Saturday’s race was at Interlocken, a business park in between Denver and Boulder. In tow I had two of my old collegiate teammates, Anna and Ben, both cross newbies. Neither had ever participated in, let alone spectated, the glorious religion-sport that is cyclocross. I warned them ahead of time that the race was going to be way lamer than the “real” cross races on the East Coast or Pacific Northwest. We pulled into the parking lot (blasting Dio’s “Holy Diver”, THE best pre-race song ever) and much to my relief attendance was rocking! When I went to register and starting doing the “holy crap that’s x” I knew it was going to be a good first race for Anna and Ben. The course was more exciting (i.e. Euro-style) than usual too: lots of grass, a sand pit, and a muddy creek crossing going into a muddier run-up that was nearly impossible not to slip on. Ben placed top-20 in the Cat 3 race, pretty good for a cross virgin (Anna was just there to spectate). Numbers in the women’s race were at double what they usually are. I got a decent call-up being ranked 14th in Colorado and lined up in the front row. Then, I can’t figure out how the heck this keeps happening, seeing as I have always had a serious lack of fast-twitch and cannot sprint to save my life, but I got the hole shot again! Actually, I was second into the first corner, but my start was pretty unreal. Within 30 seconds Laura Kroepsch and I had a sizable gap on the rest of the field and soon after Dellys Star joined us. I couldn’t believe how far ahead we were on the first lap. Dave Towle (to whom I frequently apply the term “god”) was announcing and couldn’t figure out who I was. After a couple laps of this too good to be true position I decided to turn up the suck knob from 0 to 8. I exploded like a beer can left too long in the freezer. I don’t know whether this problem is metal (I’m just not willing to be in as much pain as I need to be) or physical (not training well/hard enough, starting too hard) but I am freaking tired of it. The race became a mental battle of trying to stay focused and not get discouraged enough to DNF. I was making up enough time on the run up and the technical sections not to fall back too far–but it was still a major crash and burn. I think I finished 12th or something. Gah!
Red Rocks CX #2
Woke up to 5 inches of snow! WTF Colorado—it was 83 and sunny yesterday! I couldn’t believe it when Ben called to say the day’s cross race was still on. They were expecting 6-10 inches up in Evergreen where the race was. The bad (or, rather, wonderful) weather inspired us to bring our finest neon spandex and the house bottle of Glenfiddich. I made some gluten-free vegan flaxseed pancakes (rendered quite edible by large amounts of maple syrup imported from Holiday Farm) and we hit the very, very snowy road. Today was Anna’s first cross race so I spent most of my time before the race telling her she wasn’t going to die and cheering for our friends in the earlier races. A little Greyhound Juice, loud metal, and whiskey (just kidding) was a sufficient warmup for what appeared to be a killer course. It was pretty epic even by New England standards. Tons of mud, snow, sandy gravel, and creek crossings. I didn’t bother preriding or warming up. I just didn’t want to rock the all too familiar hole shot–>fade move. Ended up top-10 into the first corner and spent the next few laps picking off riders ahead of me. By the second to last lap I was in 2nd and the girl in 1st was close in sight. I caught her on a technical section and then instead of sitting on her wheel for the open flat section I immediately attacked her, moving into 1st. Although I was riding the upcoming technical section faster than most other riders, it probably wasn’t smart to attack so soon. I should’ve sat on for a while because she ended up catching back up to me on the last lap when I was feeling the effort. I stayed close to her for most of the last lap but then bobbled a few sections and lost her, rolling across the line 2nd. A bit of a bummer because a W was in sight, but I was pleased to have raced hard throughout the entire race instead of just the first lap. Every race has a lesson!
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