Uncle Sam..../(am I a Sandbagger?)

I was glad I almost didn't get lost on my way to Prospect park in Troy. I did my usual direction prep of half-heartedly studying a google.map for a week prior to my departure. And as usual it only kind of worked out for me. (It turns out that Prospect park is not directly [read, visible] off of route 7 as you come down into Troy) But as luck would have it I pulled out from a stop sign behind a suburban toting two 'cross bikes on the back. Lucky!

Nycross and Capital Bike Racing put together a pretty cool little cross course. A couple of the highlights were: the spiral of death (a very tight in and out spiral), a spot with a pretty view of Albany (oxymoron?), a nice grassy/muddy run up, a large amount of technical turns, and the slippery downhill off camber grassy S-turn (there was massive amount of carnage here). Plus the major open sections were limited in length and usually had some type of techical element to spice things up (like a dirty uphill, or sloped grass).

After I bundeled up and got in a good enough warm-up I headed to the start 15 minutes early. This time I was resolute to get in the first row, have the holeshot and see how the race would go if I could get the best lines for the first lap or two. It went pretty well.
It was pretty uneventful.
But, it went well.

I was second going into the spiral of death/technical aspects and could see I would be taking better lines than the leader. I glanced back before the first straight away and decided to make a move and keep the persuing hounds at bay. I hamered for the next half lap or so. Next thing I know, I look back and there's no one on my tail. I open up a bit more of a gap, maybe to 10-15 seconds of so and just sit there.
I guess I figured i was going hard enough that I didn't need to kill my self and work for a bigger gap (what would that have gotten me), and then if I did get caught I would still have something in the tank to battle with.
But man, it makes for a fricken boring race. The middle 1/3 lull kicked in and my neck got sore looking back to make sure no one was moving up. I did have to punch it a little hard on the last half of the last lap when 2nd and 3rd looked like they wanted blood. And I only ended up winning by 4 seconds.
Sorry it's not more of a spirited race report. But it wasn't a very spirited race. I was thinking I should have raced the A race. (to be clear I raced the 'B' [3/4]) But on my cool down I rode past a guy unloading three identical, very clean, Redlines from his car and felt pretty sure that I rode the right race for this week.
Well, we'll see in Wrentham.

Results are Here
I won a light for my bike. Which is something I've wanted so that's cool. Plus it costs more than the $17 I would have won if I was in the 'A' race. Well, it did cost more in '05 when it was made. And dispite the fact that the Graphic Designer chose to go with a Scott Howard double instead of shelling the dough for a cleanly shaven pro Cyclist, I think it'll work well.