Saturday, July 07, 2007

Tough Day at Manawa...

In the pain cave at Lake Manawa -- 07/07/07 -- Photo: DK, with CVO's camera

8th place on the day... Not exactly what I was hoping for. Photo: CVO

It was a tough day at Lake Manawa today. I went into the race thinking I had a chance of a good finish, but ended up a disappointing 8th. Kent went out super hard and I made the unfortunate choice to attempt to go with him.

It worked for a while too, but eventually the heat started making us crazy. Kent went down in a corner right ahead of me while we slid backwards through the Expert field. He ended up taking a DNF for the day, which is an option I considered at several points during the race. In retrospect, I'm glad I stuck it out. I rode better on lap five, the last lap, than I did on the third lap, and that was encouraging, but I just never really had the fire today.

Aaron Grady had the fire though. He's now been victorious in the last three Psycowpath races, and I've been impressed by his patient, calculating racing style. He'll let others go out and blow themselves up, but he's up-front when it counts. Today's win was made even more impressive by the fact that all the fast guys were present. Yet in the end, the story was the same -- another stellar victory for The Kid. I'm sure it was a good show.

I heard from Laura that Savery even took a turn at leading the race at some point near the middle. He finished 6th in the end. Nice ride Mod!

CVO also rode a great race to finish 5th in the Vet Expert class. Way to ride CVO!

Woodman picked up a solid victory in the SingleSpeed class too. Impressive...

Finally, a sincere thank you to all the fans cheering for me out on the course today. It seemed like there were a lot of you, and trust me, it helped! Thanks also to my beautiful wife Laura, who braved the heat to head up my pit crew. Those bottles of ice cold water sure tasted great!

Check out CVO's complete photo album from the race HERE.

Cheers,
MG

6 comments:

cvo said...

laura helped me out during the race by handing up bottles. thank you so much..

it was good seein you way out in front of me today, I caught sight of you a few times.. good job buddy, 8th place in that field is nothing to be ashamed of...

MG said...

You both are most welcome. I'm impressed with everyone who raced in that heat! Gotta love Nebraska in July. . .

MG said...

Oops. Guess I'm logged in under Matt's id. That was from me! Laura G.

Mark Savery said...

Nice racing dude, you almost got me there at the end, i was starting to flounder a bit. It was so much fun being in the mix again. can't beat the feeling.

MG said...

thanks cvo... i agree that i finished behind some pretty distinguished company. i'm not ashamed. you know how it is though. heck, mod summed it up below -- you can't beat the feeling of leading... of winning.

and mod, i'm super happy to have you back in the mix, my friend. you know manawa very well too. i'm sure you'd have shown me some awesome lines had i been able to keep up with you!

cheers,
mg

MG said...

BTW -- Just found out that I actually finished in seventh place. Still not where I wanted to be, but better than eighth!

Cheers,
MG