Close Call. Race Report #2 2009

Phew! that was close. I almost screwed up for the 2nd week in a row. Fortunately I screwed up for real, and MyFavSandwich took advantage. It was the smallest of bobbles at the most inopportune time! Super Genius I am not. I've been racing with MFS for years. We've always been closely matched, but it was always an on/off sorta thing. One week I'd be good, the next week he'd be on fire. This year however, we are both on...on...on. This week was a mirror of last week w/ MFS taking the win. Both races had us glued to one another.....and I mean glued. He's so smooth I can ride 6 inches of his wheel. In cross, that's basically joined at the hip. It appears we're also thinking alike too. Last week, all the SS were lined up on the back row thinking we would go on a separate whistle from the rest of the A's. Nope. Needless to say, we both went hard at the gun this time to put as many bikes in between each other as we could. At least that's what I was thinking ;-) Within half a lap, I was hanging on for dear life as one of MFS's geared teammates was pulling us both around the course. Dear God those 1st two laps almost did me in. Mercifully, the pace eased a bit. We had a gap on 3rd place, neither could shake the other, and here in NorCal, SS races are sadistically 60 minutes so we settled in for the slog. I took the lead with two to go. We kept getting wrapped up w/ a few other A's but it was my own fault when I pushed a loose gravel turn, opened up some daylight and MFS got underneath for the good line through some loose 180s. He shut the door on me around a tree ( I woulda done the same) and gassed it as we hit the straight for the sprint. There was no coming around. Nice racing all around though. Should be a fun season.