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.

Before this weekend, I’d never ridden in the Land Between the Lakes area. So, when I had to make a race-schedule decision between either Race to the Canal on my mountain bike or Cyclocross in Nashville, I went with the “spend more time in the woods with gorgeous fall colors” option. Race to the Canal is a 37 mile (for Cat1 and Open categories) point-to-point race that takes the North-South and Canal Loop trails from the middle of the Land Between the Lakes peninsula to the canal at the north end. Other categories started further north.

Poolboy Matt came along to race the “37 Open” category. We arrived mid-day on Saturday, and stopped by the bike shop to get some trail info before heading out to pre-ride some of the course. The people at the Wood ‘N Wave shop are super nice (they also have a female mechanic, which just adds to the awesome). Matt was having some problems with a bad schrader valve on his fork, and they were really helpful in fixing it. The pre-ride was great. We rode the Canal Loop- half of which wasn’t race course, but we figured it was a good chance to get a feel for the landscape. The conditions were essentially perfect- a little bit of dampness had transformed the trail into mostly “hero dirt” (when the dirt is just wet enough to make it ultra-grippy), and the leaves were in full-on color change. I was excited to see the rest of the trail on Sunday.

The next morning, with the help of some friends, we got a ride to our start location just in time for the pre-race meeting. The 37 mile group was small enough that we ended up being started as a group rather than with gaps between categories. I was glad- the other two women who’d entered had already told me they weren’t going to try to race with me (makes me a little sad), so I decided I’d see if I could hang with the guys.

When the race started, a bunch of guys took off at full speed. I was near the back of the fast people when I rounded a corner to see one of them getting back on his bike. The slowdown was enough to let Matt and the other guys get down the trail and out of sight. I was immediately on the wrecked guy’s wheel, but didn’t ask to get around because it was pretty obvious that he was faster, but just needed to get his shit back together after wrecking. I was right, and soon enough, on the first climb, he disappeared into the woods, and I was alone.

I had a hard time getting into the hills at first. They were too long to be punchy and generally too short to get a good rhythm going. It took me a solid half hour to get a feel for the gear to use to get up as quickly as possible without blowing up halfway through. Between hills, the trail was crazy fast and flowy with lots of baby berms and perfect dirt. Pretty soon, I was motoring along and waiting for the guys ahead of me to get tired.

It wasn’t long before I saw a group of three guys at the top of a climb when I was at the bottom. I knew they had to be fading.

(caution- dubstep content)

I resisted the urge to catch them immediately and kept motoring at the same pace. It took what seemed like forever, but eventually, I was on Matt’s wheel (I wasn’t sure where the other guys were). He said he was having a bad day and let me around at a doubletrack spot in the trail. We about 1.5 hours in, so I kept the hammer down in search of the other two guys who I’d seen with him earlier.

I never felt tired, and found both of them within the next 15 miles. After ripping through the last couple of miles of race course, I quickly found myself climbing the road up from the trail to the finish line

 

Matt finished about 10 minutes later, and the 2nd place woman was about 5 minutes behind him. Our other Memphis friends, who’d raced the shorter versions, had great days as well. If you haven’t checked this trail/race out yet, I’d highly recommend marking it on your calendar for next year.

 

In paved-road news, My new road bike arrived exactly two weeks ago, and it is, quite possibly, the most amazing piece of carbon ever to leave a factory in Taiwan. I want to post a bunch of photos, but I’ve been (vainly) holding off because I’m waiting on a set of bottle cages that I ordered through the shop nearly 3 weeks ago. Hopefully they’ll be here this week, and I can show off the finished product.

 

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.