Dan Action

Get on up!! September 19, 2007

That’s exactly what happened. Scott G. woke me up at 5:30am to get our asses up to Auburn NH. for the Sucker Brook race. He was doing his first cx race so he was to start at nine o’clock or something asinine like that. His offer to drive was irrefutable, so there I was, in the car sleeping all the way up there from Providence, and an half an hour after we arrived. My race was not until two so there was plenty of time to wake up.

One thing about ‘cross is that the world closes in around you tight and fast. Everyone, and everything for that matter, is so familiar. Obviously the bikes and races stay consistently similar, and you can usually expect to see the same folks, but the weather, for me sets the tone. In the very smell of fall, even at the onset, I remember every fall of years past. It is a season so packed with nostalgia and whimsy. All is one, you know? Then there is the sense of exactly how insular the ‘cross scene is. Everyone is reading everyone else’s blogs, or riding someone else’s frame they built or cheering, by name, people they’ve truly never met. It makes for a pretty warming feeling all together. Hannah and I talked a lot about that on the way home from the race that evening. We were both dreary and beat from the afternoon’s races, entirely too tired to do anything about the goofy smiles that stuck to our faces.

How’d the race go, you ask? Well, great, I’d reply. The start of the elite race was fine. I am purposely not trying for the hole-shot in the early races this season, especially at races with a low number of attendees. The reason is, I want to work on working my way through throngs of people in anticipation of the bigger races coming up. This year I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be able to rest on the advantage a call-up gives you. So there I was not at the very back, but close, By the time we came out of the woods I was nestled solidly towards the front. As we entered the sand I went to make a move and got put in a bad line, or chose it, I don’t know, and there was, face first in the sand. Mt bike came from out of nowhere and landed on my back. Then up I was, running. cursing, and moving backwards in the group. I dug deep and started the legs turning to get back some places and by the fourth lap or so, was doing pretty good somewhere around tenth. Me and Mr. Coady went back and forth for a while, and together we caught Curtis B. and worked past a few others as well. Jos H. must have had a mechanical or something because in my peripheral I saw flashes of red, then as I was riding on curtis’ wheel, Jos put it down on the road section, so I went with him for as long as I could, but I was hurting pretty good. Adam Myerson, who also had a mechanical, was quickly coming up on me and Coady, I was trying to hold the two of them off, but after the barriers the were getting away from me. I rode the last two laps alone, just trying to keep the pace up and visual contact with the two n front of me and finished eleventh. Still in the money, which was all I really set out to do. Many laughs were had by all.