Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Before there were good trails and mountain biking was fun...

...there was Ceasar's Creek. Lets just say, comparing Ohio trails to Ohio trails, Mohican's the Brown Gargantua, CC would be the Green one that just wants to eat people. Plenty of mileage and ups n downs, but no flow, tons of ruts and even stinky, sloppy mud despite being bone dry mid-August. And I hate to loose to that troglodyte from Cleveland (I believe the official tally when we've squared off, year to date, is him; 2 wins, me; 25,000), but man I hate CC even more and was willing to roll over on this one. I just did it for the Benjamins.

I felt tired and had zero motivation to race knowing there was no redeeming quality to the next 2+ hours other than it would end, so I wanted to dictate the pace from the gun. I took the hole shot only to get passed when I slipped in some deep and funky smelling mud a couple miles in. Brad Wilhelm came shootin by and proceeded to light it up like it was a race or sumpin. Oh yeah, I guess it was, but thats not the point. The point is he was goin harder than I wanted to. Did I also mention it was hot? Center of the sun hot? Welp, it was. After hanging on Brad's wheel for a bit, I pulled aside and let Jean Shorts and Ben go around cuz I had no desire to try to keep that high a pace.

So, within a couple miles Brad had already blown it all out and I rolled by him. A lap later we rolled by Nano who had taken a wrong turn (despite only having to follow us. I love the Beaner) and was now hanging out trail side but jumped in for the rest of the ride.

Next (last) lap, I was considering the big ol DNF, cursing my current 3rd place hoping a buncha people would pass so I could be all "well, i'm out of the money, might as well put my butt on ice" but then the opposite happens and I catch Ben, (who was suffering a case of vacation legs) and I passed him to move into second. I had to finish now.

Jean Shorts was still impressing himself wayyyy off the front while I set back and rolled at a comfortable pace for second place. I'll make another trip to Ohio to make things right, just not to Ceasars.

3 comments:

bentcrank said...

I remember racing there in the 90's. Not much more then a mowed field for most of the lap with a little bit of dirt thrown in to call it a trail.

Kind of reminds me of some section at the old Wawasee races.

Rowbear said...

that sounds more like paint creek which is also in ohio, seriously it was 7 miles of mowed field and about 1 mile total of wooded single-track.

bentcrank said...

Yea I think I raced there too. I only did one race at Paint Creek and a few at Ceaser's. But it was the mid 90's and I have slept a few times since then and lost a few brain cells along the way.