WA State Cyclocross Championships

Today's race was a blast. I loved the course, as it favored the power rider, but had just enough technical stuff to keep it from just being a grass criterium. To top it off, my team mate Landon won the race for the Cat 3 men, so Cucina Fresca has another state champion!

I had a really poor start - first, one of my team mates got cut off by another rider, causing him to crash. Right after swerving to avoid him, I got chopped by another rider right at a corner marker, causing me to come to a near dead stop. At this point I was on the back (except for my team mate, "Dirty" still slowly getting up).

Yep, that's how bad my start was - no one around me

But, as the race ground on, I moved my way up from the back. I was in the mid-teens with two laps to go, and continued my passing efforts to move past another group of three. A short time later, I passed one more rider at a run up - he thought I was "Dirty", actually, which makes some sort of sense, since usually Dirty would be with the guys up near the front, not me!

I still need to work on my cornering, but it is improving every week. Bree said a lot of riders went down on this turn, but I never had any trouble.

This was a section on the course where you could get a little airborne.

Which Landon did with aplomb!

In the end, I finished in 11th, out of 26. Wahoo! Top 50%!

Note Emy's similar tongue technique when finishing a cross race

So, it was a good race for me. I knocked off three of my five goals! Top 50%, a lap time less than 30 seconds off the winner (28 seconds off per lap average), and I passed aggressively throughout the race to move from the back to 11th. I couldn't be happier. OK, top-10 would have been a nice icing on the cake.