CCCX XC #3 Race Report

Yesterday, I had a great time out at Fort Ord competing in CCCX's Cross Country Series. This was race #3 out of 8 so we got a ways to go till we are finished sometime in June. I missed race #2 and I will probably miss race #4 due to my 6th anniversary (No, Natalie I'm not complaining :) ) and race #5 because I will be participating in my first ever 8 hour endurance race on April 3rd!! I'll post about that later.

I got a late start due to day light savings (lost 1 hour of sleep) and I just got up late haha. I still arrived with a good amount of time to register, piss and stretch and get all my gear together but unfortunately didn't have enough time to pre-ride the course, which is a good idea. I usually do this at a reasonable pace just to get a feel of what to expect around the corners and see how the course is in general and it's a good way to get your HR up and muscles loose. Since I didn't do this I felt a little off when we lined up to start the race.

The race got to a late start AGAIN. I have no where to be but just comparing to the beginner start time of 9am we have been starting close to 10-15 minutes after 11am. It was a huge turnout and it was a longer course than normal,so that probably had to do with the delay, no biggie, just curious to why so disorganized this year?

As usual, I start out "slow" and work my way up. One of these days I'm just going to have to bolt out and deal with it. If I want to win the race, this is definately what I'm going to have to do! I did this a couple races ago and toward the end of the race, I just felt tired and beat. Last year at CCCX XC #2 (first race in a long time for me) I did bolt out and I ended up so overworked I just crashed in front of everyone and almost got hit LOL!

There were 3 steep climbs per lap and we had 4 full laps with one shorter lap to begin with so we had a ways to go so I didn't want to use up all my energy right away. There were 15 racers in my category and I probably started out 10th or so. I paced behind one guy, Matt, for half the race and finally on 2nd to last lap I took off and started to play catchup. By then I was probably 7th or 8th. I had to stop once on my second lap because I felt like my front quick release skewer was loose and I didn't want my wheel falling off. It ended up being fine, nice and tight, that probably cost me 30 seconds if not more. A bunch of people passed me that I just passed, so I had to work again to get past them, which isn't the easiest sometimes since the trail can be narrow and no room to pass at times.

On the final climb I caught up with #6 in my category and we both hit the base of the hill with a woman racer about 10ft from us, with him in front of me but making no movement to go around the lady, I took charge and passed both of them on the right. He soon then passed me near the top of the hill and I gave it all I could to stick with him. We came flying down the descent and around the final corner but by then it was clear he was going to win. He ended up beating me by 7 seconds, but if I had another lap or even 1 more mile I could have passed him! I didn't see him all this time and I managed to catch up to him? Obviously I was a) getting faster and/or b) he was slowing down. I congratulated him on a good race and hurried over to grab some water and socialize with the other racers.

I ended up 7th out of 15th, again middle of the pack, so not bad! Here are the full results: http://cccxcycling.com/2010xc3resultspage.html I'm under Sport Men 19-34 with a time just shy of 1 hour 45 minutes.

Here is the GPS data: http://connect.garmin.com/activity/27029390

1 hour 45 minutes over a distance of 22.37 miles and 2.8k of climbing! That's a long one for CCCX, they are usually maybe 20 miles and 2.2k of climbing.