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.