Surf City #3, Watsonville Fairgrounds Nov 1st 2009

Surf City did a double race weekend for their series, not sure how it turned out for them, but since I work on Saturdays, and I'm already taking the Saturday off for the BASP night race (we are sponsoring the race, after all...) I get to miss the Halloween race. Darn, I like festival races. So the next day, Dia de los Muertos, I go down and hit it up. The course this time was a mix of Surf City and Peak races of the past few years. The course stayed up on the...East(?) portion of the grounds and for the second race in a row, a climb back up to the finish line start. So no spiral of death, that was the day before, but we did have a really fun course out around the track, up the corner stairs to ride down the center of a row of stables to the "tree on the hill", wound our way between the back stable buildings cam back around the lower arena and up a grassy hill to a run up that later on Justin Robinson was riding like it was his driveway. Up and down then climb back up the road to the softball field and the finish line...something like that. Anyhow, I placed myself at the back of the field, and when we went off I managed to get through the first bobble neck pretty cleanly. I have placed myself well, and now I just have to see what I can do. I stay on the pace for a while, then as I enter threshold hell I drop off a bit, never in the super front I think I was off the front group. When I had to slow up for a bit I got passed by a few guys, but I also started to feel pretty good I was catching the back of the B's field in front of us, and also catching back some of the 35's and 45's that had gotten past me. The last 3 laps were really good, the guy (726) that had been dangling in front of me for a couple of laps was now behind me and I passed another guy from my group as well. In the end, it sounds better than it is. 9th, my first top ten in a couple of years!! Yay!!....wait, only 20 guys raced, half the normal field size for Surf City, and like a quarter of a BASP field, so context right? Still, I felt good, I can feel that I am going to be improving over the course of the rest of the season, barring misfortune. So I am stoked regardless. Woo-Hoo!