Cross-Training

Saturday night an actual COLD front came through - the first real one this fall. And so, it was with a bag stuffed full of winter riding gear that I headed up to Natchez on Sunday morning for the third cyclocross race of the DSGP series. Although the temperature south of the lake was in the 40s thanks to all that nice warm water, up in Natchez it was somewhere around 34F when I fired up the Volvo around 6 am. It was supposed to warm up to around 40 by the 10 am start, so I didn't think that it would be an issue for the racers.  I was more worried about the officials, which included me, standing around in the shade. I was bringing the old Pennine along, with plans to ride the Cat. 1/2/3 race since the Masters race is combined with one or two others and officiating is a little more complicated. I was also going to be trying out CrossMgr, a cyclocross program for officials that I expected would help with tracking lapped riders.

The drive up to Natchez was really pretty beautiful.  I took the scenic route through St. Francisville and Woodville since the drive time is about the same anyway. With a clear blue sky and crisp fall air, it looked really nice.  Nice enough that I hardly noticed the strong north wind and steadily dropping thermometer.

Arriving a bit before 9 am, I set up the laptop and got CrossMgr up and running so I'd be ready for the 10 am start. With a copy of the registration spreadsheet from Ricky linked to the program, I was ready to go right about the time I started shivering from the cold that was creeping through my jacket despite the fact I was also wearing my thermal knickers underneath my jeans. The Cat. 5 race went pretty well, and other than one rider I missed entering on the first lap, CrossMgr worked quite well.  I was almost disappointed we didn't have more lapped riders. Then I totally screwed up the Masters race when I tried to make a correction mid-race and mistakenly logged a number of riders as crossing the line when they hadn't yet.  Then, when I tried to fix that problem by starting over mid-race I didn't account for how the program used lap times to estimate number of laps and completely mangled those results. I guess I should have watched the instructional video first!

The 1/2/3 race was the last of the day, and although it had warmed up a bit by then, I dressed nice and warm since I was planning on using it more to practice neglected and non-existent CX skills while off the back.  I predicted I'd be lapped three times over the course of the 1-hour race (and I was). Most of the other riders were wearing basically summer kits or skinsuits with maybe a thin extra layer somewhere. My plan for the day was to start at the back and gradually work my way backward. With no warmup at all, I was well off the back of the fast-moving group by the time we were halfway around the course, so everything was going as planned.  I approached all of the technical sections with a great deal of caution, especially on the first lap, since my secondary goal for the day was to avoid crashing. Unfortunately, that over-abundance of caution brought me into a big patch of deep sand that I hadn't ridden yet way too slowly. I bogged down and had to walk out of it. OK, lesson learned. For the subsequent laps I just plowed through the sand, sometimes rather sideways, at full speed and in a big gear. It was so deep that my chainring was full of sand coming out the other side.

By the time the race was halfway over I'd already been lapped by Scott and a few others and my lower back was starting to ache.  Even so, I was finally starting to get a little more comfortable on the dirt and was in general negotiating the barriers and Belgian gates without a problem. What I wasn't doing, however, was powering through the fast sections and downhills, using them for recovery instead. There was one steep downhill that started with a root-infested drop-off to a concrete curb, across the street, and then a plunge down the other side with a sharp off-camber right turn at the bottom.  I was taking that one pretty gingerly, although I assumed the leaders were taking it mostly in the air judging by the destroyed stakes and tape around the bottom. Anyway, it was fun and although my legs, back, and certain more delicate anatomical structures took a bit of a beating, I was glad I'd been able to put in an hour on the old steel Pennine.  I was also quite pleased with CrossMgr and plan to study up on it a bit before the next officiating stint.