'09 Cyclocross Season Salvaged in 45-mins

I had a pretty crummy cyclocross season this year. That is, until 45-minute of the entire season was left.

I was nursing some nagging health issues that didn't effect my family life but kept me from really "giving it" on the bike beginning in June of last summer. I just felt as though I wasn't quite right, blamed it on too much riding and racing, and child rearing, and decided to just lay low for awhile. Laying low is nice sometimes and its easy to get sucked into soft pedaling all the time and keeping the heart rate in the mortal range. But I knew that since it was too easy to ride like this I must really need the rest, because that's just not like me: usually its hard for me to keep it slow, to not treat every hill like a challenge. Fartlek, its my favorite term for a reason. So the last half of my road race season I was on the bike less than a 1/4 of normal. I did a couple weekday races but mostly rode with Kian attached in the Chariot.

Racing For Hardware

Cross starts in September and I didn't even care. I had a couple big races that I'd hoped to defend from '08, but we took a couple week trip up into BC instead, climbing, hiking, showing Kiki the mountains for the first time up close and personal. My first race was in late October and I had it handed to me in the Elite race, a reality check for how much fitness I'd lost. I started getting out a few times a week and had some really good short-and-sweet training sessions: I still know how to turn it up while out on a stealth training run, and I started getting some confidence that I might have a chance at Nationals if I really ramped it up.

I signed up for Cyclocross Singlespeed World's in Portland and decided to make it a "double" weekend by racing in the Oregon State Championship race the day before. I had the silver medal clinched going into the final lap but self destructed with a couple of mechanical's but managed to pull off the bronze. I did SS World's on 4 or 5 beers and a skipping cog, so I really gave myself no chance. Besides, I didn't carry any dollar bills for the stripper bus shortcut which cost me even more. But fun was had on a gold medal level, that's for sure.

Video: SSWC: Through the Thunderdome (I'm wearing tighty-whities and bull horns).
Video: SSWC: Overall Race (cameo: horning in on the Pope and getting served).

Then it was the Washington State Championships where I took Gold in the Masters and then followed it 10-minutes later with Silver in the SS division. The next day I raced but was completely shelled because of a seizure in the muscles in my back, although I was able to stick with the leaders for a couple laps which I felt really good about. I felt pretty fast.

Now came the real crux of my entire season: do I take a 10-day trip to Tucson to train for Nationals and to race in the Tour de Tucson, or do I just admit the impossibility of getting enough fitness in the final few weeks to pull of the win and go XC skiing instead? Annie had a hand in the decision, so I'll blame her: we went skiing instead and although we had a fabulous time at Silverstar getting in 5-days of great skiing, this could have been that "straw". Or maybe not, who knows, maybe that skiing gave me the extra cardio I needed, although it undoubtedly tapped into the snappy nature of my cycling legs. I was so certain of failure at Nationals, at this point, I all but gave up. My goal, starting from the front row due to my top 10 last year, was to again finish in the top 8 and defer my national championship bid until next year when I would be more fit. I even skipped the biggest races in the NW the first weekend of December to go skiing again, so sure was I.

I probably could have skipped Nationals at that point, but Lara and Jon invited me to join them for a hotel room and a carpool, so there I was.

The secret to my success was this: the course. I wouldn't have admitted this prior to the race because intuitively I didn't like the course or the conditions, and I still haven't learned that often how a course appears during pre-riding is nothing like it will become when the gun goes off. When you preride a course I think too much about the lines, where I will falter, and who of my competitors will be served well by it, but once the race starts the thinking ends and its a race into and through the tunnel. I usually like it in the tunnel, and seemingly like it best when the stakes are high. Maybe that's why I raced for the hardware this year and why I found myself in 6 out of 8 championship races this season.