With the previous weekends MTB rained-out, this past Sunday became the official season kick-off, my 21st season to be exact. I have to feel sorry for the race promoters, since it appears they found out some time Friday or Saturday that the park wasn't going to let the race go on the originally planned course. The mad dash to create a completly new course was on. They took most of last Fall's ChrisCross cyclocross course and added some interesting trails that we've never raced on before. the end result was a 21min lap (first lap anyway) that had about 1/2 mile of pavement, 1 mile or so of grass and 'cross type stuff. The rest was mud, mud, and more mud. A few deep river crossings. The imfamous "green mile" climb was super wet and took some serious power just to keep moving. You can usually big-ring up this thing, but with the soggy grass and axle deep puddles, NO WAY. A few people showed up on cross bikes. Once I pre-rode the course, I was split on wheter it would have been faster on one or not. Early race leader Camberon Chambers (on a cross bike) led the first lap and then pulled off due to a lingering illness. That left myself and Matt Brown at the head of the race with nobody else close enough to factor in. Me and Matt rode wheel to wheel the whole race and it came to a spint and he got me. We had been soft pedaling the last mile in order to come in after the 90minute cut-off, which we did (I was keeping track on my HR monitor), but there was plenty of confusion as to whether or not we came in before or after the 90minutes. I felt great but the bike wouldn't have liked a 5th lap so I actually stopped and went to the scoring table to the official word that said I was done. Matt didn't know we were done and did a 5th lap which he had a laugh about later. Ihad the Vet Expert win and he had the Expert win. The scoring discussion wasn't over as they forget to actually put me and Matt's finish times down. Everything was eventually resolved.
