled and went over the bars in front of me, with one guy bouncing off me as I squeaked past, so it was out of the saddle again. I was getting crampy. With 1k to go another near tangle put me into cyclocross mode with a foray up the grass, pretty much finishing off hopes of anything but a pack finish. Too bad, as the final few k drag slightly uphill, and the final sprint was contested by just 20-30 survivors strong and lucky enough to hang at the front. Ranger Rusnak got 5th. I rolled in just behind this group. All in all things went as well as I had hoped. Some of these guys down here have seven or eight races in their legs this season. The four hours of climbing on the parkway that I did yesterday probably didn't help either.

Weather for the next few days looks like it could be damp, but that might be good because they've been closing part of the parkway sometimes due to a huge forest fire, and we're supposed to be riding that section tomorrow. Hopefully the rain will put it out. At least it's supposed to be warmer. It was 75 when I got here on Friday, simply gorgeous. Hopefully that will return. Later in the week it's on to Chapel Hill, so let's hope the 'heels stay in it so I can take in some of the craziness. Thanks for reading!