CX Nationals: Day1

Day one was pretty epic, but should be nothing compared to Sunday, which should feature 3-6" of snow. Anyway, course was still pretty iced over for my race. There was a mud "singletrack" around the whole course, which everyone took, but you could pass by riding over the crusted ice.... though you had to be more careful.

Got a good warmup in at the warmup tent, which featured trainers in BOXES that we needed to assemble before using. So... that sucked, but I was able to stay warm, and felt like I was relatively ready to go. No where near the numbers were there at the start than I thought. I thought there were 140 registered riders, but I think there were only about 40 starters.

I started off allright, didn't quite hold my position through the opening road section, probably got passed more than I passed people... but I could see the front, and felt like I could make efforts to at least get towards it. This plan started to unravel once I fell once going up a little bit of an off-camber uphill. I took the line off the mud, and went into the ice to try and pass people, but ended up sliding out. That cost me a few spots, and a shout-out from the announcer. I made a few efforts then to get back up to some groups in front of me, but after those efforts, I didn't have the gas to get around them or work to the next one. After a while I just wanted to learn the course and ride the hard sections smoothly, thinking ahead to Sunday's Collegiate race. I guess I finished 26th, which might sound respectable being at nationals, but there weren't that many people... and most of them were in front of me.

I had a lot of fun though, and I'll throw up a picture later of my bike, which was TOTALLY full of grassy mud after the race. Seriously, never seen my bike look anything like that. Thankfully they had a spray booth set up, which will lead into a funny story I'll put up once I get the photographic evidence later on.

The So-Cal roomate, Jim, had a great race to finish a very respectable 16th of 79 in the 40+ B race. He'll be racing tomorrow in the age-graded national championships, then transferring solely to super-fan and taxi-cab duties.