Northern turkey 'cross

This was the weekend of Canadian Thanksgiving, not that many people in the US notice either that or Columbus Day. Still, Happy Thanksgiving to you all--eh?

Sunday was the first installment of the Pilarcitos Superprestige cyclocross series, at a new/old venue, Sierra Point. The grounds were "reclaimed" from the Bay, so the dirt was, well, sort of like ground concrete. Hard, powdery. We don't get to play on soft, loamy dirt around here very much, do we? Others have described the spidery course, so on to a race report:

I started near the back, hoping more for a clean race than a high placing. Indeed, the clustering in the first sequence of up-and-down-and-up U-turns made a high placing pretty much impossible: by the time I got through, the leaders had long since hopped over the triple barrier way up the course. Still, I managed to sabotage my hopes for a clean race on the first drop after the barriers/run-up by sliding out on the oversized gravel at the bottom (gravel? well-aged asphalt). After getting up, dusting off, and checking to see if my bike still worked, there was a woman doing a warmup lap behind me. So, I was either DFL or really close to it.

The nice thing was that I was strong enough to catch up and pass people after that--clearly I was far more motivated after crashing than I was last week. The two running sections really played to my long legs and running background as I could make up gobs of time and space. Somewhere in there, I came up behind Nemesis, the rider who had caused me to crash the two weeks previous by boggling in front of me--he was picking himself up after a failed attempt to scuttle someone else's chances. I followed for some ways, leaving enough space to allow for dodging, then passed on some straight where it'd be really hard for him to find a place to boggle. And that's the last I saw of Nemesis...this time. We will meet again--he's better at lining up second row for the start, methinks.

The race ended with me in a pack-filler position (36/58) but without getting lapped. Key points: start better, somehow, and don't fall over. Really, I just need to stop falling, and things could improve mightily. And repairing skin is getting old.

Great fun to see all the folks with their tents (and precious shade) and barbeques and coolers out for the races: running a team competition that includes points for all of those things is possibly one of the best aspects of this series. Morgan even handed me his camera to take a few pictures 'round the course, which was fun--hanging out at the races post-Lycra is always fun--and some of them were even in focus. I think it also allowed Morgan to focus on, well, beer.

Now writing this post is mostly redundant because (a) I think I ran into everyone who reads this blog and knows cyclocross at the race, so they know my story already, and (b) anyone who reads this and doesn't know cyclocross will probably get as much out of it as they would an advance Swahili reader. But it's good practice.