lion of fairfax

This post also appears on the Crossniacs team blog.

My best race of the season! Matt was kind enough to give me a lift to Marin yesterday morning (thanks dude) and I think we were both anticipating a mud bath. I mean, how could you not after seeing this the day before?

We got to the venue around 11am and found that the course had almost completely dried out. There were a few spots that were still a bit slippery, but for the most part the course was either completely dry or satisfyingly tacky. Our race wasn't until 3pm, so we spent the next few hours watching the racing (Josh Snead murdered everyone in the Men's A race from the gun), scouting the course, and feeling bad for being on our feet and in the sun when we should have been sitting down in the shade.

Finally, after hours of waiting, it was time to race. I got an okay starting position a few rows back, but it wasn't okay enough - some guy went down in front of me within ten seconds of the gun, of course. I slammed on the brakes early enough to stay upright and ride around the fuss, made the front split and pounded on the pedals for the next fifty minutes. The legs felt good, the course was awesome and the hecklers mostly left me alone (I nailed all my remounts so they didn't have anything to make fun of). The only bad part was coming through the start/finish line on my second lap and hearing "SIX TO GO!"... Are you telling me I have to run up that stupid hill SIX more times?!? That seemed like a bit much. Turned out they let us race an extra ten minutes since we were the last race of the day. Still not sure if that was a blessing or a curse.