Another Tough Fight at Buck

I was excited to see dry weather with temperatures only about 5-10 degrees below normal after a weekend of pretty cool wet racing. I got excited too soon….5 minutes before the race started, the rain started. On the drive over it was 65 degrees…the rain at the start brought the temp down to 58 (according to Paul Hanson’s Polar). While sitting at the start line, I was actually shivering=( I get cold easy I guess.
Anyway, on to the race….it started out per the norm…Chris Fisher busted a move, Paul and I followed as quickly as we could. Chris’s starts have been so fast that the field just splits up almost immediately. My legs almost locked up on the climb because they had gotten so cold sitting on starting line. Paul and I proceeded to close the small gap Chris and then we rode together for the next lap. In the second lap, the pace in the single track slowed, not only were things getting slick, but as I found out later, Chris sat up a little to save some energy for the climbs. When we hit the gravel/paved climb that goes up over the back of the hill, I gave it some serious gas. As Phil Ligget would say, “that man is turning his pedals in anger!” I put about 10-15 seconds on Chris and Paul in about a minute. I rolled the backside single track and came up to the last climb were I went as hard as I could Chris pretty much held the gap. I gained another 15 seconds or so over the lap and ended about 30 seconds up on him. The results won’t show this though because my number ripped off due to the wetness (many of them did), so when I got to the finish line we had to search the list for my number and my time didn’t register until we found it. When Chris came across, he pulled what looked like a wet Kleenex out of his jersey…it was his number=) Paul rolled in 3rd not very far back, with Sam O in fourth. It was another hard fought messy battle and I was happy to come out on top.

Next up is Saturday at Harmon Park for the NASCAR… I mean MNSCS race.
For now, I am tired…time for some z’s.