Not much to say about the Anderson Mayor’s Cup Street Sprints (then why are there 4 beefy paragraphs here?) that kicked off the weekend of racing. Between a poor turnout to the event and some confusion on how to properly seed an odd number of riders, the racing was less than exciting. We only had 5 riders register for the 1-2 field; and certainly no more than that in the other categories. Since there were so few people, we ran the sprints “mano a mano” (yes that’s the correct spelling, check it) in a straight, 300-meter line down Meridian St. in old downtown Anderson.
I was “lucky” enough to get the bye in the first round. My luck ran out, however, in many respects when I was told that I would be going up against the loser of the first of the two heats. So in effect, I was automatically in the “repêchage” round – and then I lost that to Tom Hanley of Bacardi Nuvo – who had just lost to Frank “Dude” Cox of Texas Roadhouse. He’s a good kid. Pretty fast (you get that way when you race the velodrome while at Marian.) Blam! I was out in one round, while Tom had the luxury of being able to lose once and then have the opportunity to race himself back into the finals – not to mention the other loser of the first round who didn’t get a chance to win his way back in.
After some discussion, the consensus was to allow the losers of the first round race each other, the winner of which would race “Dude” and myself in the a 3-up final. I picked a better gear to start with this time and jumped out to the early lead. My shifting faltered a bit and before I knew it, both Tom and “Dude” were making there way around me. “Dude” dropped his chain [again] about 100 meters from the finish and I wound up in 2nd. I didn’t feel like I deserved 2nd, since I lost one race prior to get to the final, whereas the other two guys had won 2 and 3 races to get there, and therefore didn’t stick around to see if there was a “prize” waiting for me.
This was a race that only cost $5 to enter anyhow, so I probably shouldn’t have even written more than a few sentences about it. My legs had no snap and I generally felt pretty sluggish. I unfairly took 2nd place. And all in all, I only rode about 600 meters total. C’est la vie. I’m hoping tomorrow’s race will be a better affair.