I had a decent race, I accomplished most of the things I set out to do. During the race, most of my dismounts and mounts were clean (there were just so many!). I also went out hard the first lap and was able to stay with the leaders for most of the lap. I thought I handled the more technical sections better than most of the guys riding around me. I finished somewhere around 10th out of 22 or so by my wife's count; final results will probably be up early this week.
But, like most of my races, I made a number of mistakes and I learned a lot. I've broken it down into categories:
Equipment - First, I liked racing on my 'cross bike rather than the mountain bike, but that's not really one of my lessons learned. Braking and shifting was OK despite all of the mud. The main thing I discovered was that my current pedals and shoes are really not up to the task of a muddy 'cross race. I want to look for a different shoe that has screw-in toe spikes; they would have definitely come in handy on run-ups like this.
I also want to try out some different pedals that might be a bit better at shedding mud. I had trouble quite a few times getting clipped back in. The cyclocross standards are Eggbeaters and Time ATAC's.
Warm-up - I kind of blew this today, and I know better. It took me longer than I expected to get registered and I only had time to do one recon lap of the course and that was about it. I didn't end up doing enough (any?) intense efforts in my warm-up, and I paid for it in the way I felt early in the race. Ideally, I'd like to show up a little earlier, pre-ride the course and then do some harder efforts off-course. The other option, especially if this happens again, is to do some hard efforts on the course.
Nutrition - Kind of related to the warm-up, but I wasn't really happy with how my pre-race snack worked out. I typically have one gel before the race, and this has never caused me any trouble. Well today, maybe because it was cool and wet, I didn't take enough water with the gel. I ended up with that gross sticky-sweet feeling in my mouth for the first two laps or so. I don't know that it's really a performance inhibitor, but it is distracting. Next time, more water!
Fitness - I felt like my fitness was a mixed bag today. On the one hand, I'm pretty sure I'm much faster this year than last year. I was also pretty happy with how I was able to recover on the bike a little after the fast first lap. On the other hand, I felt pretty terrible during most of the race. The mud had a lot to with it. Because so much of the course was muddy, there was almost no place to catch a little break and there was a lot of running. As I discussed in my post yesterday, I think better anaerobic fitness would have helped.
I'm sure I'll come up with more thoughts about the race in the next few days, but for now, on to the pictures!
Waiting for the race to start. I look bored... I mean, relaxed.
One of the sections that I ran due to the mud. (The mud that caused the problem isn't in this picture, it's in the corner at the bottom of this little hill.)
One of the few sections of the course where the grass was still basically intact.
They were doing some construction work in one area of the park. They stopped what they were doing when we were racing, which was nice. Going by these three guys standing around drinking coffee while you're out there suffering every lap was a little weird though.
The course took us through the park's horse barn (it was empty).
Yet another runup. Usually you end up passing some kids near the end of the race (I think they are started about 10 minutes after us). I usually try to gasp something encouraging to them.
Artsy...
This guy works at the skating rink with my wife. I don't know how old he is, but I think that it's safe to say most people his age aren't racing 'cross!
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