Mercer Madness

Mercer Cup has to be one of the most fun races of the year.  Even though it included lots of running last year, I had a blast.  The vibe is awesome and it's great to watch the pros rip it up.  This year, though, they changed venues.  I must say, though that Saturday's course at the new venue was much less fun.  Part of that was the flatness and part of that was the fact that it was so muddy.  The entire course was just mashing on the pedals, putting down all the power you can to get through the mud.  It was just all out for 45 min.  No good for me.  It should have been good for me, but I was just not feeling it.  Had a bad start position again.  Gotta fix that.  My bike got heavy and covered with sticky mud.  Ended up like 37th coming up from the second to last row.

Barriers

Mud Surfin'

No pics from Sunday's racing though.  I dropped the cash to rent a pit bike from Van Dessel (a G&T) which absolutely kicked ass.  Having a clean bike every lap was great.  Now I probably could have bitten the bullet and rode my Holeshot the whole race as it was near 70 degrees and the course was drying out, but I decided to try out a pit bike.  It was for the better because I rolled my front tire on the second to last lap of the day.  Got a better start, about 5 rows from the back, but on the long off camber chicane section had a little collision with someone which lodged a front brake arm against my tire.  Had to take my brakes apart to fix it.  I was in dead last, behind all the singlespeeders.  Sucks.  Worked my way up to 42nd.  Legs felt pretty damn good.  I was catching and dropping people like they were standing still.  On the last lap I came onto the pavement about 10 seconds behind some guy, poured it on, caught and dropped him to pick up one more place.  My one victory for the day.  Pitted for Myerson again.  Made another chunk of change.  Saturday's pitting was hard work, with the line for the power washer being too long to turn out a bike every lap when he wanted it.  Had to do it by hand and with brushes.

Next up is PA states, which I'm hoping to kill it at.  Maybe I'll actually win a cross race... or podium in something that isn't Iron Cross...