Snake Alley and Quad Cities 2011

Tammy and I drove down to Burlington Iowa Saturday morning. We left at 5am and actually had a pleasant drive down.

We arrived at Snake Alley around 10am and I immediately picked up my registration packet. I said, if it is raining that I wasn't going to do the race, well guess what? It was raining while warming up and guess what? I still raced, I should have stuck with my gut feeling and not have raced.

On the first lap I was clipped in right away and was the first one up the "snake" and was finally being passed on the finishing straight. Second lap I was getting gapped already but feeling ok and then on the descent at the bottom of the hill on the right hand corner I crashed! I may have done a rookie move, but at the time felt like I was making the right decision. I didn't want to hit the manhole cover so I was going to use a parking lot to slow down and get back in it, but I didn't see the fence that they had up and I hit the fence and tumble into the parking lot. It happened right by the medic's so I was able to get cleaned up right away. I opted to DNF the race. I thought I had broke my pinky finger, but turns out to be sprained.

Sunday, I skipped racing and hung out with my wife who is sick and having terrible coughing symptoms.

Monday, Quad Cities was in the 90's, I thought this is going to be a hot race. I took two bottles with me, one was my hammer for drinking and the other was ice water for dumping over my head. At one point during the race I was on Travis, my team mate and I told him I was there. He told me to follow him through turn two and he brought me up to top 10 or so. That was awesome, but it did hurt a bit, but it is going to when the pack is going that fast. With 5 laps to go I was a bit far back in the group and needed to move up. I made my move with 2 to go and started moving up, but didn't move up far enough, I should have kept going, but it is easy to say when it is all over with. I managed to squeek out 13th place, not the top 5 I was hoping for, but I did place better this year than last year.

Most important this is that I had fun and I am ok.

Next up, finishing my yard on Sunday and maybe racing Fitchburg on Saturday.