I thought my legs were going to have a lot of lead in them today, wasn’t too sure what I had in them. You see, yesterday, Jerel and I did 60 miles with Quadzilla and J Deisel…pretty easy ride for them (me thinks), moderate for me, and pretty tough for Jerel. Which leads me into today…
I had two races on the docket today. Fall Fling crit at noon and the DeKalb cross race at 3.
Fall Fling
The course was pretty much an oval with a slight rise after the start/finish up to the first of 2 roundabouts which we were only allowed around one side…thank god! I can’t even imagine cat 4’s trying to navigate a left right option! I can see the massive crash in my right now!
Anyway, when I found Greg before our race I told him I didn’t know what to expect from my legs today since doing 60 yesterday. I did a couple hard efforts in my warm-up and they felt kind of funny, I thought “oh well, we’ll see what happens”. Greg and I talked a bit beforehand and we agreed that if I was there at the end that I would jump up front, lift the pace as hard as I could as long as I could. Well, low and behold I was up there in the end.
I spent most all the race in the pack. There wasn’t a whole lot going on, a couple moves went up the road a couple times but they were never really going away from the pack. In a another move about mid race I looked up the road and thought one of the three kits looked like ours, I noticed a white dot in the middle of a black butt and red on the kit, that’s when I realized Greg had bridged up to the two that made the move. I thought, crap! I should be up front trying to slow the field or something. I immediately swung to the outside of the pack and booked it up to the front and when I got there Greg and his buddies were coming back to us fast….too late, sorry Greg.
When we came across the line and heard the 2 to go shout, I calmly moved up the front on the rise and as we went down the other side and turned into the headwind, I went! I swung out wide into the wind and stomped on it simultaneously. I gave 10 hard cranks and moved back over to the middle; put my head down and just followed the center line in the road for a bit, not sure how long but a WDT guy came around my and I just grabbed his wheel. We kept at it, passing a few guys, not sure if they were getting lapped or the remnants of an earlier move, but they couldn’t hold onto us. I assumed I was dragging the entire pack, looked back and we had a gap!! I didn’t have much in me though, the red light was blinking rapidly! We stayed at it a bit longer and I looked back again and the pack was about 30m behind us single file…I told WDT “dude, we’re $%&ed!!” WDT and I led the bunch across the line for the start of the bell lap. I knew I had burnt all my biscuits so I just let everybody ease by and jumped on the back and just rolled it in from there. I was happy with that, I had done what we pre-planned and surpassed my goals for the race that I thought about when I woke up this morning.
DeKalb Cross
This was my first cross race ever in life! I did it on my MTB as I don’t have a cross bike. I did get some 1.6 tyres from a buddy so I had that going for me!
Well, I have done a few MTB races in my time (wink) so I had a pretty good idea what needed to happen at the start. The old cliché’ to not judge a book by its cover does not apply at the start line of a 4b cross race, I leaned on my MTB prowess here. I looked around at the bikes and equipment and new exactly who I did not want to be behind in those first few crucial turns so I wiggled and sandwiched my way in between two guys on the front line when we rolled to the line…I was right! I hit the first turn in the top 15 and heard the mess behind me that I knew was gonna happen. I finished the first lap in the top 20 but was dying fast in the soft grass sections, I absolutely flew through the technical sections like a true MTB’er would. Problem was, after a technical section where I would pick off a guy or two we would hit the long soft grass sections and I would get passed by a guy or two, sometimes more…that was the problem more would pass me in the grass than I would pass in the technical spots. Those grass sections felt like I was riding in glue! Sucked cuz I was just housing guys in the technical twisty fast off-camber bumpy tight tree turns stuff!! So, I just stayed in the fastest rhythm I could and drilling it where I knew I was strong.
I ended up 42nd out of 73 and was the second MTB across the line (as far as I was told). It was a lot of fun, the crowd was awesome, the only dudes I ever really heard were the guys beating on the snare drum. Whom requested a wheelie on lap 2, to which I obliged on lap 3 and they just lost their mind banging on the drum, then I passed a crosser after the wheelie and I thought those guys were going to break the drum beating on it then…it was awesome! (I did hear you Kathy and Jerel, just barely once, sorry, I was zoned out on that climb).
