Sunflower CX

Another balmy, un-cyclocross weather day with temps in the mid-70's for gods-sake!! Enough of that already. Where are the slippery, wet, wintery conditions that exemplify the spirit of 'cross? Apparently not here in the midwest. Sunday's race was out in Lawrence, KS at the nearby Clinton Lake. Saturday I spent much of the morning rebuilding the Slingshot with my SRAM Rival drivetrain that I'd been holding onto to mount up on the never-arriving Ridley. I said F it and built it up cuz as soon as I do that, the Ridley will arrive. Got a quick ride on it Saturday afternoon and was just hoping the cable didn't stretch too much during the race. It was a fun day as the family was coming with and we were picking up the bro-in-law from school at KU.

Get out the race, register, and go for a quick warm-up ride. Line up in the front row again (been lucky with that all year). Ready GO! I can't get my left foot in the pedal but keep hammering it down the pavement to the over 90 degree left hand turn. Finally I get clipped in and make the turn in about 12-15th spot. The leader goes down hard right at the barriers and the field splits around him like a traffic circle. Over the triple barriers and around the long sweeping corner. We get to a straight away that is a mix of gravel and dirt and its pedal to the metal! I move up to 2nd place and sit on the leaders wheel. That was way too easy, I just went by everybody and settled in nice and easy. I continue to sit on this wheel for the entire first lap where I should have attacked as I was feeling it and everybody else seemed to be holding back. Back to the start/finish at the end of the first lap and I do attack and leave the field by at least 150m, through the barriers and on with it, solo. I'm riding both of the sand pits with not much issue and generally feeling great. Then the "Kid" catches up with me and we ride the next lap together until I make my first mistake. Double barrier section through it and back on, Nope. The bike was bouncing in a rough patch as tried the remount and got the back of the seat right in the sack. OH! Try again, success, but no chain. I can't push the chain back on with the lever, so have to get off the bike and put it on by hand. Now the kid is up on my by 30 seconds. Off to the races and start to reel him in by about 5 seconds per lap but just can't pull him back. Then Problem #2, chain drops to small ring and I can't push it back up to the big ring. Cables have stretched or loosened enough that there's not enough tension to push the chain over the big ring. OK, so running in the high end of the small ring and still going fast enough. The separation between me and the chase is enough I don't have push it too much but I want to catch this kid. Last 2 laps and I'm flying through all the sections, whoops a little bobble in loose corner, and it was then I decided 2nd place was good enough. The weekend before I pushed too much and made bad mistakes and crashed which cost several places. So I conceded the win and was happy with 2nd. Still could of, would of, should of, but it is what it is. If it weren't for mechanicals and mistakes everybody would win every weekend.