My 5th (and 6th) (and final, or I am at least 95% sure it’s my final) Real Live Race Report!

Call it an early Black Friday special, tonight, and tonight only, we have a special, two for one race reports! Or you can just call me a lazy slacker with poor time management skills, either one works.

First up, Lansing. Lansing sucked some serious ass. I am not exaggerating, it was that bad. First of all, I just flat out did not like the course. It was flat, like Euclidian three points determine a plane flat. The courses they raced those funky day glow motorcycles on in the movie Tron had more hills.

My dislike of the course pales in comparison to my poor race prep and performance, both on the course, and the week leading up to it. The diet had been in kind of nonexistent state for about two weeks prior to that race. The week before I was at least training though, I kind of blew that too leading up to Lansing. I blew it so bad I tipped the scales at 203 the Monday following the race. There will be no more “No Mores”, I’ve learned my lesson on that. Oh yeah, did I mention I was up till about 3 AM the night before the race? I wasn’t drinking but still, I wasn’t exactly well rested, or well fed, I rushed through breakfast and skimped out on lunch.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I had like 70 psi in my tires, people were pointing at me and muttering stuff to each other behind covered mouths, then laughing knowingly. Ok, that may be a slight exaggeration, but it did come up in conversation with some of the series leaders, and some other old salty dogs, and it was agreed I was being a freak, so I let some air out of my tires. And by some I mean a crap ton, more like a cubic crap ton. I checked my rear tire after the race and it had about 32 psi, and it felt like it had more air than my front. I accidentally let all the air out when I went to check, it was cold and my hands were shaking. I can believe I didn’t roll a tire off the rim or pinch flat.

It was a perfect storm of suckitude. I can’t believe I didn’t come in last. I held on as best I could and finished 31st out of 35. One of the guys I beat gave up before the race started I think, one of them was considerably older than me, and one of the others looked like this may have been his first race. Kudos to that guy, I saw him at the finish, and no one can doubt he put everything he had into that race, he was hurting!

I wonder how much poor prep and performance affected my opinion of the course. Would it have sucked so much if I had not brought the knife to the gunfight?

One cool note though. Chas’s cousins Jesse and David packed their brood drove out from the South Bend area an hour and a half to meet us. I think I had the biggest cheering section there. We took the kids out to McDonalds after the race and fed them too much sugar and junk food and then wondered why they were being all spastic and stuff. Good times. It was great to see them.

Today was Woodstock. Man, that course was tough! They mixed it up really good, some tight stuff, some off camber stuff, more than a few good climbs, and some wicked fast decents as well. Loved it! I prepped a lot better for this race. Some pretty hardcore intervals, some running, a lot of stretching and core strength stuff during my lunch hour even. Oh yeah, did I mention Son# 1 started wrestling this week? I was squeezing all this in on top of getting him to three wrestling practices this week. Not for the faint of heart. Between all that and cleaning up my diet, I dropped a few pounds too and got back in the low 190’s.

So anyway, I ended up finishing 31st out of 38. My blood sugar is too low right now for math, but I think percentage wise that is my strongest finish this season. Judging from the way my legs feel right now I am going to be feeling it for a day or two. So worth it though.

Another thing, my friends Crazy Mike and Jen made it out to the race too. I wasn’t expecting them, seeing as I called right before the race and he had said they weren’t gonna make it. I was pretty shocked to come around the last technical section before the finish to hear Mike sounding off! It was great, The Warden and crew were there with them too, not at the finish line where I expected them. Son#1 was really whooping it up too, he usually heads for the park after the first lap. It was like rocket fuel I tell you. It was a great way to finish the season, Thanks guys.