Just a training ride.

Just a very painful training ride. Brialee was about what I remembered, rough, very rough, random lengths of mud, pea soup mud, water crossings, and generally painful. It was a fun course though, tested one's skills at riding over rocks, roots, sometimes both and sometimes both covered with mud. I found the worst mud hole on course, deeper than my hubs in fact. I think that's where my back brake stopped working very good. Then there was the giant puddle with a big rock in the middle that you couldn't see, one easy way to knock a person off their bike. I can't really even describe some of this to it's full potential so I won't try any further. You really just have to see it in person, or even better, try to ride it.

My first lap was not so great on the technical riding. Lap two was better, but I finally found my groove on the last lap. I was also finding that my legs were going to stay relatively strong through the last lap as well. I hadn't ridden particularly fast, I found a pace I felt good with for the day and held it. It was just a training ride as I see it, one of my hard training rides. At some points I was likely as far back as 10th or 12th, but as some people flatted and others cracked from going too fast at the start I finally moved up into 6th place. I made a least one pass by running (instead of trudging) through the mud and remounting cyclocross style. Thank you cyclocross.

As it were, the day was beautiful for a bike ride.

As soon as I find some pictures I'll throw up a few links. I hope another video of the riders' viewpoint shows up on youtube, this one would be good.