The road season has come and gone. Spring turned into Summer. And now, Summer bows to Autumn. Time for cyclocross.
Last weekend was the official start of the “local” cyclocross season but I was under the weather and decided to wait until this past weekend before starting my season. That was not such a bad decision since it allowed me to actually ride ‘cross bike twice before racing. Never have I gone into a CX season with so little practice.
An hour of riding around a busy school grounds is not ideal practice but it was apparently enough. The years of racing have burned the basics into my brain and muscle memory. Dismounts and remounts went smoothly, albeit at something less than race pace. Good enough in my book. Let’s race.
I arrived in Hermann about two hours before race time. Plenty of time to get my race number since I was pre-registered. At least I thought I was pre-registered. There was no record of me anywhere so I got a lesser start spot. Not that starting one row further back would make that much difference.
More decisive is the position I chose within my starting row. The course started with about 150 feet of grass before a 180 degree left hand turn. Like a fool, I parked myself on the far left starting spot. Sheer genius to put myself in a spot where I will be having to make a tighter, slower turn in addition to having the guys further out diving inward through the turn. Sure enough. I begin to exit the turn, my front wheel touches the rear wheel of another rider and I nearly go down but manage to unclip in time to catch myself.
I may as well have started in the very back because that’s where I ended up as we trundled up the stairs. Poor starts have become my modus operandi so I have become accustomed to biding my time and plowing my through part of the field. The is some enjoyment in this because you are passing people and feel a certain sense of accomplishment but I would not mind mixing it up with the front runners occasionally.
The course was surprisingly flat. The stair section was shortened from past races and only one portion of riding across across a hillside. The main difficulties were the middle portion of the course filled with turns. The first eight turns were 90 degrees and could be taken with rather good speed. Those were followed by a series of much tighter turns of approximately 180 degrees. While these were more difficult, you were not going to be passed in this section either, unless you totally screwed up. Stay upright and you were good.
Ultimately, I passed ten guys and went back-and-forth with a couple guys. An eleventh man was lolly-gagging at the end, thinking he was safe in his position. I had someone on my tail going through the final turns so I could not afford to relax as we entered the pavement section. My chaser apparently gave up at that point but I was unaware. My late efforts almost caught an eleventh man who lolly-gagging at the end, thinking he was safe in his position. Only at the last 5-10 seconds did he realize I was charging hard and accelerate enough to hold his spot.
Final placing 17th of 27 starters. An okay performance with little preparation. A race to build on.
Something new that I hope to do at the end of every race is take a post race photo before doing anything else. No clean-up. No change of clothes. Just a basic photo in the vein of
Timm Koelln’s work. For the record, I make no claims of being anything close to Koelln. My first attempt did not go smoothly as I could not figure out the shutter timer on the camera in my tired, sweaty condition. I was left with extending my arms and shooting blankly.
