Race Report: Kruger’s Crossing, Nov. 17, 2012

For later: season recap, report on my less-than-spectacular DNS yesterday, and thoughts about Cross Crusade.

For now: Saturday’s non-series–but–awesome Kruger’s Crossing. This is my third year doing KC, heck the only race I’ve done three times. Every time mostly the same: cold, wet, very muddy, and the always the last race of the season.

I staged with Thom about halfway back, but in a field of 46 “halfway back” means “doesn’t matter.” Thom quickly applied serious heat and was way out of reach. I dropped several places before the first runup, and then spent the remainder of the race beating my way forward.

Mud, deep and slippery, throughout. My glasses fogged over and I got mud under my contacts. In Lap 3 or so it began raining (harder) and I think some of the competition started to wilt from discomfort. I never quite conquered the long sketchy descent through an unplowed field(!) parallel to the road from the farmhouse to the barn, it meant crossing ruts the whole time. Took a couple sideway falls that didn’t much affect my position. Sprinted hard for eighth — reeling about 15sec back from #528, but he still beat me at the line.

Finished 9th of 46. A glance over my Strava profile suggests I didn’t work hard enough, my max and average HR were both about 5–7 BPM lower than usual.