snohomish cyclocross
raced my third cross race up in snohomish. what an adventure.
i woke up to nasty rain and tony and i almost bailed. but it got really nice, so we went for it. i rode over to his place, so i brought a minimum of gear. bad idea. when we arrived it started to sprinkle. then rain. then hail. all while the temperature dropped to the low 40's. oh man, it was bad. again, we considered bailing.
i was super annoyed with myself because i'd not brought even a rain jacket. or a change of clothes beyond the shorts i was wearing. this meant that if i got wet and cold, i was gonna be wet and cold all the way home.
luckily for me, the weather cleared up for our race, but the sporadic death storms had done a number on the course, making it an absolute mud fest. as any astute reader of my blog knows, i have not raced off-road and i definitely haven't ridden in much mud. it was an adventure
all in all, i rode fairly well. i just fell too often. like a couple times a lap. that falling over takes a lot out of a rider in addition to actually slowing him down. i started getting the hang of some parts and really flew if i was able to do sections right, but all too often i was flailing. parts were so bad that even walking, i was struggling to stay upright.
in the end, i was not last, but barely. i edged out some guy from WWU in the last critical section. it felt kind of good to actually push myself. before that, i'd been too concerned with not falling to really give it the go juice.
