Battenkill Report

Battenkill. I guess you could say it went well. Race was actually pretty sedate until the last 15 miles or so. We'd drill it up climbs and through dirt sections, but then the whole field would slow up to a crawl and everyone would catch back on.

On the last true dirt descent, which was very fast, loose, and on a sweeping left hander, I was about 10 wheels from the front of the race sitting in perfect position feeling freakin' great. Two Jabroni's decided they could take the turn twice as fast as everyone else and swung wide, forcing me into the forest. Seriously. I was bombing through leaves, twigs, tree stumps, dead bodies, who the hell knows what. I'm not sure how I saved it and stayed on my bike and made it back on the course, but I'll attribute that to my Cyclocross skills.

50 guys must have passed me as I was trying to stay alive through the brush. The dirt road led us onto a paved climb, which I hammered up and found myself in a group I thought to be the lead group... until I crested the hill and saw the pace car up the road. So I jumped off that group and bridged up to a chase of 5 guys. I asked, "Is that our group?" to which some punk ass replied, "Shut the fuck up and pedal." Which was funny, because NONE of them knew how to paceline. I coached them for the next few kilometers and we finally got something resembling a paceline together and got within 50 meters of the lead group at the final climb which was dirt and quite steep.

I tried to bridge across, but it didn't happen. So I rolled in with the chase group. The initial results had me at 16th and now they say I placed 20th, but I'm positive 16th was the right placing, since I came in 2nd in the chase group. The timing on the latest results has me finishing 2nd to last in terms of time in the chase group, so that's not right. But oh well, no more glory in 16th than in 20th.

So that was Battenkill... that's racin'.

Speaking of messed up results, USA Cycling has me 22nd in the Omnium for the Philly 2Day, but the official results have me 15th. Oh well, again, no real change in bragging rights.