Springfield Oaks CX - 2009

My last race of 2009 is now in the books. It was a tough day. The weather was pretty cold, around 30F, and there was a little wind. The course was fun, but the conditions changed quite a bit throughout the day. During my test laps before the C race, a lot of the course was frozen and there wasn't too much mud. I was able to ride everything without too much trouble. I went back out after the C race to see how things had changed. The little sidehill ride had gotten pretty chewed up and was now difficult to ride. I also fell hard on a downhill left-hander that had given me no trouble earlier. I had to twist one shifter back into position and tweak my derailleur hanger a bit after that crash. So, I started the race with my left side already covered in mud.

The race sort of went like Bloomer did, I just felt like I wasn't able to generate any power. I had recognized that this was a possibility beforehand, so I kept a better attitude about it this time and just kept riding. The other difference was that I crashed four or five times.

The course conditions continued to change during the race. It turned out that even running the sidehill section was tricky, I slipped and fell a couple times. That downhill left-hander also got muddier and continued to give me problems. I eventually just decided to take it with my inside foot unclipped every lap. That actually resulted in my most painful crash. On one lap, my bike started to slide, so I put my foot down, but the bike kept sliding, so I ended up kind of doing the splits and landing on my butt. I'm still feeling that one today!

I rode near fellow Rhinos Richard and Chris for the middle part of the race. I really thought I'd be able to hang on to them, but I just couldn't quite do it. (I also noticed that I didn't seem to have the motivation to suffer like I needed to for this race.)

I ended up riding the last couple laps with a guy from the Racing Greyhounds. I was just ahead of him going into the last stretch of grass. I took the corner entering the grass too hot and slid out; since he was right behind me, he ran into me and went down too. I figured that since I took him out, I'd wait up a bit so we could have a fair finish (if he'd have fallen on his own, I wouldn't have waited). Anyway, it took him a while, but he caught up and we had a good sprint. He ended up nipping me at the line, probably by just a couple inches. (This actually generated a little discussion on the MMBA forums...)

I ended up 15th out of 26. Again, not a particularly competitive race on my part, but I don't know that there was much I could've done differently. One thing I do want to take a look at for next year is how I warm up and do my pre-race routine on these colder days. I wasn't cold while racing (after the first lap anyway), but my muscles never really got feeling good and warm either.