Livermore CX 11-08-08

Dear Training Diary,

I thought I would take this time to log in my pre-race dinner from the night before to help me better identify on how to improve my results. Here is was my menu:

2/3 of the fried calamari appetizer
1 full slab of baby back ribs
3/4 of the baked sweet potato smothered with butter, brown sugar, and chives
3/4 of the corn bread muffin with just a little butter
3 pieces of roasted veggies to help break things up a bit
Drink - Armold Palmer

Hmm... let me think, probably not the best pre-race meal - but who needs that carbo loading thing anyhow? I'm doing the low carb thing. Claim Jumper rules!


So the next day arrives and well, I'm not hungry at all. Feeling a little heavy, a little tired. Sinuses clogged a bit too. Hmm... maybe just show up and cheer on the teammates. Give the body a break after subjecting it to constant stressing. Good idea.

But the competitiveness in me decides to race anyhow. Allan Sherlock was there, as was Bob Lofland. Jeff Hane even made it out here and wore the old TWW kit (well, at least for his warm up). Scott Seery showed up as well and was our feed boy - thanks! So it was a good turnout and I'm glad I decided to race - after warming up some I felt okay. Thanks Roz also for the feeds and for snapping some photos!

So it is crowded at the start and the Master A's were given a minute head start. Then the mass of B's, B35's, B45's, and B55's followed. Big crowd, good turnout for this category. My goal was to try to stay on the lead lap, to not get lapped by the Master A's again. And once again, I was denied. Freakin' Mark Howland, yes, the guy who won some sort of cyclocross championship back in the 90's and essentially eliminated mountain bikes from cyclocross championships because he crushed everyone while bunnyhopping everything was slumming in the Master A's. He caught me with about 30 seconds left and I couldn't catch him. But that was as deep in the race as I've gone before getting lapped. If I had only not eaten the corn bread muffin... I congratulated him on his finish and then said, "you saw that I wasn't in your group, couldn't you have slowed down right before the finish?"

Overall despite sabotaging myself by being a glutton the night before, I felt pretty good out there (well, as good as you can in a CX race). Kept Allan somewhat close, he probably was about 1.5 minutes ahead of me at various points late in the race - but he stayed on the lead lap so he did well (despite giving himself a tattoo that strangely looked like a gate post). Course was bumpy but tacky and fast. My frankenbike woulda actually been pretty sweet on this course. The rodeo layout is very cool - they added some more turns and dismounts from the previous race I did there. Good stuff!




So I hung out waiting for the results and was disappointed to see an 11/12 finish. Guess the pre-race meal wasn't a great idea. I'll have to try something else next weekend. Still not DFL, but close. Allan took 8/12 in the same category. So the pace was pretty brisk today. Mr. Lofland was 10/11 in the 45B's.

TWW is still in the infancy of the whole cross scene. But we're building nicely off of this and are already looking forward to the '09 season (although this season is far from over).

Thanks for reading!

Mike