Traveled back to Fayetteville, TN over the weekend for some more cyclocross action.<\/p>\n
Once again, on Saturday, conditions were not perfect. Some would call it typical Belgian Cyclocross weather- mud, temps in the mid 40’s, damp air, and wind. OK, so some people call this perfect cyclocross weather. I guess it could be much worse…<\/p>\n
I lined up with a small group of Cat 3 men (including Ryan<\/a>). No other women showed up for the 1\/2\/3 race, so I figured I’d test my legs against the guys. I ended up doing pretty well- Ryan won, and I finished 3rd- only about 10 seconds back from a guy that I tried my damnedest to pull back for the last 4 laps of the race. It would have been cool for us to get a 1-2, but I still turned in some good lap times and felt like I’d left everything out on the course.<\/p>\n Sunday was a gorgeous day. The skies cleared, temps were in the 50s, and the ground dried out a little bit. The course was nice, too- only one set of barriers! Ryan had upgraded overnight<\/a>, so I raced against 3 other guys. I was hoping that the guy I’d almost beaten on Saturday would show up for round #2, but he was absent. Two of the guys were overnight 4-3 upgrades, so I had no idea how I’d fare against them. I had a couple of changes I wanted to make to my strategy- I decided I’d try to spin less, and I wanted to use a different “lifting” form with my bike over the barriers.<\/p>\n Both things made me a little bit faster- the bigger gear got my heart rate down a little, and lifting the bike so that I was flicking the wheels out to the side meant that I didn’t have to lift\/jump as high over the barriers. That will be a nice skill to remember whenever I have a barrier to hop w\/out much traffic around :) Even with my best effort, I still only managed a 3rd place. Once again, though, it was a hard-fought 3rd. I was dead by the time I finished!<\/p>\n Hopefully I can put that type of effort out next weekend @ the USGP race in Louisville. I’ll be testing the legs out against a much bigger group than what I’m used to, so it should be interesting.<\/p>\n