After 3 hours and 15 minutes in the car, I finally arrived at Lake Maskenthine in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. It’s actually a pretty nice area, a nice lake, some nice trees and nice people. The word on the street leading up to the race was that the trails were not that great. It’s really too bad when rumors like that start to spread. The folks at Elkhorn Cycling Club put in a lot of work to get the trails built and put on a race. When a course gets a bad rap, it always has an adverse effect on the turnout. As was the case at this race with about 60 or so in attendance. It’s too bad because those that didn’t show missed out on a really cool course.
The drive took a little longer than I had expected. I arrived at the course about an hour before the start and didn’t get a chance to do a full recon of the course. I suited up in the Rassy camo and rode the first mile or so to get the start dialed in. The plan for the day was to get into the singletrack 2nd wheel and stay there over the first lap to get the course dialed in. If I felt good after the first lap, I’d take the lead and try to bag the win.
Rollin' to the start.
The race started on a gravel, slightly uphill road. I let Grady slip into the lead and about halfway up the hill another dude passed both Grady and I and led the way into the singletrack. Not sure who the dude was but he was kinda holding up the train until we hit the first open section. Grady and I passed him and started to gap the field a little. Grady kept the pace pretty slow and shortly after we had gotten away, MG caught up, then Kevin Limpach, then JP. Towards the end of the first lap, MG went by me and tried to get by Grady, but Grady was having none of that. MG told Grady to pick up the pace a little because there were a few cats that were catching up to us. He kinda slit his own throat because Grady turned the screws a little tighter and began to gap MG off. I passed MG and bridged back up to Grady and we both began to pull away from the rest of the group.
Grady and I began the 2nd lap with a nice gap and as the 2nd lap progressed Grady began to slow a little. I could sense that a few of the cats that we had just gotten rid of were beginning to close the gap again. So I passed Grady with a pretty hard acceleration and was able to gradually gap him off. My gap continued to increase throughout lap 2 and 3. After the start of lap 4, I could see that I had about a 3 or 4 minute cushion. I decided to put myself into energy conservation mode in an attempt to save my legs for the next days race, the Big Creek Triathlon. I put it into cruise control and ended up winning with a time of 1:36:45. Kevin came in 2nd with a time of 1:39:21, Grady finished 3rd in 1:39:53, JP came in 4th in 1:40:09 and MG rounded out the podium with a time of 1:42:42. Nice job to all on a dreadfully hot, humid day.
The Pro / Semi Pro / Expert mens rostrum
As I had mentioned before, the course was a pretty cool course, with some fun singletrack, some pretty fast rollers and a few sections that had us rolling through some pine groves. Two other cats from central Iowa made the long drive, cancer survivor Sean Meyers and Bruce Brown. It’s always great to see folks from Iowa making the trek across the river to do some raging in the Psycowpath series.
So with one race let I’m in the drivers seat to take the Psycowpath series. I hold a slim 10 point lead over Grady, 309 to 299 with one race left. Grady’s been riding really strong all season and I expect him to be just as strong at Swanson. Kent McNeil will be there also along with a lot of other fast cats. It’s gonna be sweet!
Tomorrow I’m doing the bike leg of a three person team at the Big Creek Triathlon. I’ll have the same teammates that I had last year with Terri Juhlin doing the swim and Kristy Feldman doing the run. We won the coed team competition last year so we’ll be looking to defend!
Thanks for reading,
CK
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