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photo: julie

golden gate park, san francisco
2006/11/19
elite men
30/45
'mates: funke, aron; rich, matthias, and scott on the blinglespeeds

another great race in golden gate park. this will be the third year running that they've hit the nail on the head in scheduling this race. cinematically perfect low autumn sunlight filtering through the trees as the fog burns off. nothing but moist, tacky dirt on the ground from the previous week's rain and night's fog. it's refreshing to be able to stand up from the breakfast table 2 hours before start time, strap the race wheels onto my timbuk2 bag, and ride 10 minutes to the venue with plenty of time to get registered, situated, and warmed up.

i picked up a headcold last week, so was off the bike resting wednesday and thursday. just 30 minutes easy/flat on the fixie to wake the legs up friday. i slept and napped as much as i could friday night and saturday. and then i took another nap. went out to preride the course on saturday and i was liking it. only a few variations on a circuit that i've been riding a lot this year with aron and with funke's wednesday evening rides. home court advantage! my head was still draining a little bit and i had some, shall we say, voluminous snot rockets to offer, but my heart rate came right up when i tested it on a hot lap of the course. it felt pretty good and easy but i wasn't sure exactly what to make of it. either i was primed and ready to rock, or my body was still otherwise occupied trying to heal as well. tbd at the race.

i felt a little trepidatious at the start because of my health, so i didn't go out too hard. got stuck in some traffic in the first lap because of it, but oh well. i wasn't off the back, so i figured i'd save whatever matches i had and work my way up as things started to sort themselves out. as it turns out, i had plenty of matches to burn, and i easily worked my way around bunches of the usual suspects the first two times through the paved start/finish stretch. all right, looking good. first time this season i've really felt like that, and it felt good! settled into a solid pace with mack and a junior named cody. by mid race it seemed like mack was showing his fitness and started to gap us, and cody was starting to fade. i was riding hard but still well within myself, not sure if my health was going to catch up with me.

i was feeling sloppy on the slow bumpy remount after the tall double barriers at the top of the hill. i supermanned a remount a little too much and could feel my rear tire buckle to the side under the pressure. a small section of tire had rolled off the rim just a little and was rubbing my seatstay. poop! i let cody take off while i tried to decide what to do. i could swap the wheel out for my spare, or try to push it back on which is a lot quicker, and risk riding on it for the rest of the race. i decided to give the latter a shot, and stopped at the top of the rooty section to push it back on the rim. it went back on fine, and i was back in business in a matter of seconds as rich came around me in second in the singlespeed category.

i followed rich around for a couple laps taking corners and remounts pretty gingerly until he rode me off his wheel. thanks for the draft, rich! the tire seemed to be holding fine, and i quickly caught back up to and passed cody. i had a couple more racers in sight in the last laps but wasn't able to quite get up to them except for aaron, who was barely moving. i think he might have had a mechanical or something.

so i finished with my best result of the season so far, feeling strong. not sure if all the rest last week brought on a fitness peak, or if it's just my form coming around, finally. but i'll take it. it feels good to have a strong result on home turf, providing welcome motivation for the last month or so of training and racing.

thanks to julie, deb, katy, and ariel for coming out to cheer. to dave and the rest of the meeces for all the volunteer work on the course and the series. props to marissa for braving her first 'cross race, and all the sycippers who seemed to up their game this week.

technical notes: looks like the tire didn't pick up much dirt after it rolled off, and it seems to be sticking back on well, so hopefully it won't need to be completely reglued, again. it's a fresh tire and fresh glue job after my blow out at white hill. also, after removing my top mount cheater brake levers this season, i decided to put a single rear one back on. i like to dismount and remount on the tops, and it allows me to control my speed (and confidence) that much more in fast barrier approaches. it got exercised quite a bit in this race, i appreciated it.

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