Time for CX

The blood lung, leg-burning fun of cyclocross has begun. Brooks and I headed over to Delafield on Sunday for the 2nd race of the WCA series. We both skipped out on the Sat race since it was a weird, non-cx time trial setup. This was the same course as last year, pretty much a rutted out mtb course with a couple barriers thrown in to make it more cross-like. In other words, a course that I could do well on because it's more like a mtb race than a cross race.

I did the Cat 3 race with Brooks as support/water handup guy since he was freshly upgraded to Cat 2. The start was a big cluster with a very wide "starting line" narrowing down to a doubletrack within a hundred feet or so. I was way back in the pack of 30 racers right away. The first lap I spent working my way thru the pack despite almost crashing after nailing a rut with my front tire. Even with the extra work, the legs felt fine and I felt comfortable passing and bridging. By the 2nd or 3rd lap, I got into a group of 5 riders that was chasing the 2 leaders. On the 2nd to last lap, the rider in front of me let a gap develop to the 2 riders in front and I didn't want to drag him back up with me, so I sat on. Probably a mistake. By the beginning of the last lap, I could tell he was dying, and there were riders coming up on us, so I attacked him and went off on my own. I stayed away for the rest of the lap, but never caught back on to the other 2 racers. They don't have results posted yet, but Brooks said that I finished 6th overall, which would be my best CX result ever. I'm happy about that, but I felt strong enough to where I know that I could have stayed with the other 2 and maybe gotten by them at the end. Live and learn.

I'm not going to get too excited about this cross result though, as it will probably be my best finish all year in cross due to the course making it so much like a short mtb race. We'll see though...it would be nice if the legs responded this well in the rest of the cross races.

Peanut Butter Jelly.