The Arkansas Cyclocross races may be small, but it’s a lot nicer to drive 1.5-2 hours to race instead of the 3-4 hours it takes to get to races east of Memphis. Since it wasn’t part of the Arkansas points series this year, the race in Jonesboro was pretty low-key. When Ryan and I arrived at the park, the B Race was about to start. There were a couple of women lined up there, but none of the ones that I usually race against. We hit the registration table and got changed so we could ride around the park a couple of times to warm up.

I’ve solidified my warmup routine this season- I usually start an hour before the race on my B bike (the Scott Addict CX, which I’ve set up with a water bottle cage, tubeless tires, and my older Quarq powermeter) and ride around on the road for about 30 minutes. After that, I’ll go back to the car, drink a Redbull (caffeine and about the same number of calories as a gel), chase it with water, make any necessary wardrobe adjustments, and switch bikes. I’ll take my B bike to the pit and ride a lap or two of the course if it’s open. The seat height and handlebar height/reach is set up the same on both bikes, so I’m not concerned about training/warming up/racing on different bikes.

My Garmin clock is slow. I almost missed the start. Luckily, I got into the lineup a minute or so before we were off. No women were there, so it was just me and about 10 guys, including Ryan and a handful of other Memphis people. When the race started, four guys formed a lead group. I stayed with them until about halfway through the second lap. There was a small 2-landscape-timber-tall barrier that everyone was bunny hopping. I am generally not a fast/skilled hopper, so, on the second lap, I attempted to go for it at lead-group speed, mistimed, and nearly endoed on the landing. Immediately following that, as I approached the pit, I thought I had a flat rear tire, so I stopped to check (instead of getting into the part of the lap after the pit and having to run/ride in with a flat). The almost-endo and overly cautious flat check took me well off the pace of the leaders, though I did end up passing one of them when he rolled a tubular in the following laps.

I fought to stick with my 4th place spot. I was hoping the entire time that one of the three ahead of me would get popped from the group and I’d fight it out with him for 3rd. Behind me, Ryan was trying to chase me down. I ended up dismounting for the little landscape timber barrier after nearly wrecking. It was, for me, much faster. I’ve been working hard on high speed dismounts, so I’m quicker on my feet than I am trying to bunny hop something.  The course was a constant on/off effort- 30sec-1min of hammering on grass/uphill stretches punctuated by hard, sometimes powdery turns. Every time I’d get to a grassy power section, I was internally yelling at myself to never let up- especially during the 2nd half of the race, where I’ve found myself losing motivation in the past.

$100 only-woman-to-show prize money = earned.

There are three things that you can count on at the Outdoors, Inc. Cyclocross race

1. The wind will be awesome*
2. The course will be a killer power course with grass and punchy hills
3. If you’re female, your barriers include a portion of the Cat4 and “Beginner” Masters men who start just ahead of you.

*And, by awesome, I mean that everyone except for me hates having a 20 mph wind blasting from the south because the “easy” part of the course goes straight into it.

Also, In the race’s defense, #3 is in place because the women’s categories get their own start. It’s just awkwardly placed at the tail of the “B” race. It’s always nice to race in your hometown. That, along with the course/wind/etc. is why the Outdoors race has always been one of my favorites.

Sunday morning, I woke up and very quickly realized that I’d done something terrible to my neck muscles. The previous day, I’d gone to my favorite yoga class in the world. We learned this:

The class wasn’t the issue, though. The problem came later when I was showing off the pose to my parents later that evening following my mom’s birthday dinner (Happy Birthday, Mom). I felt my neck strain a little at the time, but didn’t think anything of it. Turns out, you should warm up if you do stuff like that. Who’d ‘ave thought? You should listen to your yoga instructors when they tell you that yoga isn’t about showing off. As a result , I spent a majority of Sunday morning with a heating pad on my neck/shoulders and periodically rolling the area with a lacrosse ball. It felt slightly better by the time we were ready to leave, so I wasn’t quite ready to panic.

Once we arrived at Mud Island, I registered, pinned my number, and went out to warm up. It was then that I realized that my neck was way more sore than I’d originally thought. It hurt to hold my head up in “normal” riding position, and hitting bumps or trying to be “aero” were almost unbearable. I quickly hunted down some ibuprofen then went back out to warm up in the flat area of the park, hoping for the best.

Luckily, the ibuprofen knocked the pain down a couple of notches before the race started. The competition at the line was the same as the Crossroads Clash CX a couple of weeks before- Lucia, Laureen, and Mary. However, since we’d start a minute or so back from the Cat4 men, I couldn’t go head to head with the leaders of that race as I had previously. We did have the juniors race starting with our group, so when the race started and John Brown (big little brother of Nate Brown) took off after one of the other guys, I grabbed his wheel and stuck around there for the first part of the course.

Because of my neck pain, I hadn’t really warmed up well. As a result, the first lap and a half or so were more painful and less fast than they could have been. Eventually, though, I started feeling good, and decided to leave the junior guys behind (John made a move as if he were going to go after me, but I think he was going just fast enough to win in order to save his energy for the “A” race that followed). The following 20 minutes or so (our race was shortened to 35 minutes) was an exercise in reeling the head-start riders in and attacking the ones who tried to follow (actually harder than it sounds since, as you move through the field, the riders are progressively stronger, and you’re getting progressively more tired).

Not my most flattering finish line photo, but it gets the job done. Within the next couple of months, I’ll have some new shorts, courtesy of Nimblewear. They’re guaranteed to NOT make my ass look 10 pounds heavier because they won’t be the same “thigh to thigh” stripe design of my current kit. If you’re looking for small runs (or large ones, for that matter) of custom kit, you should check them out (they also support people like me, which is even more reason to do so).

After cooling down, milling around at the car for a few minutes, and yelling at Ryan during his race, I received what may be one of the nicer prizes I’ve seen at a race (along with cash- Equal payout for men/women FTW!), a huge, yellow, waterproof duffel/backpack with an Outdoors logo embroidered in the top. It’ll stand out when it’s on the luggage carrier in airports of far-off places when I’m racing next summer…

Sunday presented us with a choice of two cross races- either Nashville, which would be a sure thing as far as the course and competition, or a race at Village Creek State Park in Arkansas, which was a first year event that we hadn’t heard much about. At half the car time it’d take to get to the Nashville race, Arkansas won out.

Ryan, Matt, and I arrived at the park, and I wanted to get in a nice, long warmup like I’d done the previous day. We registered, then I changed and headed out to check out the rest of the park (if you’re ever wondering, the path through the golf course is beautiful and somewhat deserted this time of year). I rode for nearly half an hour before coming back to the car to have a *RedBull, make clothing adjustments, and ride a couple of laps on course. While I was doing that, Matt was getting off of the trainer.

The first course “feature” I hit when I left the car was an ~36in tall pile of dirt that looked like a small BMX jump in steepness and texture. You couldn’t see where the trail went on the other side, so I took it somewhat slow and ratchet-pedaled over the top. Following that, the course was a mix of traditional cyclocross grass hills/off camber/grass that took a turn into the nearby woods for a 1/4 to half mile of singletrack. It was pretty smooth, but also included three 3-4 foot wide bridges with on/off ramps and no side rails. They added a whole ‘nother level of sketch to some of the questionable stuff I’d previously seen on cyclocross courses.

As I rounded the last few turns before I was back at the car, I heard a loud “WHACK” noise and yelling from somewhere on course. I didn’t really think anything of it and continued back to the car to make a final clothing adjustment before the race. A minute later, Matt came walking through the field carrying his bike and obviously shaken. He was covered in dirt and was bleeding from his face, neck, shoulder, knee, and back of his hands. As he dropped his bike and sat down, I tried to figure out what had happened and how badly he was hurt. People started to gather, and someone pointed out that his bike was broken-

(Yeah, I know, bad focus in the photo, but it’s what I’ve got for now. You get the idea)

Matt looked bad. He’d gone too fast over the top of the dirt hump and launched just enough to float above the ground on the other side until his front wheel hit at the bottom. His frame crumpled on impact, and he landed on his face and chest. We called the paramedics over. While they were checking him out, he started to feel dizzy and lightheaded. They didn’t know if he’d hit his head or was just experiencing low blood pressure, so they took him to the ambulance and said they may need to take him to the hospital.

Keep in mind, this is about 10 minutes before the race was supposed to start.

At that point, I’d been not warming up for about 10 minutes, and, as racers were lining up, paramedics are talking about taking my roommate/friend to the hospital. I told Ryan to go on, and that I’d decided not to race. Actually, there was no decision. The whole thing had me so shaken up that I just didn’t even think about it. I changed clothes and stuck around the car in case they decided he needed to go get checked out.

Turns out, he was generally OK. They cleaned him up and let him out about halfway through the race, and he helped me cheer Ryan on for the last couple of laps.

Not that I didn’t know already, but I realized even more so how important your brain is in racing. When I’m focused and ready, I can take on giants. If my brain is worried about my friend smashing his face on the ground, I feel physically incapable of pedaling my bike. I don’t feel bad at all for not racing, either.

Saturday’s CX Roads Clash race was somewhat of a late addition to the Memphis Cyclocross calendar. It worked out well, though, because the double race weekend I’d originally planned to attend in Nashville was shortened to a one-day event, and there was a race on schedule in Wynne, Arkansas for Sunday (about half the distance compared to Nashville).

I managed to miss my pre-race tune-up ride on Friday (I was planning on doing some quick intensity during my commute home from work, but found out during the workday that my super baller EVO had a seized drive side bottom bracket bearing which had scored the aluminum spindle of the crank. Unfortunately, the bearings feel fine out of the bike and both get “heavy” once they’re pressed in (the drive side being worse). Cannondale is sending a replacement BB and spindle, though I’m pretty sure that’s not going to solve the problem. Here’s to hoping I’m wrong.

Anyways… So I didn’t ride Friday. Saturday, I decided I’d get to the race pretty early (it was at Shelby Farms, which is only a couple of miles from my house, and where I go for most of my CX training). Ryan (who raced the A race) and I drove over, and I headed out on my B bike for a nice, 40 minute warmup. I arrived back at the car to have a Red Bull, change bikes, and go for an easy lap of the course before lining up at the start.

There were 4 other women at the line, and, between us, cat 4 men, and singlespeeders, there were 31 starters. I figured I’d have a good handle on the women (they lined up in the back and told me they liked to start “slow”), but I wasn’t sure what the men (some of which are very strong roadies) would do. When we were given the GO signal, we hammered off down a hill. A guy from Marx-Bensdorf took the holeshot, followed by Boomer Leopold on his singlespeed and Dale Sanford (also a strong road guy from M-B), who explained to me during the race that this was only his second time on his cyclocross bike. I was next, followed by all of the chasers.

As we negotiated the first few turns/hills/barrier before the first singletrack, Boomer took the lead, and I fell in behind Dale and M-B guy. The first couple of turns were rooty and pretty ridiculous for high-speed CX riding. Dale nearly wrecked (I don’t know if he clipped a pedal or nearly went off-trail) and Boomer took off as we almost piled up behind Dale. Going up the longer hill out of the woods, the other M-B guy who had hole-shotted ended up flubbing his remount after some logs, and I ran past him, landing me in 3rd position, chasing Boomer and Dale with the other M-B guy on my wheel.

I put my head down and reeled Dale in a couple of feet at a time over the next lap. Somewhere, the other M-B guy fell off. As we exited the woods into the headwind on the 2nd lap, I overtook Dale. He stayed mostly on my wheel for the entire race, but never tried to go around.

(I’m not totally sure why he was on that side of his bike in this photo)

Some more photos, courtesy of Micheal Carpenter…

I suffered hard. You have to when you’re leading someone who, by all the power-to-weight numbers, should be kicking your ass. I never caught Boomer, but I wasn’t that far back, either.

The A race that followed was a good one to watch- with the recent addition of junior tri/running talent Seth Rider to the top of the podium, there’s a bit of a shake-up in the usual “pecking order” of local men’s racing. Should be a good one to watch at next weekends’ Outdoors, Inc. race.