Hey, what’s the freshness date on race reports? A week? I guess you get a pass if you podium in the A race. That would not be me. Still, I want to waste a few electrons on the race from two weekends ago. And some of the usual New England bike blog suspects just aren’t putting out right now, though GeWilli does his level best to fill the gap.
Initially, the decision to move the race from Wrentham to Lancaster didn’t excite me. The Wrentham course doesn’t offer the most exciting racing experience, and it has a long stretch of narrow trail, but it’s only a 20-minute drive from my house. Lancaster is about an hour away, and I heard the new course would be flat. Negative move, I thought.
Then, the day before the race, I saw this:

That changed my opinion, since by race day, it turned into this:

That was not as much fun as it looked. It was approximately 478.3 times as much fun. Seriously, since the race I look at stairs and think “man, I could totally ride down those.” Which is absolutely true, if I didn’t mind breaking an arm. Maybe I should take more handicap ramps.
I also managed to pull out my best result of the season. If you count the DNFs, I finished in the top half. I might have finished in the top half of the finishers if I hadn’t wasted a few seconds at the top of the flyover on the last lap, letting two guys get past me, one of them on a flat-bar bike. I think he’s a NECX mail list regular, too. Oh, the shame. At least he didn’t make my nemesis list on crossresults.
Next up: Canton Cup. Last year I raced the masters 35+, finished near DFL, and extinguished any further thoughts of upgrading. This year…more of the same. I can’t resist that noon start.