Racing, Racing and more Racing!

Munson CX

Things have been going pretty good on the CX front and I was curious to see if it would continue. This was a night race with my race starting at 8:25pm. The day was pretty relaxing, but I lost track of time and we had to rush down to the race. I got warmed up and felt ok. I headed to the start line early only to find a lot of people already lined up. I found a spot in the second row and was ready to go. The gun went off and away we went. I had a good start and was in the top 5 or so. For some reason I thought that I forgot to start my Garmin and it was all downhill from there. I fiddled with it while we were racing only to find, in the end, that it had been started and I stopped it. The lack of focus caused me to fumble the barriers and lost a ton of positions. I tried to relax, but the damage had been done. Munson is always a power course and this year was no different. I struggled to keep pace with bigger guys on the death spiral. There was also a run up that seemed to zap me every lap also. I pushed through the race and finished 14th. Not what I was looking for, but it is what it is. One of these days, I will figure out this CX racing…

Brooksie 5K

The next day, Nathan and I ran the Brooksie 5K. We got up way too early and headed to the start. It wasn’t too cold, but after they delayed the start almost 30mins, we were getting chilly. Once we were off we settled into a rhythm. I wasn’t sure how my legs would feel after the CX race, but so far so good. We held a decent pace for the first half (Maybe too good) and Nathan had to walk the hill at the 2 mile mark. Once over the hill we settle back into a comfortable pace and finished it with a time of 30:39. Nathan is now running cross country at the middle school. I will be curious to see if I can keep up with him next year!

12hr Addison Oaks

I did this race last year and had a blast! I guess Jim Bonnell and Jay Click also had a blast, as they were asking me if we were going to do it again this year. My friend Chuck hasn’t been riding as much due to his current work schedule, so I talked Jarod Makowski into competing on our team this year. With all the big guns on the team, I was going to be the anchor! We were excited to hear that Ray Fulkerson, Joe Thomas and Nick Cisler were going to have a team, but at the last minute they had to back out. This was a downer, as we had a good race with them last year and were looking forward to going head to head again.
I hadn’t been feeling 100% coming into this race and was hoping it wouldn’t affect me too much. I seemed to feel ok the morning of, so Mary Ann and I headed to the Addison. My friends Chuck and Carl were there and were going to do the 6hr team race. We set-up camp next to them and were ready to go. Registration closed and we found out that we were the only Elite Team. So to keep motivated, the “fast guys” decided to see who could do the most sub 27 laps. I said “fast guys”, as I have never dipped into the 27 min range at Addison. Our secondary goal was to complete 26 total laps. The big guns went first and were all in the 27 range. I had a slight issue and dropped my chain finishing in 28:34. Brendan Benson showed up and wanted to follow for a lap, so I obliged and headed out for my second lap. I was close, but no cigar with a 28:10. The big guns started competing for the fastest lap and Jay came through with a 27:05 on his 4th lap and took the prize. Pete Favata rolled up and kept me company for my 3rd lap which was just under 29 min. We were easily on pace for 26 laps, but I was starting to not feel well and need to take break from the rotation especially after running subpar 30min 4th lap. We decided to finish it out be doing 2 laps apiece. This worked out well and we still had about 6mins to spare when it started to get dark. Jay and Jim put in some good night laps and handed it over to me with 36mins to go. I finished the 25th lap with 5 min to spare and then went out for an easy 26th lap. All of our goals were completed. Jim won the fastest average lap time. He was a machine! Can’t wait for next year!