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Thanks to Emma Williams from Chattanooga for taking some photos of me in the Columbia race on Saturday. Her flickr page can be found here.

Here is her series of photos over the course of the CX3 – M35/45+ – W CX1/2/3.

Start

I am hidden behind Cal Hill (Memphis Cross jersey) leading the way in this photo…

After cruising down the road and around a hairpin curve, we hit at set of barriers where I had a lot of trouble clipping in… here is me trying to make up some lost ground.

I am not sure of the sequence of all of these, but here are bunch of barrier shots from the middle of the race. The shouldering set is from the 3rd set of barriers/run up. The other ones are from the high speed 2nd set of barriers.

This photo is from around the middle of the race after I passed the CKW rider (#8, Lucas) and was being chased again by the Cumberland Transit / Vandy rider (Edward Krei, he ended up catching and passing me unfortunately):

The results are posted up for both races on the TBRA site:

• Columbia #1 (Saturday)
• Columbia #2 (Sunday)

I also ordered my set-back seat post. I stayed with a Thomson since I like the straight one that I am using now and just want to try to move my seat back a little bit to see if I can get to the pedals better. I am pretty consistent on hitting the pedals on the center of my foot. I take that to mean that I expect them to be a few inches more to the front. I am not sure if it the right thing to do, but it makes sense to me…. Tennessee CX states is on Sunday, so I can try it out later this week and Saturday before I need to race it on Sunday.

Today I raced the CX3 race again up at Columbia. This course was a bit different than Saturday and had some mild single-track sections, but was still very fast.

I got off to a better start and rode a good race. After lots of back and forth I ended up into the last barriers with Cal Hill (from Memphis) and a Nashville Cyclist racer. Unfortunately, I wasn’t so quick on getting clipped into my pedals (one of my most consistent problems) and was chasing those two the last bit small bit off the course. Right before the finish, the course had a hairpin turn on the grass followed by an uphill sprint. I closed some of the distance, but it ended up Cal 4th, the Nashville Cyclist racer 5th (0.5 second), and me 6th: 3 seconds behind. Two more were behind us in our field.

This weekend featured some great racing and some good fast power courses. I know if I could make some adjustments to get to the pedals quicker (I am thinking I need to get a set back seatpost since I have the seat all the way back already…I moved it 3/4″ back for Sunday and it helped.. ) The CX3 races are crazy competitive and some good fields have been showing up. The winner was in a different class and he put 90 seconds in the next guy. All the rest were spread out by 10 seconds or so. After 45-50 minutes that is pretty good. Some guys get out there and blow up (like about 3-4 that I passed) and some get out there and blow up and then recover… (like Cal).

Looking at the results from Saturday. The included the lap times… It is good to see that my upgrade to CX3 was not in vain. I would have won the CX4 races at a similar pace and it was shorter. When I upgraded, I had a string of last place (albeit in small fields) for the CX3. I think it pretty much had to do with the amount / intensity of the weight training I was doing. In January, I am working around the racing and the type of lifting I am doing is not that taxing (like the 4×10 reps I was doing in Oct/Nov, for example).

My first lap was 6:39 (it is shorter). After that, I ran 7:22, 7:26, 7:34, 7:21, 7:31, and 7:29. That is the type of race I like to run where I stay pretty much the same and don’t fade. The 7:21 was probably when I was chasing down someone in front of me.

These races are giving me some great limited doses of effort and I know that I will be the better for it. Plus it is a lot of fun.

Racing continues next week at States (Nashville, 1/13), Columbia #3/#4 (1/19 & 1/20), and Chattanooga #2 (1/26).