Everyone else got hardware...

...I got a big fat bruise. Of course, I'm talking about the State Cyclocross Championships today in Bremerton. Zoka rocked the house with five podium spots. Paul Guillien killed the competition in the 4s and easily cruised to victory. Then Bill Huggins won the Master Men's 3 35+ field and JoAnne took 2nd in the Women's 3s. Bill geared up again and took home 2nd in the single-speed field for two medals on the day. Unbelievable! Rick Heckenlaible secured Zoka's 5th piece of hardware with a 2nd place finish in the Men's 1/2 45+ field. We also had several other top finishers who narrowly missed podium spots and had great races. Great day for the team!

On the other hand, I rode my way to my worst cross race ever. So far I've stayed upright in every race but today all I could do was go down. Hmmm, where do I even start? First off, the course was mostly flat with a few short steep pitches that were ridable for most. Throw in a few mud bogs and it definitely favored the power rider. Definitely not my thing. I got my usually shitty start and in a very strong, small field of 10 this wasn't so good. I hit the first set of barriers bringing up the rear so I was already in trouble at this point.

I bought a new pair of Sidis last night to replace my crappy flat-soled traction-less commuter-turned-cyclocross shoes and found out the hard way that I should probably test them before racing in them. My cleats were new and a little tight, so when I tried to dismount for the first barrier my left foot didn't come out and I took a header at full speed. Awesome! Trying to jump a barrier with your bike still attached to you doesn't work so well. Thank goodness I don't think anyone actually saw it. I'm not sure my right calf is ever going to forgive me. Tune back in a few days when I post a picture of my bruise. Ugh.

Shortly after that crash I managed to slide out on what looked like a simple left-hand corner. Turns out three people on our team went down here so I don't feel so bad now. Between those two incidents just on the first lap, I was way behind the pack and pretty far off the pace. To make matters worse, my seat fell again.

With the course setup, if you were more than about 30 seconds behind someone, you really couldn't see them, so it became difficult to keep up the motivation. I was so frustrated on the second lap that I nearly called it day, but my teammates kept cheering at me so I credit them with keeping me in it. Unfortunately, I picked today to wear my new supercool pink and black-striped lightning bolt armwarmers, which just managed to draw attention to the fact that I was way behind and sucking. Oh well, at least I entertained the crowd.

On the third lap the leaders of the Master's field passed me on the fast single-track part of the course, so I pulled off to let them by and lost more time. Despite my crappy race, I got a top 10 finish due to a small field, and I wasn't last! Crazy.

For some reason I felt really flat today. Even if I had ridden a clean race I don't think I would have done any better. My legs were toast, my cardio was toast, and my legs were not diggin' powering through the mud bog. Not sure what was up, but hopefully I'll be in a little better shape for South Seatac next Sunday. And I'll still be rockin' the lightning bolts, even if I'm not moving lightning fast.