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Race #1 – Country Cross – Gay, GA:

This race was intimidating. It was the first cyclocross race after a nine month break and it had several barns that you entered (though one was optional). It was also a long course and had a few areas with loose gravel. I got there early and was able to get a chance to ride all of the course (including being surprised when the barriers were placed in between races). The chance to ride the whole course is a critical component to these races and there are narrow windows between races. It is the reason that I arrive several races before my race, so I have a few windows of time to work with. It definitely makes a difference. You can’t necessarily memorize the whole course, but you memorize the parts that stand out during your pre-ride and they usually stand out for a good reason.

We lined up to start and there was a mix of familiar and fresh faces (we get excited to see fresh faces as there aren’t nearly enough of them). We took off and hit a nice wide stretch of grass/rough rock and then an extended grassy power climb. I don’t really like to take off like a rocket so the extended time gave me time to move back up to 2 nd /3 rd position after my tortoise start. I was still finding my “cyclocross legs” so I would give up a lot of time navigating around trees, etc. but I could make up time on the less technical stretches. The course was actually quite fun. There was one section that the tape was a little difficult to differentiate the course and the girl ahead of me (in 2 nd ) missed the turn and went into the tape and down. My pre-ride of the course kept me from following her and put me back in 2 nd , chasing down 1 st . I hit the start of the third lap, and that rocky section that gave a few people flats, and suddenly knew my race had taken a turn for the worse. I saw the flat and started the long trek back to the start/finish line.

The thing about cyclocross is that people usually have spare wheels (or a spare bike), in the “pit” area that you can swap, but you have to continue forward on the course until you hit the pit. I didn’t have anything in the pit so my path extended all the way to the start/finish line and, as a long race, that meant 1.7 miles of shuffling with my bike. And it was hot. And one of my bike shoes really wasn’t tightened enough for running in them so I ended up with a big blister on my heel. Anyways, my goal was just to make it back to the finish before they started the next race. I would be DFL, but it would still be a finish. I made it in time and I was ready to head home after that. Only after I got home and I started cleaning my bike, did I discover that it wasn’t a sharp rock that I flatted on. I got fully “screwed”. A new tire and a new rim tape application later, and my bike was ready to go for the following weekend.

Race #2 – Summerhill Showdown – Atlanta, GA:

A “local” race! For cyclocross, anytime I don’t have to go somewhere on the other side of Atlanta, I consider it local. We do quite a bit of schlepping. This was a crazy little course crammed into a small, intown park (check out the GPS of the course). It has steep, uphill turns, sand, roots, stairs, and even a bit of a baseball infield that occasionally made you question your traction. We had a big field of ten women in Cat 4, including a few that looked ready to throw down (and they did). This course had a lot of “dicey” sections. I am very cautious in these races. I will “push” myself out of my comfort zone but if something really scares the hell out of me, I will hop off the bike a run it. This course had me doing that twice. Once on a steep right uphill turn that I just couldn’t mentally convince myself to commit to and another on a slippery root section that also happens to be off camber (i.e. sloped side to side). I watched one racer go down hard on it the first lap, and that cemented my thoughts on running it. The downside of this approach was that my back and hips had been bothering me most of the week and every re-mount was painful and miserably slow. On a single lap, I was dismounting and remounting FIVE times. I wasn’t even trying to do a cyclocross mount (where you keep moving and mount on the saddle first and then your feet find the pedals). I was stopping, slowly stepping over the frame, clipping in with one foot and then FINALLY moving forward again. This is not conducive to doing well in a race. I survived. I was ahead of a few people. But, I was nowhere near competitive. I did ride a few sections that I saw other people hop off for, so I will take the little victories where I can (though I suspect they rode one of the ones that I did hop off for).

Race #3 – Grant Park – Atlanta, GA:

This is usually a fun race. There are a lot of youth (youth registrations are typically covered by a sponsor for this race) and there are a lot of spectators. Including on “heckle hill” which is a challenging section that a crowd can watch you mess up on (yay!) It is not an easy race by any means. There were a lot of competing events this particular weekend so we were back to five in Cat 4 (including Karen!). Once again, I was slow on the start (4 th ) and overly cautious on almost every turn. I dismounted my bike three times on a given lap, once at “heckle hill”, once at the stupid steep wall/hill and then at the barriers that came right after that. There is a long gradual hill on the backside of the course that allowed me to pass and move into 3 rd place but by that point, I had lost sight of 2 nd place. Cyclocross racing is mixture of fitness (this is 45-ish minutes of accelerations), confidence and skill. All three are a work in progress for me this season.