'Cross at Coyote Point

The beautiful thing about racing bikes at Coyote Point is that whenever you get bored, you can just look over and watch the planes land at SFO.

Given how well my race went at GGP a couple weeks ago, I tried to duplicate my race prep: arriving pretty early to pre-ride before the 35A/45A race in street clothes, then another lap and a half before the Open A race in race get-up. I then tried to find a warm-up loop, but the Polo Grounds in GGP have nothing to fear from the sketchy industrial park I found today. Still, the legs felt a lot better than they did last week, so things seemed good to go.

And boy, the Open B race started with a bang. The start was the same as in the past, with a 300yd straight on the pavement leading to uphill pavement leading to a hard right onto the dirt. I had spotted a stump on that transition corner in warm-up and thought it would mess things up, and felt vindicated when some fellow in blue (found out later it was Kea H.) went sliding off of it to block the right side of the course while I could swoop by on the left (yes!). The dusty climb up wasn't over yet, though, and before it was over I was running with the bike with my chain dropped and I'm pretty sure my front tire had roughed up someone else's rear end...and I'm not talking about his bike...

Things didn't improve through the remainder of the windy path laid out through the "Enchanted Forest" as fast straights and slow corners made for complicated forward progress. On the bright side, I seemed to be carrying a lot more speed into corners than the guys I was trying to get past. By the end of the race, that may not have been a good idea, as my corners were definitely getting sloppier, but hey, there's something there to work with.

Exiting the Forest, riders then had the gravelly sand of the beach to deal with. The first time through I ran it and lost no time. The following times through, I rode it, but it was ugly. My stupid dumb bike pride wanted to ride it every time, but I really should have been running it.

Eventually I settled into a back-and-forth, leg-burning, saddle-swinging, snot-blowing battle with Dave P. from the Altezza 40 Horde. He could outspeed me on the pavement, and I would come back on the dirt. I think. DP's a pretty respectable racer so it felt good to be sort of on par with him. At the same time, I couldn't drop him, and at every corner I could hear his tires rolling behind me, and his fans' cheers weren't letting me forget he was right there...

The rubber band snapped on the last lap: coming down the washboarded trail out of the Forest, with my arms and shoulders getting tired and my cornering getting sloppy, I lost it and crashed. No harm done really, but there's always a bit of shock and my chain was doing twisty things around my chain rings, and just my luck, nine guys were right there ready to pass me. I swung back on and managed to catch one of 'em, but there was no catching the rest. As a reference, Dave P. ended up in 13th; I got 21st out of 43.

It was fun. A wide-open course, a really mixed bag of terrain (they should try wood chips on the European courses), a little bit of star-gazing as Barry Wicks showed up to play in the dirt, and the bittersweet satisfaction of finishing the Pilarcitos series (with free socks as door prize for the 5/5 racers). The 'cross racers were, as usual, super-duper fun; heck, even the mechanics were fun. There is a tinge of regret, though, 'cuz I think I wasn't riding smart today. Riding the beach when going in running would've been faster; a rise that I was riding in the wrong gear; sloppy corners...

Bah, I was racing. Now I need to find a way to force myself to practice the snot-blowing effort that racing requires.