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Seattle Cyclocross Series #6 |
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Team Bikeman -
Race Reports
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Written by Joel Liefke
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Saturday, 11 November 2006 |
Seattle Cyclocross Series - Race #6
Evergreen High School, Whitecenter, WA
Well I accomplished my goal of getting Top 30 first off, although it was a struggle. Again, the lovely Seattle weather produced a downpour of Noah type proportions, yes I think I saw at least 2 ark’s being constructed! We’ve had record rainfall for the month of November already and we are only a third of the way through the month. Some places got 8 inches on Sunday…crazy. Although the rain caused flooding all over the place, the course was in pretty great condition! I also forgot to mention there were 30 mph winds…which in a skinsuit….kinda cold, let me tell you!
The course is probably my favorite of the SCC series, as it is the most technical and it hinders the road weenies J. The course runs something like this, you start out on the infield of the HS track and do about ¾ of a lap onto a rolling hill section of grass. Once off the rollers, you wind your way through 3 long switchbacks through the infield before heading up some more rollers to the first run-up which is a good 30 meters and pretty steep and sandy. At the top of the run-up there is a screaming downhill section on sand/dirt into a hairpin corner run-up. After that there are is about a ½ mile of straight aways with only 2 turns, so you can definitely either choose to rest here or hammer. Then you get into a ton of off-camber switch backs before heading down into the infield again to the only set of barriers (3 to be exact) and then through to the finish shoot. All in all a great course with all kinds of technical sections. At the beginning of the race the announcer socialized that there would be 104 participants in my race…holy crap! Honestly, I think there were a lot less, and looking at the results it looked to be only about 70 or so…not sure where they got the 104?
Well I figured last week I started to quickly and it bit me in the butt, so this week I decided to take a mid-pack start up the first part of the course. I was probably in about 50th going into the run-up and after dismounting I poured it on up the hill and picked up about 5-10 spots. Coming into the screaming downhill, there was a major wreck and people were walking, so I just picked the inside of the fence and flew past another 5 people to get up into about 40th or so. I pretty much stayed there for the first lap.
On the next 3 laps, I continued to hold strong although I did get passed by a couple people, but I’d gain back those spots on the run-ups and barriers so all was good. On the final lap, I was in about 35th and knew I was close to that 30th position and that was definitely my goal for the week. In the switchbacks I saw Rich (my SCC nemesis, just kidding Rich) a switchback ahead of me, so I knew I had to boogie if I was going to catch him. Well today wasn’t my day to beat him, but in the process I did manage to catch a few more people in the technical sections on the last lap and ended up 29th, 4 minutes off the lead. Since I missed the first 2 races, I’m currently sitting in 46th place in the series. My goal for the rest of the year is to see if I can get into the top 25 so I have some work to do, but they do drop your two worst races, so that should help in the overall.
Well this weekend, we have the USGP in Steilacoom on Saturday. The course is a doozie, with a 100m darn near vertical sand hill climb that brings almost everyone to their knees, its known as the Dale “Knapp” time run-up, in honor of Dale Knapp (Kona), our local CX legend. Until next weekend.
Joel Liefke
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