Rode the Tour De Donut Ohio on Saturday. It was perfect weather and a very nice course. This is why I love these organized rides (or, in this case, race), I was able to ride with/draft off some other riders (especially nice when I hit the headwind the last 5 miles). Temp 64-84F, wind from W. 30.71mi in 1:43:38 (17.8mph), my fastest ride of the season. I was 2nd in the recumbent division in raw time (1:54:47 including donut stops, 9:50 behind the winner in the division, scroll clear to bottom of this page) which put me in the top 90 overall out of over 1000, but only ate 3 donuts (5 riders in the division ate 12 or more which knocked an hour off their times), so didn’t finish in the top 3 (I was 4th, scroll down to bottom of this page) in donut-adjusted time in the division. 🙁
Category: racing
A good Saturday night at the races
We sold our old house to Sherry’s best friend, Cyndy and her husband, Beau, 9 years ago. For about 15 years now, Beau has been racing at the Columbus Motor Speedway. He was twice track champion in the street stock/sport stock division and has finished 2nd or 3rd in the points several more times. A few years ago, Sherry and I started going out to watch Beau on Saturday’s as our “date night.” Growing up I was always more a fan of open-wheel (Indy car) racing than stock cars, but Beau is starting to win me over. Anyway, 2 weeks ago, Beau set a new track record in qualifying at 15.833 seconds, unfortunately, he got boxed in relatively early in the feature and ended up finishing a ways back (I don’t remember 9th, 11th, something like that, I could look it up, but it isn’t that important). Last week, he was fastest qualifier, but the features got rained out. This week he was again fast qualifier. Since the track is small and the features relatively short (normally 25 laps in the sport stock division), they invert the qualifying order to set the field for the feature. The fast qualifier pulls a number between (I think) 6 and 12 and that is where he/she starts 2nd fastest starts 1 spot in front, etc. The idea is to make the races a little more competitive since the fast qualifier would almost always win if they got to start on the pole in such a short race. Well, he was fast qualifier (16.089, I think, it doesn’t really matter) and drew the worst possible number for the inversion, 12. That meant he started on the outside of the 6th row, I think 20 cars started the feature, so more cars in front of him than behind him. The cars in the outside rank got a great start and Beau had made up 3 or 4 spots by the end of the 1st lap. By the time the first caution came out on lap 8, he was already up to 6th. He had moved into 2nd by the time of the final caution on lap 15 and after a great restart won the race going away. That was his first win in over a year and, I believe, moved him up to 3rd in the point standings. Congrats, Beau
I’m back and still alive
Yes, I made it back from Nicaragua, though the flight(s) home were more of an adventure than we had planned on. It was a great trip and I’ll post about it (with pictures) sometime in the next few days. I’ve been pretty tired since I got home though, hence no new posts until now. Today is opening day at the Columbus Motor Speedway where my friend Beau Davis races. I hope the rain holds off long enough to get Beau’s race in.
Update: The entire racing program was rained out last night, so opening night will be next Saturday night.