Oregon Thursday Night Race Report

The past two weeks found me residing in Ashland, Oregon, where I was attending the United Bicycle Institute (UBI) brazed frame building course. While there, I ventured north to White City (outside Medford) to check-out the Southern Oregon Thursday Night training races at Jackson County raceway (drag strip). Monique, a fellow student who is a Kenda Tires elite womens team member from Wisconsin, accompanied me to the race. With our class finishing at 5 p.m., and a 6 p.m. start time, we were a little "rushed" to the race, arriving with the racers on the line. However, the race promoter and official were understanding and held up the start long enough for us to gear up and sign the waiver on the line. Luckily for us the race started slow, as we had absolutely no warm-up, not that you needed a warmup when it was 95 plus degrees. Oh, and we didn't know the course. Started OK, heading up the drag strip, turning right to follow the staging area, and then down a service road (although the disappearing pavement on the left side got my attention). The big surprise was when the field suddenly turned off the "road" and followed what was no wider than a golf cart path, passing right next to a ticket booth (I was later advised to be a little careful about taking the inside line, as they had "problems" last year - something about slamming into the side of the building I was passing by inches each lap). On about the third of fourteen laps a rider launched an attack, which Monique (the only woman in the race) felt obligated to chase down (with me muttering something about "instigators"). About halfway through the race Monique flatted and dropped out, one of about five flats, apparently caused by "goat heads" on the course. The pace gradually increased through the course of the race until such time I realized that, despite my attention to drinking my whole bottle, I was totally cooked (literally) and went into pass/fail racing mode, rolling in to finish 10th or so. The funniest thing all night was finding Monique (a "foreign" woman) surrounded by admiring men after the race, and being told by a local racer that the altitude was about 75 ft (actually 2,000 ft). All in all, probably a better use of time than going to the brew pub.

DJ

P.S. The clothing vendor for the Kenda Tires team is, you guessed it, Verge. And would you believe that the seams on all their shorts is coming undone? Would you believe that supposedly Verge has yet to resolve the issue? I didn't think so!