Just me venting, good luck if you read it.

I've been frequently riding by the Roseville All-American Speedway for the past three years, constantly thinking about how rad it'd be to host a race there. LeadOut Racing, a super cool team based in the Sacramento area who make awesome race videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EvtYmdO7p4I), had the same thought and the ambition to make it happen.

Totally impressed with how organized the race was, even more so because this is their first go at it and it seemed like they were doing everything right. NorCal racers need to take this race more seriously in 2013, hopefully a calender move to earlier in the year will help facilitate that.

The race course is crazy technical, which is its strong point. Hairpins and 120+ degree turns all over the place, and leads into and around the speedway. Before the race Bruce, the lead official, warned us about the corners and told us he'd be lenient about cutting them if we were out of control, as did the lead car, telling us to be extra careful through one corner in particular.

Sure enough, the first lap into the race there was a nasty crash in that corner (the fifth crash of the day in that corner). The crash allowed myself and two other riders to distance ourselves from the peleton - which was actually extremely cheap of us.

For the next three laps, my group made the exit of the corner wider than it was by cutting some cones - allowing us to safely take the corner if we were going too fast. The peleton found cutting the cones made the corner safer at high speeds and did the same.

See high-tech picture demonstrating this: http://i.imgur.com/KrTz2.jpg

Eventually one of the riders fell off pace of the group and my now solo breakaway partner started attacking me repeatedly.

I followed his moves and lined up to counter-attack through a series of turns. I came into the dangerous corner with too much speed, cut the cones in order to avoid crashing like everyone had been doing when coming into the corner with too much speed, and continued on my attack.

My attack proved well timed and I left him behind. By the finish I put more than one minute into him and caught up to eight seconds behind the peleton (third place).

After the race, the lead official, Bruce, decided to relegate me to second place. His arguments were that by cutting the cones I awarded myself an unfair advantage, and that this trumped the fact that I had to in order to safely navigate the corner. As for his pre-race announcement of being lenient around unsafe corners, apparently it was just pre-race rambling.

Everything rolled down to the fact that the dangerous corner came at the exact moment my breakaway partner cracked. Had he not have been cracked, he would have taken the corner just as fast as me, and have cut the cones like he had done just as many times as I had in the race.

Bruce could not understand this, no matter how many times and in different ways I explained it to him. He was too focused on the fact that in this one instance I had cut the cones and my breakaway partner did not, and somehow did an illogical, mental hoop jump to connect this to the immediate twenty second advantage I developed within the next lap.

The post-race emotions of being absolutely robbed of a win due to the unfair and obviously biased enforcement of a rule by Bruce, combined with various poor sportsmanship comments from my primary competitor made standing on the podium unbearable. With sincere apologies to LeadOut Racing, I made the decision to boycott the podium.

The worst part is that my mental image of Bruce, who I've known for half my life, will forever be marred. Not so much by his decision, but just the complete and utter disregard of logic and fairness in making that decision.

This sport is incredibly hard and demanding for everyone. Success is often fleeting, the majority of time is spent in pain, suffering, and solitude. The highs from winning are great, but they are always followed by horrible lows. Today was a tremendous low. I was already unsure about racing in 2013, this did not help at all.