Northbrook Cross, CCC #7

Looks ARE Deceiving!

It was an absolutely perfect day as far as weather goes. Though die-hard crossers would have liked to have cold wet nasty conditions, I certainly didn’t mind having 62deg and sunshine. It was nice to not have to deal with a filthy bike, kit, and body once the racing was done!

We arrived and with plenty of time for J to get a nice pre-ride of the whole course and the whole course was fairly with no wet mud so there was no having to decide to skip sections because you didn’t feel like getting muddy yet.

Jerel and I scouted a few parts of the course while we went and got our numbers. As I started to see the course, I was thinking to myself “this looks like it will be fast rolling and won’t be the lung buster all the other courses have been…” Boy was I wrong! I was feeling much better this weekend as I was completely healed from being sick the last couple weeks which helped my certainty a lot.

As I shot pictures and watched the girls race I saw P2, her daughter, and G1 ;-). That was awesome ya’ll came out to watch and cheer! It is so nice to hear familiar voices to cheering you when you’re seeing white fuzzies everywhere! While I watched the girls racing, I was thinking to myself “man, those girls are slowing down and really are starting to look gassed and it’s only the 2^nd lap!!” After the race all the girls said it was really tough, I thought the course didn’t look too tough. WRONG!

I did my pre-ride before the 4a’s and man oh man was that entire back open field super soft. I knew that was going to be a bad section for me and my 26” wheels & MTB gearing.

I was a little nervous for the start of our 75 rider strong race because I knew the holeshot would be critical on this course. I did again get a good start; I seem to really not have much of a problem getting in the front 3^rd of the field before the technical sections. Probably is more a testament to my MTB experience I guess.

My race pretty much played out like I expected after doing my pre-ride. I got decent position going into the bottlenecks and had most of the slowing behind me. There was a dry long off-camber section that wasn’t much of an issue for my MTB. There were a few up-down 180deg turns that I just rode like a half-pipe. A muddy slippy off-camber switchback section gave me a problem the first lap. A couple guys slid out in front of me which forced me change my line. This was a section of the course where you CAN NOT change your chosen line or you would go down. Which I did, but I was expecting it once I had to switch lines, no biggie though except I dropped my chain and about 5 positions of which I would only regain a couple back only to lose more back on the soft flat open field. That’s is really the only place I was passed except for once on the path by a cross bike. The sand pits were pretty much a non-issue for me; I just blasted through at Mach 2 each time. I had a blast grabbing the GU hand ups from Rich Delgado, his were the only ones I was looking for since I knew he repped GU, he taped a bunch on the barrier too, of which I grabbed one.

photo Al Thom

One lap he yelled at me “dude! It’s whole box! A whole box!” I was all over that! But, I bobbled it and he was running with me trying to keep it afloat and I fumbled it. I should have just stopped and picked it up! I will next time, he didn’t save it for the next lap. Ended up 45th of 72 finishers and three DNF's.

All in all, very fun once again and the final drag race between Flannel Mike and Rodrigo through the sand pits to the finish line with everyone cheering them on for the race to not finish last was absolutely priceless!

Campton Cross

St. Charles Mudfest 4b’s

This will be brief, for the most part ;-) Ok, well, as you all know it was muddy and wet. We had a field of 71 start. There must have been 20 something call-ups, the top 10, costumes, Flannel Mike, Greg (the guy in blue), and all the bicycle heaven guys. Jason Knauff was funny on the line. After the call-ups he started off the race instructions with…

“Gentleman, welcome to today’s MAIN EVENT!….THE 4BEEEzzzz!!”

We were all laughing, it was classic!

 The course was wet, muddy, and very as Bear Grylls puts it “slippy”. The first lap I was able to ride everything. I was forced off the bike in the off camber chicane before the path every other time. The long drainage ditch climb on the backside was brutal made much worse by the time change! It was facing west and the sun was sitting right on the edge of the crest and nobody could see any sort of line due to the reflection. The first and most crucial part, the beginning, of the climb was completely blind. The big mud pit/water crossings were interesting. If you took them at speed (which I did) you were fine. The last lap I hit the second one so hard I could see the mud and water fly up past my head in my peripheral vision.

Going into today’s race there was a big ? mark on me. This was my worst cross performance to date, cue the ? mark. I had been, still am a tad, sick for a week and a half prior. I managed to get 45 min on the trainer on Sat before the Sun race. I really wasn’t worried about my legs; I really didn’t know what kind of output I was going to get out of my lungs though. In cross, the lungs are just as important as the legs if not more so. You go anaerobic as long as possible then a short dip into aerobic for recovery (briefly) then right back into the anaerobic zone. I can usually go a good distance while anaerobic, provided I can get full lung inspiration. I had about 70% of capacity. Not nearly enough to push hard.  I was out of it halfway through the first lap, just couldn’t get deep enough into my lungs. I listened to the advice in the article Jim had sent us and just rode it out and stopped pushing super hard because I knew I didn’t “have it” that day. I ended up 52/68 something; and I’m fine with that after being sick and all.