Santa’s and Pasta Hand-ups

Hands up high

            Cyclocross season seems to be passing faster than I ever imagined already the season is almost halfway over and I feel like I’m just now getting used to the pain that occurs from a 60-minute race through mud, sand, and grass. Over the last few weeks I have been racing 2-3 times per week, and it’s starting to show. My body aches in ways that it never did while I was racing on the road, my bike is constantly needing overhauling, and I couldn’t be happier. In an effort to keep cross weird someone at my last race was doing spaghetti hand-ups and if you didn’t take them, you got shower on the next lap with a handful of oil less pasta. It was also our Halloween race weekend; people came dress and raced in everything from Lance Armstrong, ninjas, to star wars characters. Ty and Mark came out on Saturday dressed as Santa Clauses, it was awesome they had the megaphone blasting and the heckling never ceased. Nothing makes me want to ride hard that having a few Santa’s run along side of you telling you that you aren’t even trying and that the girls go faster than you do!

This is how I reward myself for finishing!

I have experienced some great success over the last few weekends. Most recently was last weekend October 27 and 28, our local race series held Halloween Cross weekend at Big Cottonwood Sports complex in Murray Utah. The course was just less than 2 miles long and each lap had 2 sandpit crossings, a muddy run-up, and 2-4 barriers. Since the course was in a park it meant that the course was extremely wide and great for passing. Since I’m sitting in 5^th place in the overall series standing for points I got a great call-up on the front row. The gun went off and I had a textbook perfect start, got my pedal immediately and somehow managed to get the hole shot. I was able to maintain my momentum throughout the entire race until the last lap, a group of 3 racers were gaining on me quickly so I was forced to take some risks in the corners. I had less than a mile to the finish line and about a 9 second lead on the chasers when all of a sudden my luck race out and went down on an off camber turn because of some wet leaves. My falls wasn’t painful and my bike was fine but due to the slant of the course I wasn’t able to get unclipped and lost my lead. When I finally did get pedaling again I sprinted like a madman and managed to pass one guy and finish 3^rd.

Getting the crowd pumped up!

On Sunday we returned for day two of racing, although it was warmer than the day before my muscles were aching and my body didn’t feel like racing. Reluctantly I geared up and rode to the start/finish line. My start wasn’t as good Sunday and it was Saturday but I still managed to finish our first lap in 4^th place. As we were approaching the sand pit a teammate of mine came of next to me and told me he was going to get me as close to the front as possible before he bonked. His surges were relentless and timed perfectly. When he finally threw in the towel I was sitting in 2^nd place and had only one racer on my wheel. The leader had about a 20 second lead on us, so I convinced the guy on my wheel to work with me to close the gap. We took turns pulling for about 25 minutes then my friend and teammate who was watching the race Tim told me that it was time to leave him and do the rest of the work by myself because he was cooked and just sitting on my wheel. I launched a 30 second attack and that was all it took to drop him. I spend the remaining 2 laps riding myself to the point of exhaustion. I never did catch the leader but managed to close the gap to 10 seconds. I finished 2^nd for the 3^rd time this season, for some reason that top step seem to be just out of my reach. Ill keep training and practicing so that I stop making stupid mistakes that end up costing me the race. Having said that tonight I’m racing Clammy Cross which is a night race down in the Provo area, hopefully my legs have recovered and my body feels like going