roadcx.net

The end of my ‘cross season.. There are more races (Knox #2-#4), but I am not going to them. Yesterday was a great cross course at the Greenway Farms park in Chattanooga. Scott Kennedy put enough grass and mud in it to touch on all aspects of cross. I just didn’t have a good race out there… I ended up 3rd (of 4) CX3 who raced in the “B’-race. The separation between all four of us were about 2 minutes from one to the next, so it wasn’t much of a race in that sense.

As for the race, I got sort of jammed up at the start and had to ride behind a bunch of people through the first sections of tight twisty turns.. once back onto the gravel road I started to pass back people and after a while I got into a pretty stable position of 4th in the race (3rd in CX3). Michael V. took off from the gun and quickly established a sizeable lead. The 2nd place rider was a BikeZoo rider that also steadily pulled away from me. I ended up catching and battling back and forth with Ty Geren (a master’s racer). On the last lap, he dropped back and ended up a bit behind me at the end.

During the race, I had a few mistakes that were pretty costly. The main one is that I was unable to ride up the muddy climb. I got close a few times, but just couldn’t make it happen. One of the times in the middle of the race, I had just passed Ty and was trying to ride up the climb (in the 4th different manner). As it became clear that I wasn’t going to make it, I started to dismount but the front wheel had no traction and slid out from under me and ended up on the ground… a lap before I also slid out on a corner (a sharp corner with slick mud)…and ended up on my side still clipped in…

The other issue was in tire selection… I went with Michelin Mud2’s. The problem with these tires in this race (and others) is that mud tends to accumulate and not shed off quickly… Once the mud is there is tends to blind off the tread making the tires nearly useless. I might have to look into a square block tread.

Andrea took a bunch of photos of me… [photo album]