been mashed and thrashed.

Last night I did a race called the Mash'n'thrash. This race takes place in the Six Flags Magic Mt. parking lot in valencia, ca. it is a grand prix style race and is held at night under the parking lot lights. My race started at 7:45 P.M.

My weekdays typically start at 3:45 A.M. with me putting my cell phone in a figure four chokehold trying to get the alarm to stop. I usually have my lunch made, dressed, and out the door by 4:15 A.M. on my way to work. The average work day for me is 13 hours of me lugging around my 500 LB (possible exageration) steel toed boots, but, yesterday i was able to go home in 11 hours in order to make it to the race in time. Definetly not ideal pre-race routine. I rushed home to pick up Laura and Ryan and load Ryan and my bikes on the car. The drive to Magic Mt seemed to take forever and we were all questioning what on earth we were thinking after realizing we wouldnt get home till just after 11 p.m. We arrived at 7 and were all ready to turn in for the night so we thought it might be smart to grab some caffeine and snacks. Once we finished registering ryan and i pulled out our(his) trainers to start warming up while laura headed off for her 5K running race. it was nice to have his extra trainer and truly be warmed up before rolling...i wish i had one for time trials.

Once on the line the regular small talk ensued between racers until the referee did his talk. Next thing we know the whistle is blown and we are off. There was quick acceleration from the pack as everyone took off. 2 tight 90 degree turns and one u-turn in the first 45 seconds made it very difficult to keep everything together. in the first 2 laps i was like a slinky off the back as i learned the turn heavy course. i believe it was about halfway through the third lap that the group truly split but it may have been sooner. I quickly found my self out of the lead group and into the chase. we started off with i think 7 riders that stayed together for the next 4 (or so) laps then finally our group of seven turned into a group of three with one floater. it was me and two other guys(who were there together). We had one other racer who would sprint up, get caught, get dropped, then sprint up again. At one point i felt we were going to catch the leaders (about 12 guys maybe) but in the final laps they made a SERIOUS gap between us. with 2 laps to go floater guy (whom i named tinker bell ) made a big move on a slight downhill and made a pretty serious gap on us. The three of us put in a lot of shared effort to catch him but i timed my effort in a bad way. When i came to the front about half way into the last lap i felt i could close the gap between tinkerbell and i. with a hard(too hard) sprint i surged up and got on his wheel basically launching the other two around him (boooooo me). tinkerbell then surged and got on their wheel. I didnt have it in me to do a double sprint and tried to slightly up my pace in order to gain ground on them. After one turn they took a little too slow i thought i would be able to close on them but i was out of gas. two turns later i watched from a hundred feet back as 2 of them sprinted it out (for like 15th place probably but thats not the point.)

At the end of the day i have to say, I am in love with this event. It is very challenging course due to the cornering. It is very challenging pace due to the skill level of the racers present and i feel it will be an event i can continue to improve at and have a distinct measure of that improvement. I look forward to that performance building and challenges.