I felt so good to be out there racing normally today after yesterday's horrible incident. On that note, I woke up with absolutely positively NOTHING sore, swollen or even scratched. A whole lotta nothing from the crash. I still can't believe that.
Now if only I hadn't had to start the race on my muddied up new B Bike, while not having seen the whole course yet and after not getting a great warm up in, it would have been awesome.
What is this amateur hour? Good lord.
So the bike situation was all a mess because I broke my frame in two spots in the crash yesterday so my B bike became my A Bike and my team manger had to piece together another bike last night and this morning so I could have something in the pits heaven forbid I need a bike change again.
This is also when you feel like bowing down to your team that you already thought was wonderful. Trying to deal with this jargon while supporting yourself is not fun (been there). I don't take anything i have for granted and am so thankful for any and all help that I get!!!! And here I now miraculously had a second bike for the Sunday race. Wow that is awesome, thanks guys!!!!!
So off I went on my, shall we call it almost a C Bike, on the start line. Nice. It was fitting a bit odd even after trying to get it right and it was rolling different too which is to all be expected since it was a different size and the whole nine yards.
Now had this been.....oh say.....5+ years to go and had I rolled to the line on a bike that really didn't fit me and that I wasn't used to I would have had an internal explosion of freaked outness (my new phrase). But today it just simply was what it was and I laughed about it on the start with my teammate Amanda. Yeah, its not the greatest scenario but whatever, I will figure it out. I think one might call that plenty of experience with a lotta different junk happening to you over the years of racing. You learn to roll with it instead of wasting precious energy having a cardiac arrest about it.
Oh and if that wasn't weird enough to start a race on an unfamiliar bike, you think I wasn't freaking out just a tiny bit about that first corner?? Last thing I wanted to do was cause another commotion so I got a great start, then laid off in the corner staying FAAAAAAAAR away from everyone and THEN started my race. I had issues with that corner. I just felt BAD about what went down the day before because it sucked. But once thru that corner it was on like Donkey Kong.
Amanda Miller and I riding in the Top 10
The course which I didn't mention in the previous post was interesting in that it had a lot of climbing in it. "A lot" when you are talking about cyclocross that is. It had dried out much more today and was tackier. That would be good for me as maybe I wouldn't need to pit after I pitted the one time to get MY bike back.
I just had to plan when to pit and get my normal bike back and get rid of this other bike that didn't really fit me. I did about 3 laps and kind of established my position and then went in for the pit change. I wanted to do it way earlier but I really needed to get where I wanted to be for the most part in the race. And that I did and then went in and got "my" bike. Ahhh.
Once on that thing I really started to make headway as I knew how to turn it a lot better and I knew how the pressure in the tires would roll over things. Life was good!
It turned out to be a solid day coming in 8th with just about everyone who's anyone there racing. And most importantly, no incidences either!
Taking a corner with Amanda C. hot on my trail
No comments:
Post a Comment