Here is a picture of one of the obstacles at today's CX race today:
Ethan seemed to negotiate it okay. I didn't. Maybe he can teach me some skills. That log caused me lots of pain. It's not that big, but it comes right before a lefthand turn. If you take it with speed, you go shooting of into the tape on the other side. If you try to turn in the air . . . well, you just can't. So, you have to hit it with the right angle, scrub speed, and POP, hard. Otherwise, you'll crash, like me.
During warmups, I ran it the first time. But Sean Hoover's kids were disappointed and told me I should have bunny-hopped it. Not wanting them to be disappointed, I flipped around and very cool-like bunny-hopped. Something went wrong and I stacked it up pretty good. At one point, I was on my back, with my butt in the air, looking between my legs at the sky. That was a much bigger show than Sean's kids were expecting. What can I say, I aim to please.
The problem is, I caused myself some damage. I damaged the top of my left hand, which swelled up. And I damaged my left hand, spraining my thumb. And I smacked my head on the ground. And I tweaked my back. And I scraped my toe. And I got grass stains all over my skin suit.
And then it was time to start. We lined up. We started. We came to the Log, which by the way, was the smallest of three log obstacles. And I did EXACTLY the same thing I did during warmups! Again, at one point I was on my back, my butt in the air, looking between mylegs at the sky. I threw in a twist, which involved me not clipping out completely. So my view of the sky was slightly obsucred by my bike, which rolled through with me. If one had snapped a shot at the right time, the order from top to down would have been like this: wheels highest, then bike, then my legs, then my head -- exactly upside down. That one hurt too. Talking to Sam K. after the race, he said that he ran all of the logs. Why didn't I think of that?
Those two crashes rattled me. My helmet retention system broke and so my helmet was rattling around on my rattled head. I took a recovery lap and then tried to make up some distance. With one lap to go however, I couldn't hold on to my handle bar anymore and my back had had enough. So I DNF'ed. Disappointing. For the record, I did finally figure out how to get over those logs.
I've got to tip my broken helmet to Team Rico though. He was an inspiration today. He took the SS champ'ship. Then he outrode everyone to take the A champ'ship. Looks like he needs a 1 hr warmup to get that big diesel running.
2 comments:
your not too old. I just stole everyones luck before the race, sorry, you can have it back after Nationals.
That damn log! I hopped it the entire race but each time I came closer to wrecking until the last lap when I did finally wreck. After watching the elites race it, running it was just as fast and safer.
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