John Bryan State Park – OVCX #9/CAPCITYCROSS #7

JOHN BRYAN STATE PARK – OVCX #9/CAPCITYCROSS #7

Wow, what a race, what a course, what F-U-N.
I wrote after my tubie flat (glass on the course) at the Gun Club and my overall disappointment and moment of being pissed - cross is supposed to be fun and this race certainly renewed my view of what cross fun means.
I decree this course was of my top 3 favorites for 2008. Lots of flow like a great mountain bike trail or car racecourse without a ton of climbing. Although, my Polar file showed about 795 feet of climbing, it sure didn’t seem like that much, compared to the UCI Harbin race. I think John Bryan provided steady not steep climbing and not all at once, wall type climbing, which Harbin is known.
We had 40 Men line up for the CAT 3 race and I was on the second row behind Mr. Sandbagger, along with the other 08’ season sandbaggers who were sitting front row.
There has been some chatter about this – this week – I might have helped stir the pot some – me oh no - the issue for me is, yes I am sure you would like to win the overall award for the CAT for the Season, but you know, if you have won more than 3 races or been in the top 3 of 3 races or ok let’s say 6, then dam it, you should fricking CAT up, I am sorry. Let someone else win. It is not going to be me – YET. I am close, but not quite top 5 material in the B’s yet. But these guys, just week in and week out slaughter the rest of us some weeks by minutes, not 30 or 45 seconds, minutes. That is silly and why I am calling these fuckers out. Blah blah, it’s their first season of winning, blah blah train harder and we should all quit our bitching – well, CAT up and race with those that you should be – this one guy – he slams us in this race, then goes out into the A race, and sits 8/9th over almost the entire race, sitting on a CAT 1 wheel most of the race, then blows up and finishes like top 14 or something – I can’t think of a better way to bitch slap everyone in the B race.
Looking at the photos, you can see a bunch of us in laughing and heckling “some people” about sandbagging. That moment was almost as fun as the race itself.
The course started with a slight uphill with a sweeping narrowing turn to the right then a sweeping turn to the left. We wrapped around the field near the finish start area and went around a few trees into the first set of barriers – the field was getting strung out at this point. After the wooden barriers we went up towards Gazebo land hit some pavement then a hard hard fake you out right turn almost straight into a tree then a hard left a the tree into the first sand pit. I thought this one was the toughest obstacle of the day, since I had to place to really put in a serious acceleration to get through it. I ended up running it after the first lap attempt and just glided my bike on top of the sand, without actually picking it up, which was an interesting mid race experience and seemed to work well in this race.
Other highlights were, what I call the Gazebo section, where we came into a large grass area on the right outside, then circled inside center and then back out, genius design, I could pedal through the entire thing with my high bottom Bracket, thank you Ridley. I was putting time on guys here every one of the 7 laps, by just maintaining pedal strokes. I might have been smiling every-time in this section.
After the first sand, we went across the park road into a nice right then left turn onto a grass section that was very fast into a sweeping wide right turn around a tree. Back around a tree to the left and another uphill to the left. This section was a big deal breaker if you could maintain speed and pedal through and around these trees. I managed to just stand up, get in the drops and go hard, in a hard gear. At the top of the small rise, I would settle in and spin to recover a bit on this somewhat downhill grass/dirt section in the woods, behind where our car was parked. We then headed back across the park road, turning hard right and lining up for a good sprint across the other side of the sand pit.
We had two standard, wooden barriers, the standard OVCX series, double sand pits, and two large, large logs with quite a bit of running between them. We then hit the outside of this grass section against the tree line and went into a long semi flat to light downhill and into the woods onto single-track. Once on the dirt, the first sweep turn to the left, required picking the right line and having the right position on your bike otherwise, you would end up hitting sticks and trees on the outside line of the single track. A slight bit to the right and then long sweeper dip to the left and then out of the woods and back out on the grass. Some twisty stuff and back into the woods on onto the dusty single-track.

I ended up Top 15 with Ben B and the BioWheels guy just in front of me, I mean just and Layne was on my ass chasing me down like a rooster in a hen house. Ben said he was watching me like a hawk and working really crazy hard to keep me away from him. That's good stuff. A great day on the bike. A few of us went into Yellow Springs for some food and heat. Good times, good day.