Charm City Cross day 2!

Long story short:

I raced in the Men's 2/3/4 for Charm City Cross and placed 23rd out of a full field of 125 riders.  I got to race with my friend Lance for the first time since we did the Cat 4 races of Charm City last year and also Goat!  Karisa's Dad and brothers (Dan and Josh) also came out to watch me race!  No pressure...:-)

The longer story:

I had an ok warmup.  I rode the course a few times, rode around the lake there, and finished my warmup with one last lap around the course.  I followed Lance and Goat around the course and watch their lines they took.

I knew it was a full field and the start would be what Lance likes to describe as, "escaping from a burning building".  I started well but almost immediately popped my right foot out.  I clipped back in quickly and tried to move up where I could.  Things were tight for the first lap but I managed to pass a couple people that I'd marked while getting passed by others.  I'm not really good with riding in crowds because I'm not super aggressive.  I passed Goat about 3/4 of the way through the first lap fixing his chain....not cool and and I would not see him again.

I'd decided on the pre rides that I was going to run the massive sandpit.  I watched enough people in previous races getting caught up in the sand pit and knew my skills were not good enough to guarantee I could ride it....so I ran it every time.  I have to admit that I didn't look forward to this part because it was kind of a long run, but it worked out well and I never had any troubles there.

I started to get really tired halfway through the race.  I don't know if I was going to hard (couldn't tell because my HR monitor fell down early on and was around my midsection) or what, but I could feel myself slowing down and was passed by some really fast guys.  Toward the end I just kept putting in lots of effort to hold on to what I had and crossed all alone in 23rd position (beating the race predicted 63 by a good margin).

This was awesome!  I can't believe I could do so well in such a stacked field!  I've been training a lot, getting some awesome unofficially official coaching from my friend Patrick Blair, and trying hard to get my nutrition right (yay Probars!) and it's been paying off.  It's really cool that all Pat asks for his coaching is sponsoring a child from Kupenda - something wifey and I love to do anyway!

Karisa took pictures of the race and I haven't converted them yet.  I'll add them to this post later!

Tom