The Kirland Park 'Cross Race

Or how to screw things up.....
A great showing of SBR (and that former one, the defector, Ray) folks; Ian, Gary, David S, the Miranda's kids (in SBR kits) and their parents in Orrville kits. Anna was watching my boy for me, taking pictures and keeping Cookie occupied.
I'm lost in space and almost miss the start....squeeze in the 2nd row, drink as much from my bottle and drop it...then take a shot of gu (stupid thing to do without washing it down) and then we are off! I'm about 6-8 wheel entering the first tight turn, someone falls and the group stacks up; I'm abl;e to get around it and go. Tony is so far off the front he needs a seperat zip code and everyone else is chasing him. I'm wanting to go hard, but not blow up. Things are looking pretty good and soon Ray joins me and I'm thinking to try to stay on his wheel in the straights and I should be able to catch up on the technical stuff. That works for like 1/4 of a lap and on the flat section b/f the BB field, he pulls away....
At about the 2-3 lap my mental game totally falls apart and I feel like getting off the bike....oh, lookie, here comes Gary....looks like this is the race he gets the best of me, DAMN. I try to stick on his wheel and hope for something good to happen (PLEASE). There are a couple of times he gaps me and I get back on. Anna gets me some water to take on two of my laps and that helps big-time. Finally, with 2 laps to go, I decide to quit being a head case and give it the gas...I'm hoping Gary can stay with me. If it weren't for him dragging me around I'm sure I would have fallen off. The bell lap finds new life for me and I start picking off a few people again and see two guys from the Columbus race that I had beaten and chase them like mad. I ended up falling down on the off camber at the ball field and dang it......well maybe I can still get them. The guys held me off at the finish by a bike length. Gary finished right behind me. A top ten finish for the B group for him and a 2nd in the B Masters for me. Seems like Ed thinks that the Masters B race is catting up from being the B group winner last year. Ok, sure. :-)
Not a great race for me, but a real gut check and I'll hopefully do better at the next race.

Thanks to Gary for dragging my stupid carcass around the course.

Thanks, Anna, for taking the pictures, watching Aaron....you're the best.

Thanks for Reading,
Rick