In order to keep travel cost to a minimum, I decided to skip the Kanis Park night race on Saturday night and just daytrip Reservoir Cross on Sunday with Poolboy Matt and one of our customers from the shop who was trying his hand at CX for the first time (kudos to him- the Reservoir course is tough and technical. Not the easiest when taking the plunge for the first time). I hate to miss a good night race, but I was being a slave to logistics.

The Little Rock area received a couple of hours’ worth of rain early Sunday morning, making the course both slick and gooey. Since everyone seems to ask, I rode the Challenge Limus tubulars that I glued up last year, and ran around 27psi front and 30psi rear. I say “about,” because I don’t know how accurate my pump is. I do, however, like how my pressure feels when my pump reads those numbers. My usual barometer for “proper” pressure is whether or not the rim hits the ground once or twice per lap when pre-riding, and it passed that muster. The Limus is a very knobby tire, and I have modified my rear one for improved rolling resistance:

 

The Open Women’s category was lined up behind the Cat4 men, Masters Men, and Juniors. Each group started about a minute apart. I’d told myself that I would race hard, but not totally destroy my legs so that I could race the men’s race afterward.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this is impossible.

We started going straight up a paved hill. I got the holeshot and never looked back. I did, however, feel at first like I needed training wheels. I started the course turning gingerly though the mud, all over the brakes. Within a lap, though, I’d trash talked myself into going full-bore. I made it my goal to pass everyone on course that had started before me. I had a few close calls with sliding front tires and a pedal strike in the off-camber section, but I took those to mean that I was doing it right. If you aren’t the greatest bike handler, the Reservoir Park course will showcase that. I definitely could use some practice in getting my cyclocross mojo back for the season.

Halfway through the last lap, I was barreling through a really fast turn off of some pavement, looking to catch the last of the Cat 4 guys who had started first. As I loaded my front tire exiting the turn, I heard the incredibly terrifying noise of base tape and carbon unzipping from each other. Luckily, I was sliding at the same time rather than gripping. I continued on with the course, only to realize that the “I want to roll off the rim” noise was a result of the loss of pressure in my front tire. I managed to nurse it around the remainder of the course and finish before it was totally flat. Winning… but not my much over 14-year-old up & coming Emma Drummond. She’s going to be hot on my heels real soon.

 

The course ended up taking out an abnormally large number of tires that day. I saw somewhere in the neighborhood of 10-15 flats during the Open race (I decided that since I’d bombed through the first race and flatted that I’d bail on the 2nd race). Poolboy Matt flatted two himself. Upon closer inspection, all three of our flats were punctures in the same shape, size, and orientation in the tread. I’ll post some high-res pics later.