last CX race report

I went down to Aptos High yesterday and raced (if you want to call it that) the last race of the Peak Season CX series. My previous race, #1 of the series at Harbor High, was the one where I had my Brian Lopes spotting and really-lame-fan conversation. I actually felt pretty good at that previous race, and faired reasonably well, getting in the top-half at least with 10/24. It wasn't in the cards for me yesterday though. The course was fun, with a mix of singletrack and asphault through the school - and seemed to be about the same as the course that they ran there for my very first cyclocross race, which I did about 4-5 years ago (in the original Surf City series) - Kat was there for that one, and I had been on my old DeKerf softail mountain bike. Seemed like the weather forecasts had wittled the field down to a hardcore group of 16 (down from 24 at the Harbor High race) in the Mens B 35+ group. As to be predicted though, the weather "prediction" was not to be predicted very accurately - even just the night before they were calling for showers from 4am-through the afternoon.

It turned out that it was actually reasonably nice most of the morning/early afternoon, with partial sun most of the time, mixed with bits with some strong, cold winds. It made it hard to decide what to wear in terms of layers, etc., but really the weather was good, and the ground was perfect - moist by with no sloppy mud anywhere. I just didn't have much steam. I realized this in my first lap, as I watched the leaders just take off. Then, to make matters worse, in the middle of lap#2, something (I still have no idea what) caused my front deraileur to become completely missaligned - spinning on the frame's seattube so that it was loudly pushing on the chain no matter what gear combo I was in. I pulled over and tried to twist it back, but could only move it a tiny bit. I repeated this another two times at various points, each time I gave up another one or two places. In the end, I had to settle with only use of my smaller front ring (which was fine), and with the chain rubbing on the cage whenever I was in any of my lower 3-4 rear gears (annoying). My other bumble was a tumble - a minor crash in the gravel-to-asphault sharp right-hand corner two turns before the finish line. Just a quick crash that didn't really do any damage to me, my clothes, or my bike. Though I discovered later, at the end of the day that I actually had a scab from it on the inside of my left bicept - how does that happen? I finished 11th/16 this time, just barely making the cut-off to complete 6 laps - but I had fun. I stuck around long enough to eat a seriously good $2 Chicken-chile Verde burrito served out of the back of a car, drink a Samual Smiths Nut Brown Ale, and cheer on the kids race, before hightailing it out. My buddy Matt Dunston (from our Weds rides) suffered similarly in B 45+, but Blake Von Knopka absolutely killed it in my catagory - taking 2nd in the race, and 2nd in the series (nice job Blake!).

Schlachter