While Ryan and I were in Chattanooga, there was some weekend CX racing going on independently of our N.Georgia adventure.

Some may call me crazy, but I wanted to race! So we got up Sunday morning and drove to Camp Jordan park for Cross-a-nooga #2. Ryan’s legs were shot and he ended up finishing just out of the money. I, however, felt pretty good! It also helped that Cleve Blackwell from Blue let me ride one of the demo Cx6.5 bikes (SRAM Rival equipped).
Of course, I felt very much at home riding the SRAM/Blue combo… I was eager to give the ’09 Rival group a try since I’d heard great reviews about it. If you’re looking to build a bike and want components that won’t make you poor OR leave you wishing for something better, then the Rival parts get my vote. I think that the only thing that SRAM is missing now is a good set of CX brakes. The Cx6.5 is a pretty sweet frame, too!

So, I was set to race. There were six of us, and within half a lap, we’d settled into the order in which we’d eventually finish. I was 3rd behind Kym from Vantaggio (who is quickly becoming the “Debbie Milne” of TBRA Cyclocross) and Deb Whitmore from BMW Bianchi. I don’t think that my legs were a limiting factor as much was my inability to quickly negotiate 180 degree downhill turns. Seriously… there were 3 of them on course, and I never made it through any of them with any speed! Lately (actually never), my focus hasn’t been the CX bike, so I wasn’t expecting to pull off anything spectacular. It was still a nice 50 minutes of riding near my limits, through which I suffered gladly.

Ryan took a lot of photos of the B and C races (I got a few of the A race as well), and posted the link in his race report. Here are a few of my favorties:

It’s really weird how sometimes 2nd place can feel like losing and 3rd place can feel like winning. That wraps up another edition of “As the Gears Turn”