Mud, Snow, Crashing and Painful Fun…

Monday, December 1st, 2008

Mud, Snow, Crashing and Painful Fun sums up my Colorado Thanksgiving trip which included some good morning rides and Cyclocross (CX) Racing…

I was in town for five days and it all started waking up to the lovely weather on Turkey day. I was getting in some good rides and enjoying the new company over the Holiday but the cool weather and riding were awesome!

Days 1-2:
Highlands Ranch, CO was home base and while the road riding was open and great; The Highlands Ranch bike trails were the best so I kept getting drawn back to the dirt. I spent Thursday and Friday mornings with two, or more, hours of riding the Ranch trails.
One can see the trails are wide single-tracks that are well maintained and smooth, perfect CX bike riding. While I did meet a few really cool locals the wildlife was the coolest of onlookers…
The cool weather also produced some fun elements with frozen dirt, which was like velcro and ice streams.

Days 3-4
After stuffing myself with Thanksgiving turkey, wine, all the other foods, and more wine. I was enjoying myself way too much in Colorado. Saturday morning I awoke to snow but luckily it stopped and sun was starting to peak through which made my first race day in Colorado a mud fest.
It was a great racing scene and even with the weather the fields were stacked. I figured out that starting in the last row of 35 riders was not a good way to start. We sprinted out from the start for about 400 yards of muddy road until the group hit the soupy single-track. It was tight and snow filled trails. I thought I had the opportunity to pass a couple racers in the forest section as I made a dash through the snow off the mud track only to strike a hidden tree stump, in which I found myself thrown off my bike into the snowy forest and farther back in the group than I had planned.
Well the end of day 1 of Colorado CX ended with a horrible finish as I crashed more than once and found myself off the course at least twice each lap. My realization was racing cross in real cross conditions is a lot harder than SoCal.

Sunday started again waking to snow, except the snow did not stop all day. In fact it was snowing so hard on the last lap that there were sections that the tracks were filling in as racers finished each lap.
It was a much colder day of racing but I finished much better. The races were packed again and I was able to obtain a 19 out of 42 competitors but I am sure more of my California skills showed with each crash and mistake I made on course sending myself into the snow banks. The snow was great and gripped a lot better than the previous days soupy mud but the off-camber mud sections sucked. I found myself launched onto my side twice during warm-ups and once during the race and the crashes happened so fast that I was not able to unclip as I landed on my hip and shoulder sliding down the course. The bruises from the crashes are more painful than actual racing, I hate ice!
The other difficult part of the snow and mud is the build up in your tires, frame, brakes and derailers. By the last lap my brakes did not work and my tire would not spin on without some serious power pushing on the pedals.

Watching the big dogs, Matt Pochoa-Velo News and others, race was great too, especially since they smoothly steered their way through the mud and snow looking a lot more comfortable than I did, splattering myself on the courses in my two days Colorado CX experience.

Overall, the trip has been a blast as I was able to visit friends and family for the Holiday while damaging myself and bikes in the local race scene. I am actually bummed to go home as I am sitting reflecting on the trip in a Starbucks sipping my decaf and thinking of putting my ice pack on my hips when I get home tomorrow.

-DSheek
CX explorer
Next destination, Kansas City CX National Championships

– Filed under Cyclocross, Dave's Personal by davesheek at 20:48.