Let me set one thing straight... I am really starting to enjoy my decision to jump into this crazy thing called cyclo-cross...
Yesterday evening in Colmar Manor Community Park, near Hyattsville, MD, In The Crosshairs cycling team put together an impromptu race called SSYCX. Silly me decided what better way to learn CX, without making myself a complete fool, then to enter into this race and see how if I'm cut out for this type of racing! I literally just bought my Cannondale CAADX Ultegra Disc CX bike a week prior and I didn't want to reenact the whole "Sugar Hill MTB race new-bike-rear-wheel-taco-fiasco", so I figured this "underground" race would be the perfect setting (not a lot of people means less chance of crashing). The good news is the race director did a course pre-ride with us two times around, so at least I knew how things would go down. There were two groups set up, an A group (which was seven laps) and a B group (which was four laps)... B group seemed fine to me! We all lined up and I pretty much stayed in the back just to heed caution to the more experienced riders and watched what they did during the race. Of course I have watched a few CX races in the past and have had a couple of practices with the AFC team, but this being the first time racing I didn't really know exactly what to expect.... So in the words of David Farragut, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" and that's exactly what I did.... at least until I got to the down slope S-turn... This is where I need work! This tight turn psyched me out every time, though three out of four laps I was able to stay inside the cones, my speed was very slow. My mounts and dismounts were decent, though I did catch myself trying to "hop" a couple of times, but I told myself to slow down and do it right. By the third lap I was in the middle of the group and was keeping a pretty solid pace with everyone else. I figured if had plenty of steam to run a strong forth lap so I picked up the pace, but caught myself making a dumb mistake, which was jumping over the barriers with both feet off the ground instead of running with one leg over. So I self corrected and kept going, telling myself the motto "slow is smooth, smooth is fast"...
At one point in the fourth lap I was schooled in the ways of "Bandit CX" to where the guy behind me said that my rear tire was dangerously low and suckered me into checking it out... I didn't know better! Either way he passed me as soon as I realized that I got punk'd, but it was short lived! I tore off after him and within maybe 1/8th of a mile I was in my old spot and moving to drop 'em. I had a good bit of reserve power and by the last leg I hammered down and took off... and ended up with taking 5th place. All in all not bad in my book.
Anyway the course was pretty straight forward with some tree turns, loose gravel areas, a barrier set, a short but steep climb, lots of grassy areas, sandy area from a ball field, and a "use your imagination" off the bike hill climb. The course was solid and only a short 1.5ish miles per lap. Thanks In The Crosshairs for a good time, looking forward to the next one!
