OMBA Caramba, Continued..

Well, now that I have had some time to sit back and reflect on OMBA Caramba, becides JPB (who always whoops me). I just got my arse handed to me by the locals man!

Rolled down there the day before with the family, decided to make a weekend of it and visit my oldest stepdaughter in Joplin. Thinking I would be well rested staying an hour away was foolish of me. Come midnight I am up waiting to get new bedding because my little man just vomited all over the entire bed, not to mention the Fraternity semi-formal going on in the hotel.

Got up and got a decent breakfast and off to the SAC River Trails. I saw the Ethos Crew; Brocket Family and Steve-O. Also saw Doug Long & Tony Sherman who has finally CTFU to 1 this year. Did not have any  other TwinSix or Go Racing teammates racing.

Start was up a the road until a 180 back down to the singletrack. I settled in about 5-6 back pretty easily and stayed there until the singletrack where the lead group had already gaped me by about 3 seconds. I held on about 20 feet behind for a while. It actually crossed my mind that I was going to be able to close the gap until I took a switchback a little wide and my front end went out from under me and I was on my side staring at a 360 dude. Once he got by me I got up and caught back up with him and was hoping we could give chase to the lead group.

About this time my stellar bike handling skills took over and I lost another position to Tony S. Again I had to catch back up with them. I knew Tony had pre-ridden the trail and I knew he was going to make a move and I needed to be on him when that happened. Just like I planned it, saw Tony blow by his guy and here I was taking a drink and missed it. My strategy is going as well as my bike handling at this point.

Finished up the lap in this order, the 360 guy and I caught back up within 20 seconds of Tony and that's about the time he pulled a Keyser Soze on me and I never saw him again until the finial lap. Forget about the lead group, they were handing it to me bad at this point.

I was held up a little by the 360 fella, but I kind of felt bad, I fell right in front of him twice. Owe well, that's racing.
Finished the race about 2 min behind Tony (qualifies for a nose bleeding, not an arse kicking) for a 6th out of 7 (one guy DNF'd!! Awesome!) in the 30-39. But before I could get depressed about it, I looked at the overall and felt a little better, 7th out of 17.

Looking back, my legs felt great. Week leading up was perfect, just need to get that extra little bit of fitness going. In years past, about half way through the race I would be bargaining with myself to get through it (eg. only one lap left, etc.). Its different now, I was actually thinking on the last lap that I wished there were one more, perhaps I could have reeled someone in. So I am going to take that as a positive and move on. PTC will help me get where I need to be. Think Manhattan is next on the radar. It chewed me up and spit me out last year!

Here is JP's race report on his blog and Ethos blog. They were the only Northerner's I saw down there with a post. On another note, Doug Long had a pretty good race in my opinion. He's still got plenty in the gas tank.

It was wonderful to have my baby boy out! Can't wait till he can race himself!