WRITING A POSITIVE BLOG ABOUT A BAD RACE

First of all I am not writing here about excuses. Steve Yenne started right in front of me and finished 6th and my fellow 60 year old Ron Strasser Started right next to me and finished 12th. I can keep up with Steve for a while and stay with Ron on a normal day. But I finished 37th. I don't think last year we even had 37 starters, yesterday it was nearly 80, and I passed 43 of them, I just needed to pass 30 more. With the big crowd in our field (again this is my fault as I am the one who introduced the rule to have USA cycling age groups in OBRA) Brad used a lottery system to line up the racers. I drew short straw and was on the last row. Again I was not the only one but I have to say I was unprepared. I was hoping for a call up from last years results (I was 5th overall), but it was not to be. I never really got going. I tried to be aggressive on my passing but I don't like to crash and I am not the best accelerator. I race best from the front. Go hard, fast on the technical and then go faster. In a crowd I can't go fast in the technical and my best tool is lost. I need to work on this if I want to continue to race. The deal is I have never started a cross crusade race when I wasn't on the front row. It was my turn to see how the hundreds of racers come every week to see if they can break into the 60s or 50s, so now I will be trying for the teens or the twenties.

I had a lousy race but a great time. My teamies put in some great performances. Serena 8 in A's, Veronica 13 in A's, Chad a top 10 in the Men's masters B's to name a few. I also missed most of the wet sloppy snow we had in Bend, instead 65 degrees and sun. I will be back, I will be trying harder to move up and get those hard to find points. It will be hard though.