Kelso Halloween Cross Stage Race

Well, what can i say. This weekend pretty much played out like I had thought it would, Saturday was a muddy shit show and on Sunday I simply blew up. The course layout for sundays race was epic by every meaning of the term, the course was really long and and the lower section was a peanut butter mud fest. After hanging around in the cold watching Mikey race at ten I wasn't to keen on setting off for my 1pm race, this changed around 11:30 when the M2's went off and the Healing cycle's own Steve Eastwood flat out destroyed the field in his second actual cross race. Watching Steve kill it was a great motivator to get my ass into my tighties and start warming up. Once the race got under way I settled into my usually spot in the bottom third and picked out my pace bunny for the race, newly upgraded Jeff Moote. Jeff has been having a good season and was one of the few sandbaging beginner guys to ball up and upgrade into elite. As we plodded through the laps our cohorts in the bottom 3rd eventually dropped out or suffered from race ending mechanical brought on by the muddy conditions. In the end I got dropped by the new guy but I still finished the race with a smile on my face, well I didn't actually smile until I opened my beer in the parking lot. That pretty much sums up day one. Day two started with me rolling out of bed at 7:30 with every part of my body in a world of hurt, nothing some Advil and coffee won't fix. After what seemed like an hour of hosing by race bike down in the driveway to get it somewhat rid able for the day Mikey pulls up and we were off. Once we got to the venue we were surprised to see that the course had some drastic changes from last years, they kept the horid run up and about 1 minute after they put in one whore of a climb that was just barely rid able in my "cool guy single 42T front ring"... god dammit that hill hurt. They added a new sand pit just off of the parking lot that made for some great spectating and heckling. Well as for the race it was pretty much the same outcome as the day before, poo start, blew up on second lap and struggled to stay on the new guys tail. All in all the weekend was still a blast, the weather was amazing, I got in a good shit kicking and I really don't have anything to complain about. If anything this season has taught me that I can't do everything (24hr->Cross) and to be competitive I need a coach and should lay off the beer.

Eastwood killing it on day one:




Me getting killed on day one:




Han Solo himself in the pit:







*Photography by Mike Clark