Ow

Mt. Nebo is named after the ancient Sumerian God of broken legs. This is the hardest race I've ever done. Is it harder than Lost River? I don't know.

I decided to go do this at the last minute since both work and Lost River are going to conspire to keep me out of Coppi. It sucks because I like that Coppi race a whole lot but what can you do. I heard Mt. Nebo was hard, that Velonews or something rated it one of the toughest courses etc. Yeah, it was that hard.

My day started with a flat tire while warming up. Of course I didn't have any fix it crap with me since I was going straight to staging from warmup. So my warmup consisted of a nice jog in my socks back to the parking area to change my tube, then a quick trip to the staging area. Probably didn't affect anything.

The course was awesome. The climbs were the climbs. The descents were the most fun race descents I've ever done. I got BADLY gapped before one of them, and found myself at the head of a chase group like almost 100 yards behind the (already pretty freaking small) main group. BAM! I got right up to the main group and looked back to see the chase group as far back as it had been. I think I ducked under a mailbox on this one - Cancellara's descent yesterday was my spirit guide on this.

After getting undropped I soon enough got redropped. One of those annoying "NOT NOW!!!!" ones where you know you have the effort in you, it's just somewhere lost in your pockets and you can't come up with it this instant. I kept the (now really small) main field close and a few dudes came up from behind in a pack. We worked well together. It was fun.

This was the most fun I've had doing this "eh" ever. Reston has been this fun, I think that's about it for races that have been this fun. And this was as fun as Reston would have been if I hadn't been an idjit and tried to race a wet crit on worn Gatorskins. Did I mention that that sucked?

I think Lost River will be this fun. I tell you one thing is those Lost River Classic water bottles sure performed maniacally. They delivered delicious refreshing beverage, on demand, throughout the race. No ordinary water bottles, these. Get some when you come and do the race.

HARD RACES ARE FUNNER.

More random thoughts about the course later. Now I'm going to the pool and probably get drunk.