whiskey island cx

Every year I go to Whiskey Island to race my bike, I think I should go down there more often because it's such a spectacular location--it's got clear views of the Lake, the River, and the Cleveland skyline, which looks great on an early autumn blue sky day.

Also, every year I race at Whiskey Island, as I reflect back on the day I start wondering why I am so slow on the CX bike and if there's something I can do to change it. Most of the course is grass--there's also some sand, but there's also about 1/2 mile of pavement that sticks out into the Lake. When I get on the pavement, I get up to speed, and reel in riders ahead of me like they've got their brakes on. Once I'm on the grass, the roles get reversed. It drives me crazy. I feel like I should be able to figure out some way to go faster, at least while it's dry. Oh well.

The "B" field was huge, so the start was crazy. I went into today hoping to be up toward the front of the race for a while, but even though I was pretty quick into the pedals, and spooled up through the gears, there was no chance. I kept moving to the left to get some space to move up, but I realized we were already three or four rider widths off the course when we got to the first turn, and I was in argy-bargy town. I could have only moved forward if I had a snow plow attached to my bike.

At the start of lap two, I fell into my normal pattern. I didn't warm up enough (at all), so I felt horrible until the third lap and started to work my way into the group of people I always race against. It was a fun battle today.

On the final lap, I thought I'd nuke the other riders in my group on the pavement section and claim a glorious 30th place (or whatever) but some fishermen chose that moment to walk in front of us and I was only able to go full speed briefly, so I guess I didn't have much of a gap heading into the final grass sections. I thought I was safe but I bobbled a couple times on the way to the finish and got caught in the woods section just a few feet before the line and settled for 33rd.