Just like that…it was done…

Another WORS weekend has came and passed. Here is the race recap:

I didn’t get to preride, didn’t feel the need. Jerry and I rode a couple laps at Quarry Ridge on Saturday to shake everything down. Sunday Jess and I got up and headed to Franklin. This is one of my favorite races and I was excited by the 95F temps as I love racing in the heat. I got in a good warm-up, lubed up the chain and got ready to go, first wave meant fast times. I got a second row start on the outside and felt pretty darn good. Don yells go:

This is the only photo of my “racing” on Sunday (on the left with white helmet #2179) as about 10 feet after this photo was taken my chain broke. It took me way too long to fix it (almost 9 minutes) so that was that. I got back on my bike after the last mens wave and got off before the girls went. It’s hard doing a mile leadout by yourself while adjusting the shifting but I did. I actually started catching some of the slowest people ever when I got into singletrack. It’s frustrating being caught behind people that slow. But I had lots of patience as my race was over and didn’t make anyone move over and just passed them when I could. I even nailed my head on a tree hard enough to mess the helmet and knock my shoulder into another tree. Finally when I got to Craters I was behind like 20 people, took me maybe 15 seconds of Craters to get by them all, insane. Needless to say I felt like a rockstar until I thought about it, these were the slowest riders from the 50+ and clydes, many of them just out there for fun and to finish. More power to them! I kept picking people off (usually 5 at a time after singletrack.) By lap one I had probably passed 40 people. Lap two had more singletrack. My goal now was to catch the clyde leader (either my friend Gabe or my old rival Steckbauer.) So I kept hammering when I could and doing a lot of waiting. 2nd lap was uneventful except again on Craters I passed like 15 people. It was fun! Finally I caught up to Steckbauer on the downhill switchbacks and made a bold pass. On the last climb Gabe was half way up, I started to hammer, couldn’t catch him and tempoed the rest of the way, hammered through the finish to ride to another part of the course to see Jess. She was doing really well, around 7 minutes from the leader. Her time was even 20 seconds better than mine. It’s tough not to dwell on a race like this as I was pretty sure I felt well (hard to tell when you can’t compare.) My ride time was just under 1:09, High 1:04’s was podium for our group. The power of clear trail, racing with rivals and having a working drivetrain should’ve been enough for me to at least compete with those guys. The legs and lungs felt great and thanks to a couple tips from Jerry the day before I was doing pretty well on the singletrack. I even passed 5 people in my age group! Oh yeah, stick a fork in my WORS overall as I am now done. I can only do 4 more races at the most so I’ll have to take 2 of my poor 19th+ results. My season:
Iola: 19th- broken crank, stopped on the trail for over 20 minutes, then rode a lap and a half in my granny ring
Alpine: 24th- broken chain, ran/walked/coasted well over a lap
Wausau: 1st- Bike worked!
Kewaunee: Skipped to do HHH
Eau Claire: Missed for lung infection
Franklin: 21st- broken chain, fixed.

Rest of the weekend was pretty laid back. Friday after work we had engagement photos taken which was actually a lot of fun. We then met Russ, Hez and Tad for some Red Robin action which was also a lot of fun. Saturday I woke up and took the dogs to the bark park before it got too hot. They appreciated that! Then we watched the Tour and didn’t really do much. Jess went shopping and I went out for a little bike ride and then watched some Nascar and some crazy movie with Ashley Judd and Samuel L Jackson. We then went to Noodles for some night before the race fuel and Wendys for a Frosty! Then we looked at vacation options.