taccinio

this is going to be a rambly post... there are a bunch of things i've wanted to post but haven't had time and i wasn't quite ready to bump the last post down yet.

stole this pic from JoeP... hope he doesn't mind.
here's his flickr account and his blog

raced squadra coppi's taccinio ciclicross on saturday. heather & my parents both came out to watch but i managed only a respectable finish. 14th is my highest placing so far this season, but the field was small (sub-40?) and i should have been top ten.

i had a decent start for for the first time this year and managed to move up 4 or 5 places on the first lap but had constant trouble on a short but very steep climb right after the start/finish. i wound up in the tape off the side of the course at least 3 times in 8 laps and lost at least 4 place because of it. i only salvaged 14th because dave crouse from the bike lane also wound up in the tape on the last lap.

the highlight of the day was when the annoucer, who was calling out names as we came past the start/finish midway through the race, paused when he read my name, then mentioned my blog post from last week and congratulated us both... heather and my parents were out of earshot of the PA at the time, but it was pretty cool. after the race we wandered around leesburg for a while and got some halfway decent fish & chips at a little pub in town.

looks like i'll be doing a couple more cross races this year. other than the capital cross out at reston i'd figured this would be my last racing weekend of the year, but it looks like i'm going to be able to swing a trip to providence for nationals in december. i'll be racing friday in the 30-34 and then hanging out to watch and shoot the national championship races on saturday before heading down to philly to meet up with heather. it'll be interesting to see how far back i end up lining up since the seeding is based on registration order.

i'm going to try and get to the MABRA championship race in taneytown the weekend after thanksgiving as well. should be good motivation to stay active over the holiday weekend and keep me in shape for the capital cross in reston.

i need to get out to some more cross practices... the barriers on saturday were ugly. they were in the middle of a long fast flat section and i just didn't have the chops.

we had a dcmtb/city bikes team meeting last night. sounds like there will be a little structural change but unfortuantely they seem to think i'm doing a decent job and don't want to kick me out as captain. there was talk of getting together a team (or two?) to challenge for the granny gear national point series. we'd hit the 3 east coast races (converys, big bear, killington) and one west coast (temecula?). sounds like fun to me...