<br>

photo: eric sterner

manzanita park, prunedale
2006/09/24
elite men
32/34 [32/37 if you count dnfs (slackers)]
mates: funke, aron, brett, bill

here we go again, another fun-filled, action-packed season of cyclocross racing!

slept in and carpooled down with funke for the 1:00 rockstar start time. can't complain about that, except i really need to be careful to eat enough. it was good to see the whole racin' gang again.

umm, yeah, so. ouch. and... yuk.

this race was my first in several ways:
+ first race of the season
+ first race in over 9 months
+ first race with the big boys in the a's
+ first 60 minute cyclocross race

lots of unknowns for me. it was hot, dry and dusty. i got a decent if rushed warmup. in that heat, it's not hard to get your heartrate up anyways. felt great at the start. no problems getting off the line quick and riding with the guys i'd like to be with for the first couple laps. but inevitably, i looked at my heartrate and realized that i was riding over my head in the upper 190s. i wanted to finish 60 minutes, so i backed off and let the race get away from me. i spent the duration alone riding my own pace and feeling pretty sluggish. hitting the bottom of the paved climb at 0mph was pain every lap.

technically i had a pretty clean race. my only real problem was i dropped my chain once on the fast bumpy downhill 180 degree left onto the ball fields. i've been training with an 11-32 mountain cassette and mid cage xt derailleur for the climbs, so i think i need to swap those out for road bits and shorten my chain by a link or two so it doesn't bounce off as easily. the new tufo flexus tubulars worked well. the jury is still out as to whether they're better than the regular tufos. i ran 40psi in them, which i think is a little hard, i'm going to experiment with lower pressures later on.

viscerally humbling:
+ dfl
+ barry wicks lapped me in 35 minutes
+ about half the rest of the field lapped me too

update 10/4: newly posted results have me upgraded from dfl to 32/34 due to two riders who were doubly lapped and originally tabulated incorrectly. woo hoo!

redemption by number crunching:
+ i beat about half the a singlespeeders who started right after us
+ my average lap time for 9 laps was about 15 seconds faster than the b winner's average for 7 laps

update 10/2: in the interest of full disclosure, my calculation here was off because the b's were shorted a lap in the results. they did 8 laps, so i actually would have come in quite a ways back in the b's. it seemed a little too good to be true for there to be zero overlap between a's and b's. it was a fine delusion to get me through to the next race though... 8^)

so i'm feeling a little in limbo. despite how slow i felt in that crowd, i'm no worse off than in previous years really, and am probably a bit faster. i am committed to the season in the a's. in past years i would have come into the first real race with 3 or 4 dfl races under my belt. this year i'm coming into it completely green and felt it. i think my legs will get better as the season progresses. i also think i'll be better in cooler temps.

so until i'm actually racing with somone, i'm going to try to ignore the heartrate monitor and hang with some of the mid packers until i just can't hang no mo'. hopefully i'll be able to stretch that out to 60 minutes eventually. i figure i'm not learning all that much riding alone. i don't have a whole lot to lose if i blow.

wish me luck...

<br>