My 50th race of the year - or something
Today was the Northfield CX race, and according to my calculations, my 50th race of the year. That's 26 crits and road races, 1 time trial, 2 MTB races, 11 cyclocross races, and 10 nights at the track (I counted each night at the track as one race, even though it was technically three). Also, I counted Opus, but not the Boom Island CX training races.
This weekend was another double CX weekend, and a pair of second places for me. I spent Friday night getting my bike rack onto the Echo, and Maria and I headed up to Anoka on Saturday. We cheered for Bellas Barb, Manda, and Dana in the C race before lining up with Linda C for the B race. Yeah, there were only 3 of us women in the B race. We started out at a nice easy pace, heading out over some pavement, through some bumby grass, over a paved bridge and back onto dirt before hitting a triple barrier. Since I'm super smooth, I hit the first barrier and took a bit of a digger, but I was up again pretty quickly. After the race, I realized that the barriers seemed higher for a reason -- check out the three inches of space under them in the photo (courtesy of Lynne). Then we went over some relatively flat, smooth trails through the woods before emerging into a sand pit with a barrier in it. Then onto some more paved trails, through some curves, and over another single barrier right by the start/finish. The course was relatively long, and a pretty constant effort - there weren't really any parts that were harder or easier than others. After a couple easy laps, Maria got impatient and went to the front to push the pace for a bit. She put in quite a huge pull for a lap with me on her wheel and then pulled off. I took over, and then managed to pull off a true superman style fall - I caught a toe on the single barrier and went flying onto my stomach. At that point, Linda C went to the front, pushing the pace. I got up and hung on to her wheel until the last lap, where she attacked on a paved section, and I just couldn't quite hang on. I didn't have any mechanical issues though, which was great - Hollywood came running up 5 minutes before my start and slapped some spanking new Shimano 959s on my bike - nice.
Today was the Northfield race. Maria and I loaded up the Echo - it was like deja vu all over again. We got to Northfield and quickly got lost. We drove around for a while and finally some guy pulled up next to as and asked if we were here for the "bike meet" - brilliant guess, considering the bikes on top of the car. He pointed us towards all the other bike meet participants, where we spent another 15 minutes finding registration. We caught part of the C race, where Barb took second and Paula got fourth. Nice job! Maria did the collegiate race as her warm-up and then we lined up for the B race. The promoter decided to line up the women first, a nice change, so the 6 of us started a couple minutes ahead of the main men's field. We started over some bumpy grass, then around an off-camber 180 turn, where Linda C laid it down. She bounced up though, and we all approached the biggest frickin run-up ever. Wow, was it hard. Holy crap. You could grind up the first part, but then there were two barriers, and then another LONG stretch of steep running uphill. Linda C killed us all on the run-up, but I made it to the top second and took off after her through a bunch of grassy switchbacks. Then there was a rocky downhill singletrack section where I caught her and then took around her as the trail opened up. I almost nailed a pine tree, but it was all good, and then we headed into the "pinwheel" a spiral that you went into and then back out. It was pretty rad. Then Linda took around me again on the run-up, and I caught her again on the downhill. Then it happened again except I didn't catch her. The bell lap came far earlier than I expected, I think my race ended up being under 40 minutes, but it was all good because I finally came in ahead of Super-Rookie. To be fair, I started with two minutes on him and he is far better than me at turning left, thanks to his track skills. Maria pulled off a third place again, with Betty A and Gopher S battling it out in a sprint finish for fourth.
And Matt Anderson was handing out Coke at the end, so it was a good day all in all. That's Coca-cola, not cocaine. Steven has an awesome video of clips of the race, and Dispencer drew a sweet diagram of the pinwheel.
Next weekend is the MN State CX race, and my mom's going to be here!! I'm pretty psyched about that. Plus, it's her birthday tomorrow - happy birthday mom!
And I'm already fired up for jingle cross rock - it will be my last weekend of racing for 2006, and it looks like it's really going to rock.
This weekend was another double CX weekend, and a pair of second places for me. I spent Friday night getting my bike rack onto the Echo, and Maria and I headed up to Anoka on Saturday. We cheered for Bellas Barb, Manda, and Dana in the C race before lining up with Linda C for the B race. Yeah, there were only 3 of us women in the B race. We started out at a nice easy pace, heading out over some pavement, through some bumby grass, over a paved bridge and back onto dirt before hitting a triple barrier. Since I'm super smooth, I hit the first barrier and took a bit of a digger, but I was up again pretty quickly. After the race, I realized that the barriers seemed higher for a reason -- check out the three inches of space under them in the photo (courtesy of Lynne). Then we went over some relatively flat, smooth trails through the woods before emerging into a sand pit with a barrier in it. Then onto some more paved trails, through some curves, and over another single barrier right by the start/finish. The course was relatively long, and a pretty constant effort - there weren't really any parts that were harder or easier than others. After a couple easy laps, Maria got impatient and went to the front to push the pace for a bit. She put in quite a huge pull for a lap with me on her wheel and then pulled off. I took over, and then managed to pull off a true superman style fall - I caught a toe on the single barrier and went flying onto my stomach. At that point, Linda C went to the front, pushing the pace. I got up and hung on to her wheel until the last lap, where she attacked on a paved section, and I just couldn't quite hang on. I didn't have any mechanical issues though, which was great - Hollywood came running up 5 minutes before my start and slapped some spanking new Shimano 959s on my bike - nice.
Today was the Northfield race. Maria and I loaded up the Echo - it was like deja vu all over again. We got to Northfield and quickly got lost. We drove around for a while and finally some guy pulled up next to as and asked if we were here for the "bike meet" - brilliant guess, considering the bikes on top of the car. He pointed us towards all the other bike meet participants, where we spent another 15 minutes finding registration. We caught part of the C race, where Barb took second and Paula got fourth. Nice job! Maria did the collegiate race as her warm-up and then we lined up for the B race. The promoter decided to line up the women first, a nice change, so the 6 of us started a couple minutes ahead of the main men's field. We started over some bumpy grass, then around an off-camber 180 turn, where Linda C laid it down. She bounced up though, and we all approached the biggest frickin run-up ever. Wow, was it hard. Holy crap. You could grind up the first part, but then there were two barriers, and then another LONG stretch of steep running uphill. Linda C killed us all on the run-up, but I made it to the top second and took off after her through a bunch of grassy switchbacks. Then there was a rocky downhill singletrack section where I caught her and then took around her as the trail opened up. I almost nailed a pine tree, but it was all good, and then we headed into the "pinwheel" a spiral that you went into and then back out. It was pretty rad. Then Linda took around me again on the run-up, and I caught her again on the downhill. Then it happened again except I didn't catch her. The bell lap came far earlier than I expected, I think my race ended up being under 40 minutes, but it was all good because I finally came in ahead of Super-Rookie. To be fair, I started with two minutes on him and he is far better than me at turning left, thanks to his track skills. Maria pulled off a third place again, with Betty A and Gopher S battling it out in a sprint finish for fourth.
And Matt Anderson was handing out Coke at the end, so it was a good day all in all. That's Coca-cola, not cocaine. Steven has an awesome video of clips of the race, and Dispencer drew a sweet diagram of the pinwheel.
Next weekend is the MN State CX race, and my mom's going to be here!! I'm pretty psyched about that. Plus, it's her birthday tomorrow - happy birthday mom!
And I'm already fired up for jingle cross rock - it will be my last weekend of racing for 2006, and it looks like it's really going to rock.
posted by karla at 6:48 PM
7 Comments:
Northfield rocked! I have some video of you flying out of the singletrack ahead of Linda. See you at jingle cross! You doing the Wisconsin State champs?
Wow, I can't believe you're still racing...I'm impressed...it's been a long season for you. Looking forward to seeing your mom again next weekend too (yes, I'll be there cheering).
Atta Girl KJK, I counted all of the times I pinned a number on this year, between road, track and cx, and I'm at 53! We rock!
oops, I missed the badlands classic, I'm up to 55, the State CX is all I have left in me, then I'm done, have fun at the JingleRock...
Glad the picture was useful ;-) Did you see the photos of Northfield on Red Lantern's (Dan Cleary?) BLOG? Looking down shows how painful and monster the thing was WAY better than looking up it. I'd love to memorialize that sucker for myself so I can look back next year and have total recall of how horrendous that thing was, roflmao!!
Awesome! Cyclocross looks like a challenging sport. The video of you blazing down the hill rocked! Any idea on your speed?
Ride safe, congrats on the 50th race and continued good luck Karla!
jingle.
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