Granogue/Wissahickon

A week after Iron Cross and I was beginning to feel like King Freakin Kong. My legs were feeling a lot stronger and I was keeping up with the faster riders in Pittsburgh at the weekly practice at Frick Park. They hadn't done the long stupid race as I had, but I was still matching their starts and staying with them thru the training course. It was going to be a good week. Getting out to Granogue was an exercise in changing schedules. Once I got everything figured out and I wound up leaving later in the evening on Friday. I was going to stay a bit more than halfway over then finish the drive off in the morning. Unfortunately, I had some misfortune in the form of a bad sandwich from Sheetz. I woke up early in the morning not feeling well. My stomach was really starting to talk back. I tried a bit of breakfast, but it all bounced right back up. Ugggghhhh, I needed to get back to sleep for a bit. I got all my stuff out to the car but stayed at the hotel for a while to snooze and try to recover. I wound up sleeping til almost noon time. Scratch Saturday's race. I did drive to the course to catch the tail end of my race. After watching the womens and then the mens elite races, I was a bit bummed out. The course looked to be a good one for me. The areas that had always given me trouble were removed and the long push up to the top of the hill after the woods was now a short drop followed by a run-up. This was very close to the weekly trainly loop I do at the park 2 blocks from my house with the exception that it was shorter then the training course. Dammit, it would've been fun, even with all the rain and mud. So I zipped up to Pottstown for the Wissahickon race. For dinner, I had to scrounge around for something decent and eventually found a good chinese place. The one little Italian restaurant that we ate at last year had closed up so that put a bit of a damper on things. I did get a full nights sleep and felt fairly good for the race the next day but just not strong. I read the start right and on the 180s on the far side of the course, I was able to read how and where to be perfectly. The first one, I was off the bike and pushing through and jumped up on half a dozen riders. The second one, the clusterf*** was even a bit more of a mess but I was able to get past about a dozen or more riders and now was on the high side of the course while most others were fighting along the flat but muddy trail. I bombed the outside of the course heading into the horse corral and made it through to the back side of the course. Well things were going well to this point, except I really didn't have the horsepower to back my good start up. Once the course opened up, I fell towards the back and then having a bit of a chain issue I stopped to fix it and went to the very back. Oh well. Instead of just giving up, I decided I was just going to ride. I caught several riders back from my category and even started to catch some of the junior riders back that stormed past me early on. In the end, I got lapped by only 2 riders, Matt Krause and Roger Aphsolm, both of whom would have been able to finish somewhere between 10th and 15th in the elite race. So all in all, it wasn't that bad. Next week I have a couple local races so it'll be nice to just have those short 20-40 minute drives. Then, on to Beacon. I have my technique down for doing the amphitheater climb so I should do much better. Just stay away from Sheetz food.