Sunday morning, after the sun came up thankfully this week, I headed up to Fort Yargo State Park in Winder, GA for another race in the Georgia Cross series. I had never been to the park before, but from the bits I saw, it was quite beautiful and would probably be worth the hour trip back up there just to visit some time!

After last week’s debacle with the weather (and by debacle, I mean the fact that I’m an idiot and had no layers and was riding in a jersey and shorts) I came fully prepared with some nice merino wool base layers, and I was quite warm and toasty! It was definitely warmer this week, but even if it had been the same temperature, I would have been cozy. Also unlike last week was the course. While the course last week featured hill after hill, this course had almost no hills at all! It instead chose to focus on obstacles and barriers. I’m glad to say that even with all the barriers, I did not have a crash due to clipping in and out of my pedals! I’m still not quick with re-clipping and am losing some time, but that will come with practice. The interesting features in the course are shown below

I really enjoyed the course this week, thanks to the lack of hills! I definitely wasn’t in contention for the State Championship jersey that was awarded to the winner of today’s race, but I had fun! I was actually in the mix of things and keeping contact with the group until we came out of the beech on the first lap (so basically the end of the 1st lap). I had some issues clipping in and by the time I got going, the pack had blasted off up the paved part of the road and they were gone by that point. There were a few of us slow-pokes towards the back that were jockying for position the whole race. In the last 100m of my third lap, I got lapped by the leader and (thankfully) only ended up having to do 3 laps instead of 4. If I had been a tiny bit faster, I wouldn’t have been lapped and would have been forced to do one final lap (and my race would have been 40 minutes instead of the scheduled 30). In 2 weeks is the last race of the Georgia Cross season. I’m sad the end of the season is here as it has been so much fun, however, I’m already starting to eye some mountain bike races for next season to try out as the next thing for me to do!