Since daylight savings is giving me an extra hour of beer-drinking blog-writing time tonight, I figured I’d go ahead & get today’s race report out of the way.

Ryan and I went to McEwen today (just west of Nashville). When I arrived at registration, I found out that there’d be a small (4 of us) but competitive women’s 1/2/3 field. Woohoo!

We lined up behind the Cat 3 men and started 30 seconds back from them. I had the holeshot, but dropped back in the first couple of turns in order to get a feel for the other women’s strengths/weaknesses. At the first log barrier, my nerves got the best of me, and I mis-timed a dismount- I was off in time, but lifted my bike late and bonked my front wheel into the tree at full-speed… my bike bounced backwards hard enough to send me into an odd dirt/mtb shoe interpretation of a 180 ballet pirouette. At that point, I’d been on Jessica Owings wheel, but Amanda Ragle took advantage of my screw-up and passed me going into a nasty off-camber turn along the edge of a stank-ass cow pond.

Somewhere soon after, I passed Jessica to stay on Amanda’s wheel. My temporary plan was to stick to her wheel for a little bit, then throw down a strategized attack later in the race. However, we soon took to the barriers, and I ended up getting a gap on the ground (thank you, Coach, for those 20x dismount workouts…) When I took the lead, I maintained the same, barely maintainable pace that we’d done for the first lap. Amanda & Jessica did not.

I kept hammering the course as hard as possible. I could see Amanda a couple of turns back, so I didn’t want to let off at all. After a few laps, Ryan gave me a time check of “well over a minute.” I kept hammering. I was pulling the cat 3 men in like fish on a trotline. Soon enough, I was bearing down on the guy who was in 4th when I realized that I could no longer see Amanda in any of the turns behind me. I made the executive decision to downshift and take it down a notch. I’ll be racing for bigger money in Jonesboro tomorrow, so I forced myself to swallow my pride and not totally bleed out of my eyes in order to achieve the “make all the guys my bitches” goal.

At just under breakneck speed, I concentrated mainly on not braking much. I realized today that with the ill-fitting geometry of my previous CX bike, I was just now starting to learn how to turn fast enough to squirm/roll my rear tire under. Fun stuff!

Later, in the podium photo, I potentiated the Nashville rumor that I’m a “lesbian biker chick”… who cares what anyone thinks when you’re on the top step?

It’s November, which, if you live in Memphis, means two things… 1) the weather will, at some point, cease to be unseasonably warm and start to be unseasonably cold (usually within a span of 24 hours); and 2) Outdoors, Inc’s annual  Cyclocross Race headlines Memphis Health and Fitness magazine. I could tell you all about the race here, but then you wouldn’t have a reason to either click that link or read the article in Memphis Health and Fitness.

Last year, I was photographed and included in a sidebar along with the article… sort of a “meet a real life cyclocross racer” thing. This year will be similar, except for the cover photo. Instead of using a photo of racers taken during a previous cyclocross race, they realized that during cyclocross races, people generally scowl, drool, and have a gelatinous mixture of sweat and boogers hanging from the end of their noses. Instead, it made sense to take a photo of someone doing cyclocross things outside of the whole race situation.

So, a few weeks ago, I met a photographer & publisher at Mud Island park. They took a lot of photos- standing, running (up stairs and on the ground), riding, etc. The fun part was doing everything in slow motion while smiling, looking at the camera and trying to look like I was not doing whatever it was in slow motion. Everyone’s favorite one? Shoulder my bike and freeze in place while running up the stairs…

Hopefully, next time I run up those stairs, I’ll be going much faster and be dragging the souls of my competition along with me. The race is November 13th. Come out, watch, and heckle. If nothing else, it’s a good excuse to drink a beer and yell at people on a Sunday morning- perfectly acceptable behavior for any cyclocross race.

And, on a totally random note, here’s a video that made me smile: