I've been pretty tired the week leading up to Spartan Cross. The wife was out of town and I've been playing Mr. Mom for the week and haven't had a decent nights sleep for quiet a while. So along comes Sunday Morning and I wake up at 6:53 and I'm meeting Justin and Jason at the shop at 7:30 which is about 30 minutes away.
I quickly throw on my bibs, some shorts, and a t-shirt all while brushing my teeth. Run out the door load the bike, bottles, pump, gear bag, and a extra large cup of coffee. As I'm loading the gear into the truck the thought crosses my mind "Why I'm I doing this? After all, I really needed some rest, the bed was so warm, I'm late, and I don't feel prepared at all to race today. I head out anyways.
I get to the shop and load up my stuff and grab some coffee and pastries from Starbucks and head to Spartanburg. We get to the race, register, and start warming up. It's a fun course with a lot of off camber sections, flowy single track, and a long stretch of flat pavement. AWESOME!
I do my warm up lap and head over to the starting line. The race was going pretty well except for the run up stairs. A guy falls just before the barriers, I go over the barriers just behind him. I basically sit on his wheel until........... I hear Ben yelling "Go Mike! Granted I was very happy to just sit on this guys wheel until the finishing pavement and out sprint him. But when Ben said "Go Mike", I did just that. I over took him just before an off camber section and took off as best as I could. I finished that lap with the bell ringing for the final lap.
I stayed on the power and didn't let up. As I got to the top of the hill I could see Justin a good ways ahead of me. I pushed harder, I thought I might be able to surprise him on the finishing paved dragstrip. Unfortunately I didn't see him again until after the race. We hung out and cheered on some guys from the shop in the Cat 3's race. Then we headed home after we found a decent Mexican restaurant and ate too much!
