Cap CIty Race #6 / Smith Farms - 12/5/09

Smith Farms Highlight
I walked away with my first Ohio Top 3 Podium finish, with a 3rd place. Happy day. This venue was on part of the Central Ohio Parks, Three Creeks. It was a great venue and had some nice features for a cross race. There is much more here to use I think but the area around the barn and storage area served us well, with some really nice terain. I had a decent start sitting with the front of the fast guy ten "B" field.
Course: Our start was a drag race to a wide sweeping left onto a getting narrow bridge and then a hard left up left to an off camber hill. There was a nice dip on the inside of the off camber section, which proved to be not the line to take even though it appeared to be the fastest line, it wasn't - tricky. Once up the little hill, we were on an old double-track tractor road for a short bit, then a hard left onto the pavement, where you could have rolled a tire. Off the pavement and back onto the grass with one of my favorite spiral cross designs of the year. (I can do really well in this type of stuff, looking around and through these type of cross things, where others sometimes can't look ahead of their front tire) After the spiral we headed over to the main road near the course and had a barrier with a super steep run up and then a quick steep downhill. We had a short recovery section downhill still parallel to the road then into some off camber turns up and down a hills side near our parking. There was also a really cool dip with an uphill into a right turn with a tight sweep around the barn in the photo. Sitting in the line of fast 10, I knew if I could just hang on to the group, someone might make a mistake or slowdown, sure enough I hung on, slowly warmed up and started to feel really great. My legs had tons of power and gas and I was running the double barriers and single up hill barriers really well. I picked off Larry P, when he went down in a slipery corner and went from 8th to 6th when a few others cracked with 3 laps to go. Tim, Glen, Michael O. and local B racer and ("i haven't been riding, really") sandbagger Brandon all were remaining in front of me. I chased and chased Tim till I finally got him on the tractor road, Glen was just in front of him with 1 lap to go.
I could tell I was gaining on Glen, I just kept pushing and pushing. Once I passed him, Tim came back around on Glen's wheel and they both worked to try to close the gap to me, but I managed to hold them off in the last of the twisty bits before the finish line.