A Little Psycho

By Friday afternoon I'd just about had it with this chest cold.  I knew it was kind of a crazy idea, but I decided to go up to Natchez for the PsychoCross race.  It was time to roll the dice and see what happened.  I still had that deep chest congestion, but took some comfort in the knowledge that the temperature would be in the 70s by the time any heavy breathing would be required.  Allie was planning on going, so I hitched a ride with her, loading my not-quite-a cyclocross bike into her car at the quite civilized time of 7:30 am, leaving us plenty of time make the drive before the 11:00 am start time.  Considering my delicate condition, I planned to keep my effort level low, my head up, and my ass off the ground -- not necessarily in that order.

We arrived to find the usual small but enthusiastic turnout, and after riding one lap of the course I knew it would be a challenge regardless of any plans I might have had to take it easy.  The course wound through a park with some rolling terrain, which was nice, but each lap included two sets of artificial barriers plus a very deep sand pit.  As if that wasn't enough, the first set of double barriers came right before an iron pipe fence that was so high that I could barely step over it from a dead stop.  The fast (and tall) guys would run at it, plant one foot on top, and leap over it.  And then there was the sand pit.  Each lap there would be one or two deep tracks through it that had been made by someone ahead of me.  If I charged the sand pit and somehow managed to stay in the track all the way across I could make it through. 

That happened exactly once. Most of the time I'd get halfway through before coming to sudden stop, and the would have to try and clip back in before riding straight up a steep incline.  A few times, the best I could do was to shoulder the bike and run up the hill. The last set of double barriers was the easiest, and I was usually able to keep a lot of momentum through those. Anyway, I started the race last, passed Allie at some point, and pretty much stayed there for the whole race.  A couple of laps before the finish I caught the rider ahead of me and was considering going for it on the last lap, but when I completely flubbed the sand trap on the last lap, the gap a bit longer than my motivation was willing to close.  Anyway, it was a fun diversion and I didn't think I'd done too much damage.

Sunday morning I boldly headed off to meet the Giro Ride.  It was fairly warm and quite foggy, so I clipped on both head and tail lights. They would stay on until the fog cleared around 9 am, which was about when I flatted right after turning off of Chef Highway onto the service road. 

I felt pretty good on the Giro Ride until we were about halfway back when my earlier cyclocross exploits began to catch up with me.  By the time I got home I was feeling pretty well cooked, but had only a couple of hours to recover before walking down to the Oak Street Po-boy festival.  We made kind of a quick run up and down the street, experimented with some new po-boys, had a beer at the secret St. Andrew's location (where's it's half the price they charge on Oak St.), and picked up a big cup of iced mint tea at Zotz before heading back home.  The festival was just getting started when we were there and since the weather was great I'm sure it was a big success.  By then, however, I was starting to feel like was losing ground to the chest cold and my voice was not sounding too good, so I guess I was due for a little recovery time anyway.