Utah Cyclocross Series #5

There is nothing like peeling off the layers down to ONE and exposing bare legs to the 38 degrees weather. Welcome to the wonderful world of Cyclocross! And yes I DO love it if you are asking yourself why-why -why, does she do this? :)

The weather was brisk one could say but it was a fairly nice day out for the race at Wheeler Farm in Salt Lake. Wheeler will always throw some off camber sections, pea gravel road, grass, singletrack and a fast moving paver sections at you. And of course there are the barriers to jump over, this time with one set conveniently located at the bottom of a bit of a slope, the other in a smoken' fast section just waiting for you to get too much speed and topple over them instead of running over them.

One flat for me before the race and one flat after the race and none in between. Whew. That was a close one! I was running tubes today. Not even Slime tubes, just tubes. Chris had tried and tried and tried to make something work with the rims I was using but to no avail and I was stuck with the heaven forbid tubes!!! I am not a fan of tubes because I always always, did I mention ALWAYS flat them. In this case it wasn't my riding style leading to the flats but it was instead the goatheads that were scattered throughout the course. EEEOOOHHHH - goatheads?? NO, not a real goathead silly. Goatheads are seedpods that fall from plants and have a pointy end on them . It is a thorn that looks like just that, a goat’s head. And they lay on the ground waiting to get a free ride on your tire so they can spread themselves throughout the area. They are little buggers.

So anyway, no flats during the race for me along with a strong start put me in the lead and kept me there and I won. The Masters 35 +B and Single Speeders started about a minute up from the Women A group that I was in so that gave me lots and lots of carrots to chase. And it really got my rusty wheels in my brain turning thinking about tactics and getting into the singletrack first and what I would have to do and when I would have to do it to accomplish that goal. It was really good for me because I raced fair but aggressive and was able to pass about 20 or so men. They don't make it easy as they are a strong bunch and that is the way I like it!

Chris had yet another awesome race, racing in the B men's category. He placed 3rd!! And that was after racing yesterday at the Utah Cyclocross Race Series #4 in Ogden, UT (I didn't race that one), then doing errands in Salt Lake and finally coming home to work in the garage for 4.5 hours cleaning and maintaining bikes. Really not the way you want to "recover" from a race in preparation for another race the next day but it worked for him!! Go figure! I am proud of him for doing so well given the amount of time he doesn't have to ride and recover and train these days. Good on him!