roadcx.net

At last, everything sort of came together for cross. The weather turned the course from a nice day at the park to a soggy, slippery muddy slog. I front loaded my weight training this week to get the intensity out of the way by Tuesday. Work had its part as well and forced two days in row off the bike (Thursday & Friday). The race was Sunday, so I hit RB’s on Saturday morning for nice 40 mile ride with two LT 3-minute intervals…

So I was ready.

[CX3 & Women CX123 start line]

I had a normal start and let the craziness happen in front of me for the first 1/2 lap. The course featured a lot of slippery mud and off-camber turns on said mud. After the start, I was a little off the pace at first up the long hill to the first set of muddy rooty turns. Some of the leaders got tangled up sliding out on the root, I was able to close up. I followed it up by sliding out on the following corner and ended up just running up through the barriers. I ended up running the deep mud section to the second forced run up as well. The first time through the sand, my front tire slid out on the wooden border, requiring me to run it. I stayed with that as well since I think, for me, it was faster.

As the race started to spread out I started to get more and more confident through the sections of 2″ deep grassy mud and started to pull people back and keep them behind me. At one point there was about 4 racers strung out behind me applying the pressure…don’t make a mistake… one mistake and we have you… I managed to keep the mistakes to a minimum and somehow limit the damage when I did bobble.

The course was a long 2.1 mile course, so we only did 4 laps. The CX3 field strung out to the point that I couldn’t see those up the road (the eventual winner Michael Biegalski and two others) anymore and was left with Olaf Wasternack breathing down my neck for most of the last couple laps. Every time I made a mistake he would close in and I would have to continue the fight. I rode the last lap pretty much cleanly and was able to keep him behind me for 4th place. Although this is not a great result, I am really happy about how I raced this course which quite honestly worried me on the pre-ride laps. I have not been much of a technician…. that is developing some I guess.

The main thing that I really encourages me about all of this is that my fitness, weight, and mood are better in January than I ever remember (except for 2001 or 2002 maybe). I am still in the base training regime and plan to really start the racing on the road in April. I updated the race calender and then created a version for myself that eliminated races that I knew I would not do. It is a long season, but as long as I keep things to a plan, it will be good one. It is amazing what can happen if you don’t take 2-3 weeks off the bike every couple of months to go overseas. This is it, I am already 32, time to see what I can do.

Andrea came along and took the race photos of me and also managed to capture teammate Susan Williams in her race (Women CX4).