This past weekend was the second event of the Seattle Cyclocross series for 2013, hosted at a new venue in Carnation - the Tall Chief Golf Course. This golf course has been closed down for over a year, but somehow the SCX crew managed to get it opened up as a cross venue. They spent a good amount of time cutting out a course, and it definitely worked out! The course was very large and covered some climbing, off-camber mud sections, steep hills up and down, a lot of slow mud and deep mud too. Bikes were coming in with large chunks of mud and grass, and many racers were going to be making trips to the LBS this week to fix broken parts as a result.
Our race started about 30 minutes late, to give you an idea at how the racers were trickling in. As with every race so far this year, I was starting in the third row, so it definitely is important to move up quickly! When the bell rang, we hit the gas. Despite having only a moderate jump off the line, I was able to pick a very clear line into the first corner and moved up into the tail of the lead group. As we made the second corner and into the off-camber straight section, I continued to hold my spot. We hit the big downhill and everyone braced to make the corner at the bottom. I cut through the mud and started gassing it up the short gravel climb to continue holding with the leaders.
At this point we flew into the front stretch of the course - a series of straightaways and looping corners in a variety of bumpy grass and slow-n-tacky mud. This was the section of the course that really killed your legs, as it was very difficult to keep up momentum in this mud. This is where the elastic finally snapped and we who were holding onto the leaders' tails were ejected. I continued to push along, trying to catch back on, but realizing I would be spending the rest of the racing doing so.
Hitting the mud in front of the pit, I jumped aside and started running while I watched others struggle through the deep mud. Once you reached the other side, it was back on the bike and full-power to get up a short muddy hill before looping back for a second shorter hill and then shooting out onto a nice hard path for a minute. The final part of the course was a loop through the grass and then into another mud field. This field was far more rideable, but I still felt I was faster dismounting and running the last half, gaining ground on some of the riders who persisted in riding the entire thing. Once you were through the mud, a short trip over the barriers and then you were right back to the starting stretch and hitting the gas again.
In the end, I had a decent race, ending up 17th of 25 starters. Definitely showing some form improvement again, so I am looking forward to another week of build-up before MFG's Magnusson Park race next weekend - an event I have always done well at and won as a Cat 3 last year. As for the new course? Well, it is definitely a challenging set-up, but I think that it was a well designed course. If we race here again next year, I think they will have things changed a little, but overall it was a great challenge to the riders and a good way to spend the day at the races.
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