For Whom The Bonebell Tolls

So as el Maya says we are getting a little bejiggity with all the pavement and lack of dirt lately. I rolled on over to the dark side this weekend…gasp… I went up to Wisconsin for their state championship road race. I know before you let your brain leak out of your ears, the course has an almost 50mph descent. Who can pass up that kind of madness? Well not me, and especially when tornadoes almost ruined my beloved trails.

Big victory on the day not just for me, but for the entire cat4/5 field, is that there even was a race for us. Our race was set to roll out at noon-o-five. At ten-to-noon the skies were absolutely torrential. The organisers had pulled the previous race off the course, and let them restart when the rain miraculously dispersed. We sat in the car for about 45 minutes wondering why we had come. Trying to come up with an idea of something to go and do that would justify coming all this way just to sit in the back of a truck looking like of couple of dorks. Well the justice was served as rain stopped and we were finally receiving word that we would be racing today….Hell’s Yeah.

I managed to start the race on the front, the very front, for the neutral roll out. The first time up the hill was not so bad. Top ten for the rest of the first lap, and then we came to the hill again. It was not completely awful. Which is why I had such a difficult time accepting the next realization about two miles later, that I had crappy legs today. I fell off the pace at about mile 9 of 39. It sucked, this course kicks my ass like nothing else. I have raced it three times now and everytime I get dropped. As a dirtbiker, I was supposed to be able to climb. At least that’s what all the roadies said while they pointed their fingers and laughed at my unshaved legs. Maybe they were right I should have shaved, then I would have looked like I knew what I was doing when I was falling miserably behind and the pack was just inching away while I was powerless to do anything. Misery. It was just like Big Brown’s jockey, Kent Desormeaux said about trying to get Big Brown to sprint, when he tried to whip the horse, there was just no horse underneath to whip. The rest of the laps were spent with a few others and we made a race out of it, but we were all more than a little dismayed at out prospects on the day.  Oh well, back to the stable, for more tranquilizers and hay, and standing around all day watching reruns of Mr. Ed.