Oct 27- Kelso Ontario Halloween Cyclocross

Report from John Roden

Nothing like a nice 1pm start time for a family friendly race. We still were hurrying to make our 9.30 departure deadline, but made it across the border and off to the Kelso Conservation area with not too much time to spare. After some jabbering in the parking lot, I went for a lap with Dan Staffo, decided the course was pretty hard, did another lap and confirmed this and
went back to the car to do some last minute tire pressure adjusting (downward due to wet grass).

This was a classic hard course that would favor a real climber hard man type, short laps of under 6 minutes with a nasty stairstep climb that most riders opted to run. I had kind of a lousy start but decided that this racewould really grind people down and had no regrets about sitting in 12th. or so for a while. The hill took a toll and with what looked to be a 10 lap race in store, I settled in and tried to just ride fast and move up. Some of the people I passed blew up, other stayed with me for a while but fizzled over time and by the end I was ready to barf and get off the bike, in roughly that order. The kids and dog all had a blast on what turned out to
be another really nice late fall day in Canada. I still feel like barfing 6 hours later, so it must have been all I had in the tank.

Money went 5 deep, I knew before I even looked at the sheet that I would be 6th. I just had a feeling... Now with the weak US dollar, it would be nice to win an envelope of that pink money with pictures of waterfowl and pond hockey, but not today. Dan was hanging tough in a loaded masters race and finished in the top 10.