Cranky Monkey 2009

Us So. Md. boys had 2 teams go down to Quantico this year.
Me, Doc, and Randy G on 1 team . Matt, Barry and Dave on another team.
Me and Matt drove down there Friday evening to pre register our teams and pick out our sites.
Got down there pretty early, saved us from sitting on 95 for as long as last year.
I actually got home early enough to have time to finish packing up without feeling too rushed.
I got an email from Randy saying he pulled his hamstrings and wanted to know if he could back out of doing the Lemans start. Now I had reason to be nervous. I hated doing the start last year, but it wouldn't kill me.

I show up at 7am for the race. The 1st of my team.
Randy shows up and tells me his legs are feeling better and that he can start.
Inside I breath a sigh of relief. I ask him a few times if he's sure. I can do it.
He assures me that he's fine.
So Randy start us off, than me, then Doc.
Randy gets back real quick for the 1st lap. Tells me its muddy and slick and I take off.
I try to remember not to make mistakes that I always do.
Don't try to ride everything, if its quicker and easeir to walk a hill, walk it.
Randy put me in a good position. Very little traffic my first half lap.
The trail was wet and sketchy, but I've been riding Cedarville when I should'nt have been.
I'm pretty good in the mud by now.
Those skills helped me pass a few riders on sketchy decents.
I was watching my computer on the time. I wanted to do better than I had last year.
I was right about an hour and from what I remembered, I thought I had 1.5 miles to go.
I passed the notorious pool, everybody from last years race, when it was 95 remembers this.
With changes they had made to the course, the pool was about the end of the course.
Shit, if I had know I was that close I could of pushed harder that last bit.
I see the school and markings and jump into high gear, like kicking it into over drive now is really going to make a difference.
According to the computer, about 66 minutes.
I'm real happy with that.
Rest of the day continued, Doc,Rand, Me.
Repeat.
I finish my 3rd lap around 5:40 , after doing my worst time, although not nearly as bad as last year.
Doc takes off.
Me and Randy are discussing weather Doc is going to make it back in time for us to get in a 10th lap. So far Docs times say he'll make it, but this is his 3rd and if he's like me he's going to be alot slower. The cut-off to start your last lap is 7:00.
Finally at 6:30 me and randy both decide we don't wanna do a 4th lap anyways and change.
We're doing this for fun. 3 laps was fun. A 4th would be work.
We don't think it'll make a difference in the standing anyways.
So at 6:55 we're staring at the exit at the woods praying we don't see Doc pop out.
At the 7:00 cut-off we do a little dance in celebration. We would've felt like shit if Doc got back in under the limit and we didn't go back out.
Doc gets in a 7:07.
We end up 7th out of 24 in the 3 man masters division.
I'm happy as shit. I only wanted to finish in the top 10.

Looking at the standings later, IF Doc had made it by 6:59 we would have had to pull a 50 minute lap to have gotten 6th place.
Not a chance in hell that would have happend.