After ascending out of our sleep cave for coffee and breakfast, we piled our stuff into the van and were off to the course for our last day of racing. We would not be back to the house as myself and Russell would be shuttled straight to the airport after the Elite race.
We made it to the venue in time to sneak in a lap of the newly revised course before the next race went off. After riding, I was back at the truck to set up the "B" bike on the trainer so I could be all set for my warm up. I spent about 10 minutes looking around before asking if anyone had seen my other bike. It was brought back from the pit after yesterdays race and stored in the truck over night. I checked with the guys in the pit, called a teammate that rode back to the hotel and spoke with the race director and none of them turned up a thing. My bike was gone, crap, now I was a bit stressed as I warmed up for my race. Matt was already on the phone lining up a replacement to be shipped out that week and had also set up his bike as my pit bike. With about 30 minutes til race time, my teammate, Isaac, walks up with my bike and a great story. He was walking the course and sees a guy standing with my bike and quickly takes it from the guy. The guy looks and says "hey, what are you doing?" Isaac says "I am taking my teammates bike back, they having been announcing this bike missing for the last 2 hours and you are standing right next to the speakers!" He says "I just borrowed that this morning!". Well, it turns out that he had checked out a demo bike from the truck and took the wrong bike. I would have thought the name on the top tube and the $300 Dugast tubulars would have tipped him off that it was not a demo but I guess not.
After the stress of all that business, I had to hit the line for race #2. I had a pretty good start but not as good as the day before and found myself just off the lead group. It was really windy and I could never close the gap. I would get within 5 sec. and then would lose it in the sand as people were running in the only rideable line so I was forced to run. I ended up 10th but felt like it could have been another top 5 day. Oh well.
I skipped the elite race and worked the pit and then helped with cleanup so we could get to the airport on time. We were out fairly quickly and I was on a plane back home from another great weekend with the Trek CXC crew. I will be back to Louisville for the Master's and Elite World Championships and hopefully my bikes will not go missing.
Thanks to Trek CXC for the great race support this season and to my wife for her encouragement and support to do it.
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