Quick and Dirty

Hey sicko, get your mind out of the gutter. This is about bike racing. And some other stuff.

Monday, November 06, 2006

Nobody wins when you're playin' Bloody Knuckles.


Actually, the course tape pole won this round. I was ski-racing one of these a bit close and re-opened a scar from earlier this year. I should get some gloves.

I went deep yesterday, as promised. I had a good start, probably top 25 and settled in carefully to a pace I could deal with without blowing sky high. I faded back to about 40th at the worst and battled back in the later part and won a sprint for 31st. All in all, it was a pretty good race considering the brutal lack of oxygen in the air.

I really liked yesterdays course. It was truly a classic track with all the best features that a UCI event should have. Lots of grass with straight and twisty parts, some fast off camber, a paved climb, 1 set of barriers into a short runup, a grassy climb and a wicked sand section. It was very windy, which did a lot to shape the race at the front and throughout the rest of the field. If this thing was about 1000' lower it would be one of my favorites!

I'm pretty glad to be back home, I'm feeling pretty beat down yet again. I feel lucky to have survived this weekend after my goofy crash, Simon's hard crash and worst of all, Josie Beggs gnarly collision with a spectator. From what I know, a kid jumped out in front of her and she went down hard on her face. She broke her cheekbone in 4 places and needs reconstructive surgery. What a shitty freak accident- I have nightmares about this kind of thing and I sure hope Josie gets good care and has a quick recovery.

4 Comments:

At 5:20 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Weakmo

 
At 1:18 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

as an out of towner... how would you rate the venues and the crowd turnout? CX tends to hide in the shadows around here despite having some great tallent...

 
At 3:51 PM, Blogger Barb said...

Both courses were good, but the Sunday course was world class. It really was everything I think a cross course should be. The crowds were louder on sunday I think, it was closer to town and that always helps. I was pretty surprised how many people new who I was and were yelling for me around the course- that was cool. I've never been to Boulder before and I had a really great weekend in spite of my poor racing. Greg and Amy Keller were super fun to hang out with and their kids are beyond cute. I wish I could say I'll come back, but the high altitude is kind of a deal breaker for me and I can't see coming out next year unless I'm ranked well for the series. The altitude is really my only complaint, everything was really well done.

 
At 8:16 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Glad you guys made it home safe Josh! 'Twas rad hanging with you and Team Swiggco. Tell Simon Seamus keeps asking "Where's Simon?". Oh, and there are some super rare pre-crash photos of Simon here:
www.pelotonphoto.com.

Stay in touch!

 

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