-H

This is not a pleasant sight on race morning when you have a 9am start.

Watching the car thermometer reading drop as you drive out to the race venue does not help.

At least the wind had calmed down considerably from the 40+mph gusts on Saturday.

Biggest race excitement for me was the start. Since it was so cold I (and a lot of others) decided to forgo the pre-race warm up ride. Mine consisted of pedaling from the car to the port-a-pot to the start line. As such, I did not realize I was in the granny gear. We line up, Jurgen counts us down to the start and off we go. The start is fast downhill sprint and before I know it I'm spun out and going backwards, what the FRENCH??? I look down and realize my problem, but now the chain is crossed (smallest gears front and back); so I have to shift rear cassette, then the front chain ring to get the right gearing. About the time I have all that straightened out all the girls are hitting their brakes and turning... aahhhh - BUT we are not at the end of the start run, yet! It seems that the race leader has seen the ribbons where the finish section crosses the start stretch and she has turned off about 1/4 mile early. Luckily everyone grabs a handful of brakes, makes the turn and follows the leader. Since everyone in the group followed there would not be any penalties or DQs for cutting the course. Our race was just a bit shorter than everyone elses.

Not much else to report about the race. I did finish 3rd of 4 in my group, and 5th of the 8 of us that started together.

Congrats to Kyle for having a good race and putting some of that green paper/cloth stuff in his pocket.

I'm sure once he reclaims his laptop, which was left in my car, he will have a race report of his own posted.

Other excitement on the race front was a friend that trashed his rear-derailleur while riding sweep for younger kid's race.




And on a totally unrelated note...
What do states like Colorado and Wyoming put on their highway overpasses?

A square?