Belated Race Reports and Bad Karma

No, I have not put off writing race reports from last weekend because I'd rather forget about the weekend as a whole. Rather, I've been quite the busy little hen lately and have not found the time. Better late than never to keep my reader (Dad) happy. Plus I don't want to be one of those people that only write race reports when they did well.

And that's a perfect segue because I did not race well at Beacon or HPCX. 9th on Saturday at Beacon and 5th on Sunday at HPCX. 9th! Geesh... I've been doing better than that in the elite races.

OK, so I did suffer some mechanicals (dropped chains) in both races, but still. I'm rather disappointed with the entire weekend, not because of my results but because of the way I raced. Angry. Sometimes when I race angry it works, but this weekend was a mix of anger, sadness, and disappointment, sprinkled with a little bit of bad karma.

Details: Beacon was going ok. I was recovering from a bad start when we hit the beach run. During the run I felt someone run into my bike and then a whole lot of tugging. It's my guess that during all of this my chain must have dropped to the outside of the chainring. When I exited the beach run and went to remount my chain was off and I stupidly tried to fix it myself instead of running to the pit which was a mere 150 feet away. Once I realized that people were screaming at me to go to the pit I wised up, got the Merckx and was on my way again. With 1/2 lap to go I caught a group of 4 in front of me at the amphitheater of pain and was pretty confident I could pass them. Unfortunately bad juju struck again and I dropped my chain at the top of the stair climb. This time on the Merckx which has a chain keeper for crying out loud. How do you manage that? And the problem with dropping your chain on a bike with a chain keeper? Well, it tends to get all jammed up between the keeper and the chainring. 30 seconds. That's how much time I lost and rolled in for 9th.

At HPCX the following day I had a much better start and was happy with my gearing of 34/29 because I realized I was spinning easily up the muddy climbs. But happiness only lasted a half of a lap because my chain dropped again, and again near the pit. This time I decided to keep the Blue and not go to the pit. I only had a 12/25 cassette on the Merckx and besides, this time the chain had fallen to the inside and was much easier to fix. Back on the bike, the rest of the race was uneventful. I passed a few gals and rolled in for 5th.

Looking forward I have decided not to race Mercer Cup, the MABRA Champs, or Nationals. That leaves me with 3 more cross races (Long Island and Reston). I hope my attitude and karma improve soon!

Oh, and I must have done something really bad to piss off the karma gods because the coke machine ate my buck fiddy yesterday.