Memoirs of a C Cup

Another Canton Cup is in the books. This year was by far the biggest C Cup I’ve witnessed through the years. The early day’s races were all pushing 100+. Despite the apocalyptic rain that should have surly washed the earth away on Saturday, the course held up swimmingly. A little too swimmingly for my liking, but I’m sure the promoters were thrilled. The did a great job of keeping it all in tactMy day started bright and early. First on the schedule was NERD cycling’s own Chris Hong (seen above) rocking the socks off the mountain bike in the C race. He put up a good result for his first ever ‘cross race. He’s definitely got a few things to learn, like how to adjust your leg warmer mid race, for one. Next up was Junior NERD rider J.C. in the Junior/Master B’s field. Gavin and Luke ran away with it from the gun, but J.C. held strong to take the last step on the blocks. He was on his way to holding off the entire masters field before going down hard on the pavement stretch along the lake. Despite a blood soaked kit and skin flapping in the air, he got himself up and hammered home to hold onto his spot. That’s pretty much all he’d need to put on an application to my team. Regardless of how strong you are, you can’t be a rider who wins races if you can’t first be a rider who finishes races. After half a day of feed zoneing/ pitting/ and being a spectator, the pro men’s race rolled around. As with the rest of the days races, we had an impressively large field for a non-UCI race. I felt decent off the line, and got a good wheel coming off the pavement into the grass. Coming around the first corner, some bozo tried to sneak by me on the outside of a fast sweeper. I was a split second away from pulling a Bart Wellons and drop kicking this fool, when I caught the Clif bar logo out of the corner of my eye, and realized it was Jessie, trying to get back on the lead group after messing up his start. So after almost making a fool out of myself for trying to block the 6 time national ‘cross champ, I settled into a rhythm and put down a good first few laps. That’s when things turned a bit sour and my stomach started a rebellion against my legs. I sat up a bit, and tried to feel things out, but it was just a funky day physically. I can tell the form is there under the surface, but after a long week in the saddle, I just didn’t have the snappiness there to unleash it. Hopefully with this week to rest up a bit and get in a couple more speed workouts, things will be good for the upcoming races. The highlights of the race were some fun corners, a couple bunnyhoppable barriers, and being able to turn things back on in time to catch a handful of guys on the final lap. A-Wall killed it in the ladies race, but came up just short if Mo. back to school for the week, then I'm out.