Scary fast, brutal and unforgiving (Race Report: Cross Crusade #4, Washington Co. Fairgrounds, 10/23/2011)

This course should be a Dogawful slopfest, pancake flat and routed through stables and manure. It should be all about who can power through the slop and pick off weak flies on the recovery legs.

The rain last night wasn’t nearly enough to bring on those conditions. Instead it was scary fast, brutal and unforgiving. The slightest mishap meant losing a zillion places, forever. Example: on Lap 3, I botched my remount after the stairs (in the team tent fiesta), not too bad, just a little, the kind of botch that costs me a place or two that I can swiftly recover. Yesterday five or six guys — my guys, going my speed — passed me, never to be seen again. Firm footing like this changes the main question of the race. Most cyclocross races are about “who is most skillful;” a wattage-throwdown like yesterday is all about “who screws up the least.”

Conditions weren’t what I was hoping for but I managed to have fun despite.

So, me, how’d I do? Staged third-to-last group callup (maybe 130th to 150th), finished 57th. I ate up eighty or ninety places but it hurt. I was literally crying on my last lap.

Other than that, this is a beautiful venue (wide open) and great fun. I had a cadre of support: my parents, Jenny and the kids, our friends Susan and Conrad, Chris’ beautiful wife Dawn and their girls Freya and Ursula, and Jimmy and Annie as usual. My mom kept time for me which was awesome. We ate waffles and had a nice day at the races.

Photo: Vitus1997, Flickr