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Andrea and I traveled most of the way across the state of Tennessee on US-64 to Fayetteville to race the final weekend of the Beat the Freak series.  We rolled into Fayetteville about 11am and stopped to eat lunch at Raphael’s Italian Restaurant.  I had a pretty good chicken sandwich, but… I think I ate too much too close to my race.   I tried to warmup some before my 1:30pm race, but never really could get into it..

The course was a pretty good one that for a dry course, had most of the elements of a good cross race.  Lots of high speed grass, some pavement, a high-speed barrier/log pair, a set of stairs, and (a first for me) a cork-screw spiral.

Anyway, I lined with a small CX3 field (4-5 serious contesting).  The start was pretty fast…(as usual), me and my rock gut didn’t get off to such a good start.  It took about 3-4 laps to settle in behind Barrett in 2nd.  I started to get stronger near the end, but I could never close down the 10-15 second gap that he had on me.

On the last lap, I just caught/lapped Andrea (she was racing her single speed as the only Women CX1-2-3).  On the last stretch we sprinted it out…  I edged her out, but I had to dig to get around her.

So, a bit disappointing on my start keeping me from staying up with Barrett.  He might have still won, but it wasn’t even a contest due to my bad.   Tomorrow will be a different story.  No more bad starts!