This past weekend I decided to change states and go race in one of Tennessee’s cyclocross races. This was a new series: Beat the Freak, sponsored by SVMIC cycling. In a follow-up post, I’m going to compare the TN and the GA series of races, so I’ll leave out any opinionizing about the course/series until then.

The Course

This course was a very, very simple course compared to my previous race. Whereas the last course was more technical and had 3 mandatory dismounts (2 sets of 2 barriers, and 1 flight of stairs) and one mostly-mandatory dismount (log -> hill -> sand -> hill), this course had only 1 mandatory dismount (1 set of 1 barrier) and no mostly-mandatory dismounts (unless you count the sand trap).

The race took place at the Lincoln County High School in Fayetville, TN. It started in the parking lot before taking a left to the football stadium. Imagine the football stadium as a track, with the curved 100m of the track being the low points, and the straight-aways being the high points. You took a slightly steep hill to the top of the stadium, rode a flat path the length of the stadium, down a small hill then back up a hill to be at the top of the other side of the stadium. After going the length of the stadium again and descending a hill, we took another U-Turn and were in the grass. After a short period of grass, we hit a mostly dirt trail that had us wedged between a corn field and some woods. This segment was probably half a mile long before turning slightly uphill and back into some grass. We hit a turn and saw the one barrier, but instead of jumping it, we turned and went into a fairly bumpy grassy stretch. After a moderately long (relatively speaking) slightly steep hill, we cut back and jumped the barrier. Shortly after the barrier was a dirt patch followed by sand pit. The sand pit was very short and could be coasted through. After this we were back on the road and then back at the start. All in all, the loop was 1.9 miles long.

The Race

In my field (CX4) there were only 10 racers. My chance of DFL went from 2% (the field of 50+ in GA) to 10%. Blast. In addition, most of these people looked in shape and like they knew what they were doing. Right from the gun, I knew where my place was going to be: DFL. The rest of the field took off like someone had lit a fire under them. I’m still relatively new to biking, and still am unsure how to pace myself that well, so admittedly probably started the race a little slow. I noticed that 8 of the guys sped off, leaving one guy slightly ahead of me. As the race went on, he inched ahead of me a little more every lap.

My splits were:
Lap 1: 08:49
Lap 2: 09:42
Lap 3: 09:57
Lap 4: 10:04

Total: 38:38

Place: Last

My Thoughts

First of all, even though the dead possum on the side of the corn field almost ended up beating me, I still had fun, which was a good thing. It’s hard to compare this to my previous race, in terms of speed or time, so I won’t!

I was a little concerned that I had majorly slacked off, based on my placement. I definitely felt like I had worked very hard and my heart rate data seems to back this theory up. In my training rides during the week (note: these rides were on a trainer, so I do realize this skews the numbers a little lower, but not this much) my average heart rate was typically in the 140-160 range. My average heart rate for the race was 183bpm. So at least I went harder than I do training.

One of these days I’m going to negative split a race, or at least get nearly-even splits. My fitness just isn’t there yet even though I’m only doing 30 minutes races. I’ve only had 2 weeks of training since my first race, so I shouldn’t be noticing any real performance benefits quite yet. In a few weeks though, hopefully some of the data will lead me to believe I am improving somehow!

Tips!

I also realized that this was the first time I had ever gotten a cycling tip from someone! While we were racing, a few people from later races were taking practice laps on the course. Someone was coming up behind me, so I moved over, assuming I was getting lapped (which I did later, but it was just a practicer in this case). As we hit the bumpy section before the hill and the barrier, he took the time to explain that I should get into my drop bars in this case. Score! Thanks to Mr. random person warming up for giving me my first cycling tip!

In addition, I also received a tip from a skin-suit wearing biker. He was unloading one of his 4 bikes from the rack on the back of his car as I was pulling my bike out which was wedged into the trunk of my small car. I heard him mentioning a tip about the sand, and the following conversation ensued:

Me: “Hey, how did you say you should approach the sand again?”
Him: “Well…..oh, wait, what category are you”?
Me: “Uh…CX4″
Him: “Oh, in that case I can tell you, you should lean back and just let the bike do what it wants”

WTF??? I have hairy arm/legs, no skin suit, a (tiny) bit of a belly, asked a probably admittedly stupid newbie question, and you’re worried about me beating you in your category? I mean, I know its a race and all, but if I’m asking how to ride through sand I’m probably not worth worrying about. Thanks dude!

Note: In all fairness, he might of been / probably was just messing around with me, it was a bit early in the morning so my sarcasm meter hadn’t warmed up yet :)

Race #2: The Sunday Race

I had originally planned on going back to do the second race on Sunday, but due to the small turnout, and the fact I didn’t feel like driving an extra 2 hours (on top of the 4 already required of me) and getting back at 8 or 9 that evening instead of 4ish I decided just to call it a weekend and only do 1 race. I have plenty of races left in the season to go out and do!

I guess since I didn’t end up racing on Sunday, I could have gone harder Saturday…as it was I was saving myself for Sunday, thus explaining my DFL finish (really!). Oh well, next time Tennessee, watch out ;)