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Team Bikeman -
Race Reports
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Written by C. McDowell
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Tuesday, 04 December 2007 |
Slip, Sliding Around
Michigan Cyclocross Series Finale
December 2, 2007
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The southeastern Michigan-northeastern Ohio cyclocross series came to a close this past Sunday. The evening preceding the event was more or less Mother Nature waffling on the Fall-to-Winter transition: “Soak them with rain or pelt them with hail? Freeze the ground or saturate it with heavy snow…?”
The weather ultimately demonstrated some serious indecision on Her part with racers experiencing myriad forms of precipitation, all of which were mingling in a most interesting fashion upon our combination paved, chunky grass field course. To give you an idea of my own uncertainty for what the race might hold, I brought both my mountain bike and my ‘cross rig that morning, just to be sure I was covered when the gun went off.
Beginning the race, I was seated in second overall for the series behind Michigan veteran Ann Schwartz. But I had more than a couple of women nipping at my heels, eager to improve their standings in the next forty-five minutes. The race began uneventfully down a paved straightaway, which eventually fed into an off-road one-eighty before the first set of barriers. True to all previous races, Ann S. rode away alone from the gun, never looking back. I began employing my own goals for the race: taking lines that would allow me to carry speed through the slop and staying upright, above all! Another experienced Michigan mountain biker and cyclocross racer Ann Grofert and I settled into a comfortable cadence together, much as we had racing XC mountain this past summer. Ann G. knows that when I gun it from the start, my energy peters out just like a toddler before snack time. Seeing that I had chosen to ease up and stay back with her and Susan Shaw caused her at every chance she had to stand and sprint away from me— only to have to brake like crazy in the next turn. I kept thinking of Big Al at Caster’s in RI last year: “Smooth is fast.” And how!
With the lap cards reading two to go and my legs feeling only better as time went on, I was beginning to get excited. I had yet to place above third all season (a most frustrating phenomena), but I began to think this might be the day! I began revving up to come around Ann G’s wheel again as we were navigating the crusty, slushy build-up along the paved finishing strait coming through the Start/Finish for out bell lap. Suddenly I heard the officials shouting, “You’re done! You’re done!” Without warning, we had been stopped a lap early, with two Masters 35+ riders rolling in just behind Ann and I, also having been denied their sprint finish. As a lover of crit racing, I was more than a touch upset with having tempo-pedaled through a finish I feel I could have confidently contested in a sprint and won, but one can never know.
Despite the rocky and questionable ruling on how our race ended, I took 3rd for the state championship race and 2nd overall for Elite Women in the series. Looking back, it’s been a fantastic season, and I can’t wait to continue the fun next fall.
Many thanks, Bikeman,
Callie
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