Signs of Cross?

(On my way to the State Short Track and DH title: sweet photos from Matt Link at www.fattirephotos.com)

The North Vernon weekend has come and gone again in Indiana. This weekend features a short track, downhill, and XC event as part of the Dino series and is also a AMBC event. That being the case, it usually draws a few more people than our usual series. I was excited to do the short track race to get a good gauge about how my prep for cx has been going since it is somewhat similar in styles. I was not, however, excited about the XC since I would place this trail on my "not so good at" places for me to race. You can about guess what that means for me, ie: climbing. I do feel it has a few more places for me to lay the power down on some flats than French Lick did and I was ready to give it my best and see how I faired. I felt once again that I prepped well for the week before and had a focused fresh diet and rested well. It was fun to take the RV down and this venue is always a cool place to RV it.

Friday night saw my travel mate Josh Johnson (7th in elite ST) and I arrive late since I had to work a bit late in the OR Friday. We set up camp and hit the lights out around 1am. A holiday weekend in an RV is not the best for sleeping since every person in the world seems to want to blow things up. I heard the "fun" until late in the night. I kept imagining some firecracker landing on the propane tank that would blow us into the sky... thankfully that didn't happen.

(photo by Matt Link)

Thankfully, we got the day started off right. The temps were nice and comfortable and I was able to enjoy some nice hot coffee without having to worry about drinking water instead. I had a nice prep for my short track race and went to the line ready to roll. We had a sweet turnout for the women and I thought that was pretty cool and was happy to see all the gals come out and race. I rather enjoy this st coarse a lot and my goal was to race as hard as I could to win and conserve when I could. I got a great start and was pleased to see I could still lay down some good vibes on the flats and I kept flickering to thoughts of cross and the months to come throughout the race. I really can't wait to see if all the hard work and focus after the surgery will pay off in my main discipline. Anyway, I rode a fast 10-15 minutes and stayed pretty much with the sport men before I started to lap some women. I decided at that point to lay off the gas for a few laps and conserve my energies for the other races. I rested and raced at times to finish off the 31 minutes and was very pleased with things in the end. Which leads me to this: apparently my own personal strategy of taking a few lap slow here and there appeared that I had some sort of race tactic surrounding the other racers out there. Looking back, I see how my slowing down at times came across as slowing the field down, but I promise I had no intentions of this at all. That gives me waaay more credit then I deserve. So to Emily and Meridith, this is my public apology for messing up your races in any way. It wasn't my intention. I was simply trying to conserve.

After the ST I decided to "race" the downhill. I did win the event, but I can't take much credit for it since I pretty much went as fast as I could on the single track, then ran the techy stuff.

After the day's events were over, the temps began to shoot up and Josh, myself, and a few others hit up some swimming in the river. The view in the river of the surrounding bluffs and boulders were truly amazing and God gave us a wonderful afternoon of viewing some of his handy work while cooling off. Aside from a near disaster of me almost losing my croc in the river, requiring a major rescue mission- Saturday turned out the be a great day!

(Pushing thru the heat for XC. Photo Matt Link)

With a full day of fun on Saturday in the books, Sunday proved to be a bit less "fun." By wake up time, the AC was already kicking on in the RV, and the temps would keep on rising the whole day. The best part was that we finally got to race this place DRY! Not only do I dislike racing here, I really dislike it when it is wet. So nice to have a dry race and, all in all, it was a fun trail to ride. I had a good start and thought I felt good in warm ups, but halfway up the first ascent I knew I was gonna struggle on the days climbs. I just didn't have much snap. Couple that with the heat, and it would be a really tough day of racing for all. I lead for a while then had Amanda pass by me on a climb. I hung on her wheel for most of the 1st of 3 laps and was actually pretty happy with being able to stay with her on the climbs. She is such a strong climber- I give her the polka dot jersey for our class! Once the real climbs began I slowly drifted back... or she ahead, and settled into second. About that time I burped my front wheel on a rock and spent a whole lap riding around almost flat and very tender before smarting up and stopping to air it up some. That helped me at least be able to corner a little better, but it was still pretty sketch as I only had 10psi at the finish check.

I soldiered on the remainder of the race and I was pretty happy with how I climbed and managed to ride despite feeling like my front tire could roll at any moment. The heat was pretty bad and shortly after the awards ceremony, I felt the affects of it hit me and had to lay down in the AC. I was so very thankful to be able to have the RV with AC to lay down and chill out a bit before making the drive back home.

So... 1st in ST, DH and 2nd in the XC. Kudos to Amanda Mckay of Shamrock Cycles, she had a strong race and deserved the win!

I'm back to hitting some training for a couple weeks and will take a bye week from racing. The short stint at ST has me starting to look forward at planning for aligning training for cyclocross... it will be here before we know it and some signs of Cross are in the air... or maybe my mind.

“And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.” – Galatians 6:9