Boulder cross #3

After the nice 40’ warm up ride to the race Lindsay and I parked at the Full Cycle (the shop a wrench at) tent and truck. I surveyed the course while Lins tock in some race atmosphere, a burger and some brews. I got in a warm up lap on the course and I was immediately worried. The first half was flat sections on the hard pack beach and field. But the pavement and field section were riddled with either turns or brain rattling, washboard bumps. None the less I felt this section was where I could make up time. But then the course rolled into the off camber sandy turn down to the beach. Then up the what seemed like a 4 mile slightly up hill beach run, back down the beach in 5 inch deep, balance sucking sand to the muddy shore that required what seemed like 500+ watts to turn over my 39/27, then to the easier gravel and paved section!
standard cross I guess, and I was standardly terrified.
I warmed up well with some hard efforts and was pretty sauced on cytomax , sport legs pills and 1 can of GO FAST. I got fairly good position at the start in the second row and we were off.

I got a solid hole shot into around 10 position but as I braked getting ready for the right hand turn everyone seemed to be much more confident about there turning skills than I. This is a normal thing but this time it was crazy! Then, about… no the whole field came by me, tearing ass into the field straight ahead. What the fu*!? Ohh!? I guess no right hand turn on the first lap? I guess they told us this at the start but I never heard it. Neither did Lindsay but what ever.
So I wasn’t in the first lap lung busting mix up front but on a positive note. I wasn’t in the first lap, lung busting mix up front. around the second lap when 75% of the field realized they had just gone way harder then they should have and I started to pass some folks. I got into the top 20 and laid down the best pace I could. I handled the course better than I thought I would but it was the toughest course I had done yet. Training or racing, granted that isn’t that many courses but point is it was more difficult than last week. And combined with my race course knowledge snafu I was under the gun to place better.
The lap cards read 2 to go fairly early so I gave it everything focusing on making no mistakes. I had one carrot in my sights with ½ a lap to go but just couldn’t get by him.

In the end I finished happily in 16^th, and unhappily I finished in 16^th. I did better than last week which was good and with the difficult course my improvement was solid. But I couldn’t help loath my stupidity at my lack of course knowledge of the starting corners and the thought that a top ten would have been easily in hand.

A good lesson learned and another fun race in the bag.

More soon.