why i do NOT love des moines

so, this past sunday yerke, jeff, and i headed to des moines for a cross race. we arrived a little later than we would have liked, but still had plenty of time. the race flyer directions to the park must have assumed that we already knew where the park was and knew how to get around des moines intuitively, because it was a sheer piece of luck that we found the place. but find it we did. with about half an hour to spare before the race was to begin.

so, we got all registered up, into our kits, and decided it just might be a good idea to do a bit of warming up before the race. we rode around the course a couple of times. me, unintentionally being a bit of a twit, didn't realize the race was about to begin, went out for another pre-lap, and ended up holding up the race for a few minutes. but they were nice enough to wait for me.

a bit about the course. they laid out the course in a big oval. downhill, and then back up. gravel downhill, a barrier at the bottom, and three at the top. a long, windy climb inbetween. i'll just say the climb was painful. i was going slow enough that my glasses were fogging up. that = slow. oh yeah, thankfully, it rained on us lightly during the race. i say thankfully, because it kept it from being terribly humid, like it got for the rest of the races after us!

matt was loving his flat bar set up, and he and jeff ended up finishing together. i ended up finishing a bit behind them. i got lapped. i was sooo happy to see the leaders catch me. in my mind, getting passed = one less lap of this murderous climb that i had to do. to inject a bit of perspective, yerke grannied the hill in his 30x27. i was stuck in my 2 to 1 ratio. still, worth mentioning, the rest of the singles won, and finished highly in the race. how these guys do it, i don't know. perhaps i need to gear my monstrosity of a race bike up like these boys.

we elected to stick around and watch the gals race. lindsay put the hurt on the women's field, and took first. way to go!our trip out of des moines went worse than the trip in. we stopped at a pizza buffet and i made a pig out of myself. then we tried, rather unsuccessfully, to find the interstate. we figured the detour signs would lead us to it. 20 minutes later, and at least a few miles in the wrong direction, the detour led us to the interstate finally. we would have been much better off getting on the interstate in the wrong direction, and turning around at the next exit, rather than going through town to do essentially the same thing. stupid des moines. it's sure got nothing on iowa city. but we had fun. then return to iowa city to begin this, what is to be a long and busy, week. not a very good post, i know. that's all i've got.