Dirt Spanker

Well, after doing everything I could all week in an attempt to not catch the cold making it's way through my family, it hit me Saturday night. Got about 4 hours of sleep and felt like crap Sunday morning, but it was race day so what else was I going to do? Sleep? Nah.

Picked up Clayton and headed up to Mont du Lac for the Dirt Spanker. This is a fun course. Well, fun if you like a race that starts you at the bottom of a 230' climb with no warm-up. Normally I love it, but just didn't have the energy yesterday. Had no illusions of greatness going into it, just wanted to ride and see what happened. For the first two laps the answer was, "not much". I was suffering like a dog on the climb to start lap two, to the point where I briefly considered calling it a day. But, I figured 4+ hours in the car and a $35 race fee, I may as well keep riding. Towards the end of lap two I started feeling a little better and was still mid-pack in a pretty long train of riders. I passed a few here and there, but mostly I just sat on, knowing this was a throw-away race.

Ended up 7th and my time was only about 2-minutes slower than last year. Not bad for being sick, but probably not worth the toll it's taking on me today in the grand scheme of things. At least it's a rest week. Congrats to Clayton for killing it and just missing out on the hardware. Props to Kevin for another win and to Matt for finding the podium in the Expert field. Cool to see father and son McBurney medal. Jamison continues his statewide podium tour. Peace Coffee rocks.