Yo me gusto cyclocross!

I think I might be addicted to cross. Or maybe it’s just racing my bike that I like so much, but either way, Sunday was awesome! I made another small component upgrade to the Fondriest (switched out the stupid commuter pedals for SPDs. This made a huge difference in remounting) bringing my total bill for bike rebuild to about $120. Not bad!

The races that I’ve been in are part of a larger five race series. Because my buddy Kevin (who finished 7th on the day and ended up 8th in the overall series) didn’t convince me to race cross until the 3rd race in the series, race number 5 for everyone else was race number 3 for me. That’s a lot of confusing number placement so go ahead and take the time to read that previous sentence one more time if needed.

Outside of track racing it’s a safe bet to say that no two courses are the same. Even on the road race organizers can get creative with chicanes in downtown sections or take up really steep short hills in some races and longer climbs in others. I really liked the course at Coyote Point. It had a few elements that we hadn’t had in the last few races. Some of these aspects were:

- A long climb with some steep sections thrown in for good measure. I am not a power guy so I really like climbing. This climb was long enough to hurt the power guys and steep enough to hurt what seemed like everyone else. On the first lap when it was still bunched up I was able to pass a lot of people on this climb. On the laps that followed after it had strung out a bit I was still going by at least one or two each time up.

- A very technical section of four consecutive 180 degree switchbacks over woodchips. I can’t imagine a cluster of woodchips like that was natural so I can only assume they were brought in by the race organizer. This section was insanely hard and I thought it’d give me a lot of trouble. I am going to chalk up my riding this section clean and actually passing people through here as pure dumb luck. There is no way I should have gotten through there clean, but I did. One guy following me actually praised me on my cornering skills as we exited the 4th one. This made me laugh because I really had no idea what I was doing.

- A long descent (what goes up must come down) on not very smooth single track. There was one good line so if you were in front you could pick it. Outside of that you just had to follow the wheel in front of you and hope he picked it. The exceptions were the guys on mountain bikes on the first lap who basically decided they didn’t care about the line and just bombed the thing.

- A beach. There was a section of about 50 yards on a loose sandy beach. As people ran this section the sand got packed and later races eventually started riding the whole thing. For the C’s at 8:30am I don’t think anybody was riding it. I never even attempted it and it’s the one time that all those years of triathlon came in handy. I passed about 10 guys on the first lap running this section. On the subsequent laps I would maybe pass one guy or run at the same pace. Today I have a bruise on my right shoulder from carrying the tank more lovingly known at the Fondriest over this sandy section. Later I asked people how they managed to keep their saddle from constantly banging them in the back of the head as they ran and nobody had an answer. I guess that’s just the way it works.

- There was a set of barriers that were totally bunny hop-able. And while I was going to try it on the last lap I didn’t because I was trying to hold my place and didn’t want to lose it because I did something stupid.
- There were also two pretty significant sections of pavement where the power guys would really throw the hammer down. Since I am by no means one of these guys with huge amounts of power I would simply try to hold wheels and get as much of a draft as I could. I usually ended up passing them on either the climb or some other technical section of the course.

Now, if you got through all of that rambling I’m sure you’re thinking I won the race since I did nothing but mention all of the people I was constantly passing. Unfortunately this was not the case because I started about three rows from the back of the pack due to being a complete idiot. On my warm up lap I lost track of time and suddenly realized I was on the only person riding through this one section. I glanced at my watch and realized I had about 2 minute before the race started. I had to sprint through the middle of the course to get myself to the staging area and the only place I could squeeze in was at the back. So, most of those people I passed on the first climb and beach section were people I should have been way in front of to begin with.

In the end I finished 23rd out of 68 with is another big improvement over my 38th from Golden Gate Park and 2nd to last at Sierra Point (this result really shouldn’t count due to 17 chain drops). In the overall classification for the series I moved up to the top 30 (I think. They don’t have this posted and I’m trying to remember what they had posted at the race) despite having skipped the first two races.

Basically using very complex mathematical formulas on this degree of progression will bring you to see that as long as I stay on this trajectory I should be World Champion in about a year.

I would like to race a few more CX races, if for nothing else to use as threshold/power workouts. But, with the road season quickly approaching Northern California I feel like I should save any travel money for those races. And since I know this ending is keeping you glued to the edge of your seat waiting to see if I race anymore, you’ll just have to come back to find out.