Leroy Township - 10/5

I'm way behind in posting, so I'll make these short.

I did the Leroy Township Cross race on Oct 5 put on by Chagrin River Cycling. They did a really nice job for the first year at this park. They didn't have a lot of elevation to work with, but put on a very technical course including a BMX style rock garden and some incessant drainage ditch crossings... 7 times across this nasty little thing.

I lined up with the other 23+ A racers. Got a decent start, and settled in pretty quickly. The technical nature caused the first split as the front 6 or 7 guys got away. I was probably sitting in 12th at the end of the first lap. Then went to work trying to pick off places as people blew up.

It came down to Jason Halleran from Spin and I fighting it out for 9th place. We were pretty well matched trading places for about 2 laps. As we came through the line, Lynn told us we had three to go, and I took a breath. Jason some how got a gap on me right then. I worked hard to close it, but slid out on one of the twisty bits... and that was it. I tried to pull him back for the next lap, but my head had different ideas. I ended up a minute behind him at the finish in 10th.

The best part of this race was I had no mechanicals, and I felt like I raced well with the exception of lap3 to go, and maybe the last lap when I decided I didn't need to race quite as hard since I wasn't going to catch Jason or get caught.