Saturday, October 30, 2004

evolution cyclocross

finally, the cyclocross season has begun... well the season began weeks ago, but my season began this morning in leesburg at the evolution cyclocross... up at 6:50 and out of the door by 7 to head up to Ida Lee park in leesburg for the 9am C race... arrived just after 8 and drove around the park for a couple of minutes before the i saw the sweet sight of yellow course marking tape... registered and then headed out onto the course for a couple of quick warmup laps...

grass, grass, and more grass... long grass, wet grass, and soon to be muddy grass made up all of the course... the course had 4 steep climbs, 2 of which i figured were rideable (well all of them where if you were on a mountain bike), a couple of slick twisty downhills, one set of barriers and couple of sections of leg-sapping long grass, including the climb up to the finish line...

we lined up half way around the course at the top of a long downhill with a right turn at the bottom... by virtue of being out at the start early i ended up in the middle of the front line and once the whistle blew i was briefly in 2nd place... once we hit the 2nd turn i was back to 5th, and by the third turn i was back to 7th then 9th... over the next lap i traded places back and forth with a couple of riders, losing time on the downhills and dismounts and making it up on the climbs... half way around the 1st full lap i locked up back wheel on a slick downhill and somersaulted down the trail... while i picked myself and my bike up 3 or 4 riders passed me, including a couple that i'd been swapping places with earlier...

over the next lap and a half i pulled back one of the riders and slowly put time on him so that by the last lap he was out of sight... i never saw those other riders again though... i don't know if i would have held them off if i hadn't crashed... overall it was a good race, 12th of 24, my best cyclocross result ever...

richmond tommorow...

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