Manions

Racing went ok this weekend. I haven't trained much at all in the past 2 months, so I didn't expect to go hard, but I did. I doubled up both days. Saturday went well, I got 4th in the open race and 2nd in the single speed. It was a lot of time on the bike and I'm really glad I was able to race. I don't remember much from the open race. I was holding 3rd place for a while, then I crashed. Then I got into some grass and had to spend at least 30 seconds pulling grass out of my cassette derailleur.

Sunday I was pretty torn up. Everything was sore, and my ss bike broke before the race even started, I was frantically finding parts and tools to replace my crank when finally I realized it wasn't to be....but wait, DANO had his ss bike there, it was awful, but it was there. I raced it and sprinted for 2nd, got it at the line, it was exciting.

The open race I was going good, 2nd lap I was 4th behind COE, Jensen, and Don while riding with stolte. On his wheel he started to slide, we were hawling into the section right before mr. stitches and I ended up going down. Bent my shifter, dropped my chain, started running, it was bad. I got passed by a few guys. If it were last year I would have gave up, I had raced a lot and was tired, but I started racing again. I passed a bunch of guys and kept pressure on stolte until about 2 to go, I started fading, and my rear brake cable was getting caught on my stem when I turned which locked up my rear brakes. I lost some time, I was still in 5th but with 1/2 lap to go a Bobby was comin up on my. Eventually after the little up/down/up/down/up/down section after the barriers he caught me. I went really hard around the 180degree roundabout horseshoe turn coming into the finish, but he still got around me, so I got 6th.


The course was probably my favorite course I've seen. People said it was hard, but maybe they have never raced in Iowa, or any where outside of KS/MO.