Kent CX

With the good weather this week, I was riding, running or lifting every day. On Friday, I went out for a quick ride with the best intentions of going at an easy pace, but ended up doing several hard efforts. So, in spite of the 60 degrees and sunny weather I was feeling pretty flat this morning when I drove down to Kent.

I had a bad start. My cleat missed the pedal, so I was stuck spinning with one leg for several revolutions and ended up with the last few riders. I moved up in the field at the first turn and made up some ground on the bumpy dry grass. There was a traffic jam on the second right hander into the muddy grass (I wondered why it was muddy after so many dry days), and another traffic jam at the entrance to the gravel path.

During the warmup, I was thinking the tricky twists and turns on the course would cause carnage on the first lap, and I wasn't disappointed. A mountain biker went into the 180 turn onto loose gravel with way too much speed and washed out his rear wheel and went down. I stretched the tape on the outside of the course to work around him. I managed to overlap my front wheel with the rider in front of me, and we rubbed tires pretty hard. This was a case where racing at Westlake every week for several years paid off and I kept it shiny side up.

I was with a group of six or eight riders that was bottled up behind a guy on a mountain bike who looked like he was riding way over his ability. He'd get out of the saddle and sprint when someone would try to pass, then blow up and sit down, but I didn't get around him until the turn just before the singletrack. I overcooked it and hooked my left brake pedal on the tape, and snapped the tape.

The singletrack didn't really provide many opportunities to pass, so I just settled in to the suffering. The group got to the first steep 40-50 foot hill, but I had to brake on the downhill leading into it, so I didn't have enough momentum to even try to ride, so I hopped off and waddled up with the rest of the group. Everyone kept it shiny side up on the down hill and the next run-up, but there was a tricky left hand turn over two muddy roots that took out three riders at the same time.

I finally worked my way around to the start of the second lap and was feeling pretty bad. 60F is a great temperature for riding on the road, but feels like tropical heat on the 'cross bike. I was melting. I muddled through for a couple more laps until I started to feel pretty good again, then picked up the pace when I closed in on the riders in front of me.

There were three riders that I chased down, but I didn't manage to overtake permanently. I made up ground on the run ups, which kind of surprised me, but then they would open the gaps on the singletrack. I thought I'd overtake them on the last lap, but ran out of gas.

That was a tough course, but it was a lot of fun and was really challenging. It had a little bit of everything, and the woods section was great. As usual, Team Lake Effect did a great job.

Just two more races to go in the series.

Here's a link to my A race snapshots : Link