Jingle Cross Mud

Peanut butter mud was the rule of the day at Jingle Cross. Friday night was wild. 25 lined up in my 45+ race at dusk. By the end of the race, it was completely dark and we were racing under the lights. I didn't preview the course because I would have had to wash my bike before the race-I figured that it wouldn't make that much difference anyway. Had a decent warmup, though.

The 3.5 km course consisted of a lot of flat riding, with some muddy stretches mixed in, and two nasty freaking climbs, both unridable. The first was the climb up Mt. Krumpet, which was really difficult-100 ft elevation change running through sticky, gooey mud to the top, then a greasy off-camber descent with two hairpins. The other was a short rise that turned into an unpleasant greasy run-up, with an equally greasy descent into the area between the bluffs and the livestock pens, which was wet sticky mud.

We lined up in the grid and they said we'll start in 30 seconds. I reached down to adjust my shoe buckle, and the start bell rang, so I was in 20th place instantly. Marvelous. I though it was disaster. I chased hard, but didn't seem to make up much ground. Then we got to the run-up to the top of Krumpet. I must have passed 10-12 guys on that climb-it helps to have some natural running talent. I ran the descent as well. With the fading light, finding your line was really difficult. If I had a chance to spend a bit of time practicing it, I probably could have ridden it, but that didn't happen. So I ran it every time and ended up passing people riding their bikes. Every time up the hill I made up huge amounts of time, so that by the last lap I had worked myself back to 7th, then passed Scott Fleming and Dan Hansen on the climb to move into 5th. I almost caught John Meehan for 4th, only a couple of seconds ahead of me; if I had an average start, I would have definitely been 4th and been in the running for the podium.

No such luck Saturday. Bottom of my shoes got wet, so I slipped and could not clip in at the start, thus relegated to the back of the pack again. The Krumpet run-up took a different path and was a freaking mess. The descent was through the crappy mud we ran up on Friday. Dropped a chain on first lap, and stopped three times to clean out my brakes/fork/seat stays so that the wheels would actually rotate-mud would be mixed with grass on the run-up and create an adobe brick in two places on your bike. Lost at least 1.5 minutes with the stops to fix the bike. Horrible day, ended up 9th out of 20 starters.

Deanna and I managed to get a case of bad food poisoning from Chipotle burritos that evening, so no racing on Sunday. That's it, I'm done for the year. For the 14 races this fall: 1 DNF, 3 firsts, 2 seconds, 2 thirds, 3 fourths, 1 fifth and 2 ninth places. A very good season, to say the least.

Some excellent photos here, in particular, the womens 4 race, which was the highlight of the weekend for the male racers.