It was really interesting to race cx out of town, against a field of women I knew little to nothing about. The course was much different from what we typically see locally. It was basically a large field with wild grass. The course was mowed into it, the only stakes/tape was at the "spiral of death." They also had a warm up track, with practice barriers, prepared. It was a warm, windy day, about 70 degrees at race time. I decided to race masters 30+ since I would not be able to make the whole CXstitch 3/4 series--so points in the series didn't matter to me. I got a good warm up in and put a few efforts into it. I wasn't riding my normal race wheels so I want to make sure I knew how these would handle. I also did a practice lap of the course immediately prior to our race.
There were four women's races being held concurrently (3/4, 30+, 40+, 50+). We started in 30 second increments. The three master's fields went first. We got the whistle and I jumped hard. I wanted the whole shot. One lady got ahead of me but I went after her wheel. She pulled away from me at the steep little uphill, and I got passed by another lady at the barriers. I could see Cory staying pretty close to me. She's racing really well this year, so I knew that I needed to push myself to stay away from her. My chest was on fire when I went through the start/finish and saw three on the lap card. The second lap went well and I was expanding my gap on the master's field. During the third lap, I got passed by the 3/4 leader. I made it to the spiral of death and was great until I hit the center of it. I wasn't looking where I wanted to go and ended up running smack in the pole at the center. I jumped up and got back on, but got passed by three girls in the meantime. I went hard to increase my gap on the master's ladies behind me. I got the bell and headed back out on course. I was a little more careful in the spiral this time and made it through without a problem and finished strong. I ended up first in the 30+ and 7th overall I believe.
The course started on a straight into the wind. It curved left to a gentle downhill switch back. After a hard left, hard right there was a short steep downhill with a wide 180 and a short steep uphill. From there it curved around with a gentle uphill to the barriers. After the barriers it curved a few times, climbing gently to the "spiral of death." Basically you went round and round to the apex of the spiral and back out. From the spiral there was a long downhill section with a turn at the end that took you right back up. From there we went back to the front section of the course where it wound a bit to the start/finish.
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| My prize & medal! |
Sunday's course was longer than Saturday's...it had some of the same features, but had some rocky, mountain-bikish downhill sections. We headed out for a warm up lap and I was climbing a little steep hill. I took off gear and just began spinning wildly--I originally thought I'd dropped my chain. I hopped off the the bike and my chain was dragging the ground. I shouldered the bike and went up the pit, but my field was already on the line getting instructions . . . and no one had a chain tool . . . and they kept telling me I needed a special chain tool for a Campy chain. I was disappointed because it was basically the same field. I would have loved to try to take them on again. And it really annoys me the results show DNF instead of DNS.
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