Sunday, October 25, 2009

PICX II--That's a Winner!




Sam and I loaded up the bikes and headed to Godfrey, IL on Saturday. This was the second race in a new Saturday series of cross races. We had decided Friday night that Sam would take the new cx bike and I would stay with our original. We got there and registered. The lady handling the registration was so excited that woman were racing. Sam got the bikes ready for us while the 5K cross country race was running. I had thought about entering it, and seeing how slow everyone was, I should have.
I rode around the park and on the trail while I was waiting for the race to end. They gave the announcement that the course was open and jumped on for a warm up lap. The course was mostly flat but had lots of turns. The grass varied in height so some areas were much slower than others. There were a ton of turns in this course. The promoters bill this as the Corn Maze race and it was definitely a maze. I reached the barrier and hopped off and jumped over. I thought it was odd there was only one. I remounted and came to a screeching halt…there was the other one. They were oddly far apart with a small turn in between. After the barriers, the course only had a few turns till the pavement/trail section. The next grass section was crazy. I thought I was lost several times and almost got turned around in the round-about. Coming to the straight away at the start/finish there was one off-camber spot. I made it through once and they called us to the start.
The beginner men and women were going to be on the course together. There were about 12 men and four women. I told myself it would be freakin’ embarrassing to finish third or fourth in the race. Of the three other women, two had raced in Hermann. Sara started us and I jumped off the line. I was not getting caught behind anyone this race. I locked easily into the new pedals (first time on the bike with the eggbeaters). I got out in front of the other girls and jumped in front of about half of the men’s field. I got the barriers and realized I forgot to click out. I stopped before crashing and got off none too gracefully, hopped over both before remounting this time and took off again. I kept neck and neck with Mark (one of the other girl’s husband). We traded positions a few times as we went through. We crossed the start/finish line and went around again.
During the second lap, I passed Sam with a quiet, “sorry, honey, gotta go.” He cheered me on. I was almost to the barriers when I heard the announcer say the leader of the women’s race, Kate, was going past him. I yelled, pretty forcefully, “What??? What am I then?” About thirty seconds later he corrected that. I was still staying tight with Mark on the back section of the course. We were going through a turn and I tried to take him on the outside. He went wide and I went into the tape. I yelled (not at him) a bit more, but stayed upright and got back on track. Mark turned around and apologized for his lack of bike handling. As we hit the start/finish area, I realized the third place male was in front of us. I urged Mark to go after him. (this was his first cross race). We both over took the third place guy.
The rest of the race was pretty uneventful. I accidently stayed in my big ring on one lap. That’s when Mark got a gap on me. I lapped the third and fourth place women at some point. I was half way through a warm down lap before the announcer had realized I won. I think he should have waited to start drinking. All-in-all it was a good race. It had a lot of turns, but none of them as tight as the last course. My heart rate being high didn’t freak me out as bad. When it was all said and done, I realized I probably should have raced the women’s 3/4 instead of the Beginner. Next week will be tough as both races are women’s open.

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