More Cyclocross: Getting Fa(s|t)ter

Don't worry, only two more 'cross races this year, then maybe it'll be time for dumb ski stories instead of dumb race reports.  

So all my bad behavior during rally season finally caught up with me.  With all the touring and regular riding I was doing through August and into September, I had the metabolism from hell. There was simply no such thing as too much, I could never eat enough.   Unfortunately, once rally duty picked up in October, the appetite stayed, but the outlet for all those calories went on hiatus. End result: I'm a solid 5-10lbs more than I'd like to be right now. 

I finally got back to some regular riding last week and discovered something else though- that 5-10 pounds may not be all fat.  I'm way, way, way stronger than I've ever been on the bike.  It's just unreal how much easier a lot of my regular rides have become.   Cyclocross is still hard as hell, but if the informal Wednesday night race was any indication, I was at least going faster.  

After the double header last weekend, and getting back into the local Wednesday night series last week, I wasn't exactly super excited about doing another 'cross race. I quickly got over it once I got to preride this past weekend's course. Best course of the series so far. Smooth sweeping paths through the trees with lots of elevation changes. Some flat, open sections to play pack games. Even the technical stuff was fun in that you pretty much carried the bike through it all, so there was no risk of pushing too hard and wrecking equipment.   It was fun to ride fast just for the sake of going fast, race or not. 

Since I'm kind of in a skills development mode for the rest of this season, I decided I'd work on picking people off and work my way up from midpack.  Everybody in B is getting a little smarter and the first lap of this race was pretty mellow, leaving us bunched up quite a bit. It made it fairly easy to work my way up and by the second lap, I was in the lead pack with Mike, Garret, and Nevin. It was a fight to keep up with these guys, I was pretty strong on the first third of the course, but I was hanging on for dear life everyplace else.   I watched Garret slow way the heck down once or twice to avoid dropping us, so I knew he was saving up for a serious attack. 

Sure enough, on the final lap, he made a break for it and Mike followed suit. I did what I could, but Mike was slipping away. Fortunately I managed to overtake Nevin and hang onto what I thought was third place.  I learned later that although I was in the lead pack, the lead rider- Colby was way the heck out in front of us and just trounced as all.   Still, fourth place is my best showing yet and puts me third in the championship standings.  I better enjoy my third place while I can though, once everybody drops their lowest score- it'll take a pretty crazy turn of events to bump me much beyond fourth.  Colby's pretty much got the championship wrapped up for himself, but it'll be a fun fight between the rest of us.

Next weekend is going to be an insane weekend of bike racing. I'm embarking on a whirlwind trip down to Traverse City to do the Iceman, a 28 mile MTB race. The big challenge here will be sharing the course with the other 3,999 idiots that signed up.  I'll be riding a singlespeed, so traffic on the course can be both a curse and a blessing. I don't know how I'll do at this race- I hope the opportunity to push hard will be there, but I might just have to sit back and enjoy the ride. 

And enjoying the ride might not be so bad, as the very next day, I'll be back up here in Negaunee for another cyclocross race.  This one isn't part of the championship series, so a bunch of us that have been racing B have decided to give A try.  Not only will I have to race longer, I'll have to go even faster if I want to stay on the lead lap.

And just in case all this racing actually does kill me, well... at least Chris was out getting some good pictures again to remember me by. Don't forget- Karki Hill Cemetery is nice if you decide not to go for the whole feed me to the vultures thing.