Peak Season CX #1

Fun course (Harbor High School in SC), and pretty good weather (rain held out). Really well organized grass roots event, and the free hot dogs at the end was a bonus :-) My race went pretty well except for the one water hand off that Shaney attempted with me near the beginning of my last lap - I clipped a PVC pole right afterward and went down quicker than you can say "huh?" Bummer was that I was just in front of a few guys in my catagory, and we had been trading places in the previous laps -they all proceeded to wiz on past. I was only down for a couple seconds though, and managed to still pull off a reasonably good last lap after that - including a sprint for the finish line which I actaully WON (first time I think this has ever happened to me). 10th/24 guys in B 35+. We stuck around long enough for Riley to race in the free kids race at noon - he was the smallest kid, and the only one with training wheels. I was proud of him for just finishing - it was a long lap!

In between mine and Riley's races, we were walking back to our van and I spot Brian Lopes pulling his bike out of his cool travel van (complete with "Lopes" and "55" in cool lettering on the side). I actually stopped accross the street and said "are you Lopes". Doh - what an idiot... He smiled and answered "yep"... So I asked "you're racing cross?". He said it was only like his third race or something, and then I blathered something about how there were a few local DHers getting into cross, and wished him good luck.

When we were taking off for the day the A's were just finishing their first lap - Lopes was at the tail end of the front pack of about 8 guys. Not bad for a gravity freak. I guess it helps to have a whole boatload of World Cup and World Championships under your belt... I now wished I would have looked closer at his bike - I forgot that he's racing for Ibis now, and I heard that they're getting ready to introduce a carbon cx frame. The only thing that I noticed was that he was running riser bars :-)

Scott