Ice Weasels

Wow, where'd the season go? Hard to belive that it's already mid-December. In past years nationals would have been this weekend. Weird. I'm having a hard time believing it's almost Christmas, too. I think that has to do with the amazingly warm and dry weather we've had this fall - it's been late-October-like for 2 months now.

Anyway, I met my end-of-season goal on Saturday to have two consecutive good races, although I went into the race intent on having fun and ending the season positively even if I was getting lapped by cat 4s. The course was super fun, twisting back on itself a lot so it was kind of hard to tell where people were. There were some fun tight turns, a blazing fast set of barrier surrounded by tons of rowdy spectators, a fun up-and-down section on the back of the course with a little run up, and a fly-over. The only other fly-over I've done was at Gloucester, and that one had a nice set of stairs leading up to it and a pretty long flat section on the top to remount. At Ice Weasels it was a ramp up, covered in that fake-grass-carpet stuff, with a boards nailed down every 16 inches or so - wicked slippery - and then a pretty short remount area and a quick drop into some rutted mud. Fun, but I was pretty cautious on the way up after I slipped and almost fell down it when I was preriding.

It wouldn't be 2011 without me having a lousy start, which in this case could best be described as "apathetic". So there was some traffic to wade through on the first lap. I passed a lot of people, then got in a group of 3. I was corner really well (wee!) so when I was sitting anywhere other than 1st wheel I would get frustrated in the corners by how slow I was forced to go. But my acceleration wasn't fantastic, so passing was a little tricky. I passed at one point before a technical section and had a little gap, but then I was going to slow up the fly-over and actually got passed back at the top. OK, that's all right, passed again before the technical up-and-down-run-up section, and the girl behind me bobbled something and I got a pretty good gap. At this point I had probably 3 to go, and I was feeling kind of tired. I was pretty stupid before my race about what I ate. Basically I didn't eat enough. I had my oats and coffee at breakfast, but for some unfathomable reason I didn't bother bringing much food with me. I had a yogurt, a container of raisins (???) and a Gu shot. Right? What was I thinking? So I had eaten my yogurt about 3 hours before my race, then snacked on raisins, then totally forgot to eat my Gu shot after my unimpressive warm-up. So I think I was running out of fuel at that point in the race. The good: I kept it together, rode within myself, rode well technically, and kept the gap I had on the 2 girls I'd been riding with. The bad: I didn't catch anyone else. But I finished pretty strong, despite getting hung up in some lapped cat 4s.

The rad: before the women's race my teammate raced with the 3/4 men and schooled every last one of them. Then she won our race.

It was, in fact, a terrific end to the season. That race pretty much embodied all the awesome things about 'cross - great course, great crowd, beer tokens, and a pedal-powered apple press, to name a few. I'm not particularly burned out on racing, but I am a little tired of being slow, so I'm excited to get back into it after great season of training under my belt. I just wish I didn't have to wait so long!