Last race of Sportif Cup. Means nothing to me, but I needed a picture.

Twelfth (that’s a really weird word to type)! I can’t seem to escape it. Two 12s in a row preceded by a 13. My points dropped from 395 last race to 393 this one so I suppose I did do about .5% better.

I totally wasn’t into this race. I signed up without looking where Taneytown actually was on the map, looked the night before the race, and went to bed already not looking forward to it. After the 70 mile drive up to near Gettysburg, I undo the bike, do the normal pre-race stuff, and don’t like anything about the day. It’s 35 degrees, windy, I feel slow, the bike feels slow, and the course has all sorts of off-camber stuff that I seem to be terrible at.

The race starts, I get going decently, make some passes, am around 15th or so nearing the end of the first lap, and completely wipe out. Went too fast into a tight off-camber corner and washed out the rear tire. Probably looked much worse than it was. Got back on, realized my rear brake cable had popped out, get back off, fix it, and I was finally on my way again. Probably lost about 30 seconds. I push the entire second lap just to get back to where I had been. The rest of the race was rather inconsequential with a short battle that I lost on a slide followed by a poor dismount, and gaining another few places due to attrition.

Aside from the fall, it turned out to be a better than expected race. I felt good and the result was good. Still aiming for that Top 10, but only one race left in which to do it. The nifty online race predictor says I have no chance, but I’ll set out to prove it wrong. If it happens, great. If not, this is a “home” race put on by “my team;” It’ll surely be a good way to close out the season.

GPS pow. Pretty long race. That’s good for me, especially when I go down at the start.

Update: This getting older stuff really is for the birds and really is for real. Not only at the start of the race was I still a little sore from my 5k a few days prior, but the day after the race the entire left side of my body feels as if I was hit by a car. Again, my “crash” wasn’t much of one. It was fairly high speed, but I hit the ground about as well as one can and slid a bit; something that a few years ago I surely wouldn’t have felt the next day. Le sigh.

Update #2: A video of the course is available. Don’t look for me; different race than I was in.