BAD RACE GOOD DAY

I like to think of myself as consistent in my racing. I finished anywhere from 3rd to 8th up to yesterday. Yesterday I was 18th. I had my best start and my worst finish. I crashed very hard with 1/2 lap to go. Broke my helmet and my neck doesn't want to move to today. Me and one of the faster juniors hit each other. He was trying to pass me on a corner. He wanted to win. I was trying to catch a couple of more guys in my group who were just ahead. I wasn't thinking about what was behind me. We hit, he apologized, we both got up. I must of been down longer than I thought as 10 in my group passed me. It would be easy to blame the jr  ( I don't know his name). I call it bike racing. We are all tired and trying to finish and making split second decisions all the time.  If I wanted to be safe I would have stayed at home and watched TV. If I would have been having my normal race the Jr would not have caught me anyway. If I would have ridden the mud hole the first lap (like I am doing in the photo after my crash, note the grass in my helmet) and not just the last three he would not have caught me. Blame is a silly thing in a bike race. Crashes happen, people get hurt. I am hurt. I hope to be back for the GP races. More mud more jrs.

Did that ruin my day. NO. First of all because of my consistency I ended up 5th in the series without my double points (the last race is double points). I am proud of that. It was close but I held on. Two, almost everyone else on the team had their best race of the year. You can see the smiles of the women (Sorry, but Julie is missing). Serena won the women's B race (the series also), and Renee was 4th and 4th in the series. I am not sure why they are smiling though because they will have to move to "A"s next year. Karen was 4th in the 35+ group, though rumor has it she is eligible for a different age bracket. Serena caught Karen  (they start 30 seconds apart) and then Karen stayed with Serena the rest of the race. They both thought it was cool to have a friend so close by. Julie, not pictured, won the 45+ women's. The other photo is Karen riding the mud hole. Not many women were able to pull that off. 

The rest of the team did awesome. We had two men's "A"s in the top 10 (Ben and Damian) and Mike was 11th in the 35+ A race, Matt Fox ended up 4th in the "B" race. 

So I am sore but happy. Time to clean my bikes, do my laundry and go to Sunnyside and talk about it one more time. 

Thanks for reading

Don