Smith Farm CX

Nate-

It has been a while since my last post so I will break up the last couple of weeks into multiple posts. This one will be about a fun cyclocross race in Connecticut at Smith Farm. The course was great, and I got to do my first spiral ever! The first part of the course went around a field and ended with a muddy spiral that was fairly dizzying. The second half of the course was through an apple orchard with a couple of steep ups and downs.

The start of the race was great for me. I was able to line up fairly close to the main line where most of the grass was worn away. The promoters had enough room for just about every one to line up in a single row which was nice. Out of the gate I was able to find sixth place, and stayed there through the spiral and through the second set of barriers. On the third barrier of the set I saw a rider trip and go down. I thought there was going to be a massive pile up and the distance that we gained over the rest of the pack would be lost. Overall not much time was not lost but it messed up the little bit of organization that there was in front of me. The rest of the race consisted of damage control. It felt like I was on a teeter toter battling between pushing too hard and risking blowing up at the end or letting people pass and getting dropped early. The course was very wide open and fast which did not suit my legs this day.

No matter how hard I tried I could not put a gap on any one. This was a really weird feeling since I am used to mountain biking where it can be a matter of minutes between competitors, not a handful of seconds. Most of the race feels as if you are riding in that imaginary piece of elastic that snaps back every once in a while but it never quite snaps back all the way. When I found out how I finished I could not believe I how compact of a group I was in. I was five seconds from the person in front of me and 6 seconds ahead of the person behind me. Five seconds in a race that is almost an hour is not that much time at all. I was still very happy with my finish of 11th out of 41 starters. This was also a great race to prepare for the Cycle Smart International coming up.