day one done

This morning the Toughest Two got rolled back to the toughest one and a half. But no matter how short you make it it's still painful cuz the mount washington auto road is STEEP!

They had to shorted the stage due to snow on the road. Up to about 1.25 miles up the road the pavement was nice and clean- but then the snow started to creep onto the course. Traction was never really and issue, but I was a bit nervous about what the trip down would be like- but my worries were for not as the finish line was shortly after the snow line.

I had planned to grab JJ's cassette that has a 26T on it, but I had planned to run the cross bike in the hill climb and then it would be moot. Well I was feeling rugged and ran my road bike with my standard gearing- the low being 39x23. It actually wasn't too bad. The 26T would have been nice, and I think next year that will be the way I go.

I have no idea what my time was or how I did, maybe that will get posted later tonight. Of course the highlight of the day was the Crit down in Storyland. Roughly 27 real corners and a few other sweepers that you could pedal through- all in a lap that takes about 3.5 minutes! Pretty crazy, gas on, brake, sprint, break, sprint, break, hold the corner- argh! It's the toughest 45 minutes of my year- I think it's harder then the CX races because you are ALWAYS accelerating. The course ran the opposite way as last year- so we rode up the polar coaster side of the hill- and yes that stung each lap. I had a rough start and worked my way up through the field, finally sitting in the front third to front quarter of the race (I think) I had hooked on with a group of four that were riding good tempo. Actually the guy on the front was, nobody else (self include) was doing squat. At one point the guy in front of me let a gap open and within a lap we had some work to do. I went to the front and we closed it down. In the park the three of them were killing me in the corners (I used to think I could corner a road bike- guess not!) but I could get a bit of a gap on the long straight into the headwind. So on the bell lap I attacked from the back and opened up enough of a gap that they had to work really hard to catch on and that pretty much gave me what I needed to finish ahead of them. It may have been that I was the only one who was looking at it like I was racing for a win- but we couldn't see anyone else ahead of us (there were plenty) so for me it was like a mini win.

My legs are now cooked, hopefully I can recover for tomorrow and we'll see who I have to mark (if I'm in a good position in points) and let it rip. Tomorrow I may go back to the SS as that seems to work a touch better for me- but we'll see.

Time for food then sleep.

DEA