Art O’Connor

This has been the year of no crits for me. I did one RMR back in March and not a single crit all year. Today the RMR paid me back for ignoring her all year.

It was raining when I rolled out of my driveway so that had me in a pretty good mood. It is always nice to be able to ride to a race as opposed to driving. The rain was short lived as the pavement was dry by the time I crossed Redwood. Oh well can’t have everything I suppose. I rolled up an hour before the start and chatted with Team Rico and Hardest of the Hard for a bit. The RMR course is one of the harder course we do all year, it has a sketchy off camber dirt section (more on that later), and a weird off camber/run in the grass. This year they also added 2 trips up the banking in the oval. I know it is not everones favorite course but I think the do an amazing job of utilizing the terrain and making it a real challenge. Besides if it was easy it would be called golf.

My start again was pretty bad. By the end of the first lap I was in 7th or so. Even with the hour ride out to the race my legs felt flat. Gotta get that figured out. Ali went out faster than Lindsey Lohan snorts a line of free coke from a toilet seat. Sometime on the 2nd or 3rd lap Mitchell blew by me and took Gallagher with him. I could only watch and make false promises to stop drinking beer until after Nationals. By about the 20 minute mark my legs had finally opened up and I started to claw my way back to Reed Wycoff. I caught him and seemed to be chipping away at Gallagher when I blew it worse than the Nobel Peace Prize committee. On the off camber dirt section I caught a pedal and went down like G Dub’s approval rating, nearly taking Reed down with me (sorry man). I jumped up pretty quick but when I grabbed my bike my left wrist (the one I broke this summer) was not having it. Thankfully it is nothing a lot of ice and Vitamin I wont fix. Kind of scared me though. Oh well that is racing. Mitchell (must be drinking his MonaVie) proved that he does not need a climb to dish out the beatings and passed Ali with 2 to go for the win. 3 races down three MonaVie W’s. I hope I can add to the tally soon.

After the race DrX hooked me up with some kick ass Washington tuna and a HTFU bracelet! Pretty ironic since I had just dropped out of a 1 hour race. Much appreciated though coming from a guy who knows a thing or two about HTFU.

Down in Moab after years of telling us he is coming back Indohran finally has made a confirmed appearance. According to the web site,5 head owner and ‘cross promoter Matt Ohran has the fastest lap for Vet men in the entire freaking race! The only thing more amazing than that is the endless smack he must be running at this point. He will get years out of this one. Bart Mang has the fastest lap in the Pro’s and both MonaVie teams look like the have it wrapped up, nice work. Ohran told me Sly went out for a lap with him and was blasting the techo, but Ohran dropped him and rode alone. No wonder. If T-Wells was riding behind me playing that shit I could probably drop him just to get away from that noise. Yaaa!

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