Minnesota or Oregon?
You would be hard pressed to know the difference based on this weekend’s racing. Reminds me of the fall in the Willamette Valley when everything turns wet, muddy, slick, and soupy.
Yesterdays race was not for me. A course that was half ‘cross (open, grassy, wood barriers) and half mtb (singletrack, deep mud and sand, roots, and natural barriers) had me thinking to try my first double-dip weekend race as an expensive training run. It had been raining before my race so everything was wet and muddy and the two sand sections were unridable. As it was, I think I was handling the technical stuff better than most of the riders immediately around me, but I was more than happy to save my legs and energy for today’s festivities.
Skip forward to today–pouring rain about 5:00 am; dry when I get up, raining on the way out, but not hard. Pre-ride is wet, but not too muddy, but this is the one race where the A race is first. Back to the car to sit on the trainer for a while; it really begins to rain again. By the time I get back over to ride the course again, it’s nothing but mud soup in many sections. The Tufo tubulars aren’t giving me the grip I need around the corners, so a quick trip to the car to put the Michelin Mud’s back on the bike. Roll back in time to grab front row at the start, but bobble my clip in and fade back to 15th or so. Back up to 10th by the first sand pit (which I’m surprised to discover I can ride), but I make the mistake of not coming up to my tops and need to bail out and run the last few meters. Fight my way back up to 8th by mid-lap and get enough room to ride the course as best I can. Our laps were running longer than 8 minutes and the course continued to get muddier and soupier even though it had stopped raining. By mid-race, I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable on the course and have a short gap to the guy behind me so I put the pressure back on to get a better margin in case I bobble along the way. By the last lap, I’m in no man’s land, which is good because I nearly go down on the same corner twice and have to dismount on a short hill because of the soup. Sprint to lap someone in the last 100 meters and my day is done. Sixth overall and in B1, one spot behind CJ and one in front of Guy, both sporting the new kits (not cold enough for fleece skinsuit, yet).
Great race–for some reason I love racing cross more the muddier and wetter it gets.
All told, the weekend was a blast: 90 minutes of racing, 2 hours of driving, 2 hours of cleaning the bike, and I’m still working on the clothing. Could take a while.
