Book of Chad

We love heading to Washington state to race in the cascade cross series. The cascade cross series is a vibe, they beat to a different drum and they don’t care what anybody else thinks about them. This is the third trip down for Lindsay and I and we alway are long finished our cross season by the time we can get away for a cascade cross race. This was our first time on the Cornwall course and it was a brief 30 minute drive from the boarder crossing to the event.

Prior to the race we had spent a week cross country skiing and I had an ankle injury from it. The ankle was sore but it didn’t bother me while riding the bike only when walking or running did I have pain, so I was hoping the race would have limited running in it. Oh was I in for a surprise, first I realized that all the starts that day were Le Mans style, where you would run across a field to pick up your bike and start. Then we pre-rode the course.

The course was more of a xc mountain bike course than a cross course. There were stairs, rooty technical climbs, single track descents and even a couple rock rolls. It was the kind of race course that you could have used three different bikes per lap to get it right. I brought 33mm challenge limus tubulars with me which was great for roughly 10% of the course where the rain had made for a muddy race.

I actually got away from the running start pretty well and came into the first pinch point of the course in third. As we started up the first climb I realized that I was not really prepared for a CX type effort at this stage of my training year and took it down a notch to preserve my own self implosion. From there on I worked on getting the features right and keeping the flow consistent. Mid way through the race I had a crash and bumped my right knee into my handle bars, causing a sort of funny bone response for the next two laps.

After shaking the crash off and getting back up to speed I glanced at my watch to see how much longer the race would be. My watch was already over an hour and as I got to the start-finish line there was still one more lap to go. It was a pretty tired lap however, I made it around and passed through the finish line in 9th gaining 2 positions in the last lap.

Race: Cornwall, Cascade Cross
Time: 1:19:33
Laps: 7
Avg Heart Rate: 185
Max Heart Rate: 192
Place: 9th