While each and every other sucker sits home eating butter

people lacking imagination would just label this "INTENSITY".So Sunday. Things warmed up and the wind made a 180. The course was for all intensive purposes, the same. A few new twists here and there, but the flow of it all remained consistence. So much for that “get a better start spot”. Those fools were sitting there on there trainers the second the women’s race went off. If it means that much to you, you can have your 5th row call up. I got a decent start despite the back row line up. I seem to have a knack for making sketchy passes in tight turns. Maybe it’s a mountain bike thing? Trying to get through the crowd a bit faster on the first run up on lap one, I was using my vertical advantage by running with the bike completely over my head. It makes fitting through those tight spaces effortless. All was going well, and I had just enough time to catch a “hey, look! That’s a really good idea!” from a spectator before getting a face first introduction to the hard pack. I clipped the back of one guys leg and, BAM, I was down for the count. I made fast work of getting back up, but all pride was left on the spot. The next 6 laps went by pretty quickly. I held up a bit on lap 4 to join up with a hard charging old guy behind. We worked well together until I saw Trebon coming up behind. I took off like I was being paid, trying to make it to the line without conceding a lap. In the end, he came up, wise-cracked, and rolled on to take his second win in as many moons. In retrospect, it was a good weekend. Results in the pro’s are hard to swallow, but I can see the progress from the past weeks and feel confident in continuing the forward momentum. It was also great to meet up with so many old friends. Road guys I hadn’t see this summer and mtb’ers I haven’t seen since CO. Thanks to all you readers who made a point to say hey out there. It was really great meeting a lot of you. You forget what it’s like to have “home course advantage” when your living out of your back pack all year, so it was really awesome having you all lining the course pushing me on. To the girls on the bench screaming,“Go Big Sexy!” you guys basically made my race. So that’s it, my 7th annual Gloucester is in the books. Here’s looking at Maine next weekend! ( p.s. maybe the best part of the weekend: watching Todd Wells and Rudy Bear drive up behind my dad in the passing lane Sunday, and flip him off for driving too slow. Hilarious!) this guy is totaly checking me out.