Mount Pleasant Winery Cyclocross.

Normally I would take this moment to make fun of the label "mount" placed onto this place. However, after having ridden 8 (I think? I honestly lost track of how many) laps of this course, I feel I am in no place to make light of the elevation change here. I was physically and mentally drained... completely. light headed and confused for the majority of it.

Mount Pleasant is in Missouri "Wine Country" which surprisingly makes
some decent wine. The majority of the course seems to have been set up on a "scenic hillside" where tourists were meant to sit and enjoy their Norton. This made for a very unpleasant "mount" (yes, I am aware of the over use of this word play at the race).



This picture seems to portray how the course was on a hillside. It was almost always going up or down. The largest problem was this was that the ground was soft and almost every "down" section ended in a 180 that required all the gained speed to be scrubbed off. All sorts of cyclocross pain and anger was induced.

The race started out as per normal. I was mid back pack. The first time around it didn't really seem that soul sucking. I even rode the runup hill. I was feeling pretty good about myself. Then suddenly about halfway through the second lap my body hit a wall, almost like it was saying "what the fuck are you doing enjoying this"- there was no further enjoyment. I fell back to about midpack with all of the other people hating their lives.

I really wish I could write a more complete writeup, but I honestly don't really remember most of the race. My head was numb. One of the more amusing bits of the course was that it was routed through the bar... I was so crosseyed at that point in the course I don't think I ever remember what it looked like.

Like this apparently


Somewhere toward the last third of the race I crashed pretty hard on one of the many off camber downhills. This might or might not have been when my front tire came so close to rolling that it picked up grass between the rim and base tape.




When I picked myself up off the ground I had dropped another 5 places or so and was feeling all the fight gone from my legs. My goal at this point was to finish without looking too pathetic. I honestly have no idea whether I succeeded or not in that goal... I am guessing not. I didn't linger at the finish. I rode straight to my car and gulped down water and attempted to regain sanity.

I did eventually gain it with the aid of several Augusta Brewing Company beers. I'll probably need a few days to say for sure, but I am thinking that it was a good time.