green acres cyclocross

holy shet we had some crappy weather today; perfect weather, though, for cyclocross! I believe we were at about 35F at the time of our race, and had snow/drizzle coming down on us to varying degrees throughout the 30 minutes. Miserable. Awesome.

I invited the popsicle kisses crowd to come out and see what all the fuss was about -- I understand thems got real cold and wet like, but I thoroughly appreciated their presence. I could hear them cheering for me on each lap; thanks guys!

Let's see if I can recap appropriately...

Race is to start at 11am. I wanted to get there on-time/early this weekend (as opposed to my other races this fall which have all felt rushed) so I plotted an ETA of no later than 9:30am. Apples (formerly Weezy), A and I had a nice sit-down breakfast at Zumbro and arrived out in Lake Elmo right on time. I planned to ride the trainer outside of the car, but I was way to cold; Apples and I decided to take to the local roads and get our "warm-up" in there. I worked out fine, and we lined up with about 50+ other folks for the C race.

The course was in part (or completely?) designed by Ped; he puts together good courses from experience so I was eager to give it a go. There was a giant hill at the outset of the course that would be integrated into the mid-point of the course in subsequent laps. After that we rode up and around a large field, which allowed time to recover from the climb. The climb was brutal. By the second lap, almost everyone around me was riding real slow like upon cresting that hill. Would have been a great time to make a move, but I was equally blown. I checked the heart rate after the hill on the first two laps and registered in the high 180's each time. Close to dizzy-time, so I stopped checking on the rest of the laps -- there was no point and I was just going to waste more energy.

After the loop around the field came the descending. I really like descending; mostly because I'm not shitty at it. And a lot of other road racers are kind of pusses when it comes to riding fast down hill. I thank my silly dh/freeride days for this. I stayed up on the off-camber switchbacks for all but my last lap; I stacked it good on the final turn in my final lap after having made up ground on 4 or 5 dudes with some hard work on the field just before. When I got up, my handlebars were super tweeked to the side and I tried to straighten my front end in vein as the same 4 or 5 dudes went back past me. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Back to the course...

After crossing the start/finish line (this is a circuit course, btw, sort of like a lot of auto racing you see on teevee) we hung a left and rolled around the farm land a bit, through a hairpin turn and into a fast sand section. It was only about 20ft long so it was totally ridable. You just had to not stop. Some folks did. These folks fell. After the sand, there was one more obstacle before hitting the massive hill; an off camber run-in to a barrier and a left turn into a steep little run up. It was tough because the barrier was perpendicular to the course before the run up so you had to jump the barrier, and then immediately start running up hill 90 degrees to your left. This sucked a lot of the energy out of my legs just in time for hitting the hill.

All in all things went well. I stacked it only once and it was at the end. I learned I'd have been better served by a smaller gear (running a 42 x 12-25) because of the hill. I was able to ride the hill out all but once when I had to dismount in the last 30ft after my rear wheel slid out. Still, I was totally wrecked after that hill and this left precious little energy for chasing.

Apples managed a top 10 result coming in 9th. Bravo, Apples. Big shouts out to Ped for the course and yelling at me to get in a bigger gear at a critical time, to DC and Scherer for running alongside me on the hill and helling at me to keep going, to A, of course, and again to the popsicle crowd for awesome support and coming out in the crap weather.

Take care of that noggin, Smithers, you gonna need it next weekend at Taylors Falls.