Lion's Den Cross

I was back out on the 'cross bike today at United Cycle's Lion's Den Cross. The weather was completely different to my last race as it snowed early in the morning. My new wheels had arrived earlier in the week and I was watching the weather as I thought about which tires I would use on them. A Facebook posting claiming that the hill would be taken out if it was wet made me decide on my Michelin Mud 2s. Well, the Mud 2 isn't a true mud tire and the hill was left in the course, despite how wet it was.

The Sport race was actually the second one as they decided to schedule the Experts first. When my race started, the Experts had cleared the racing line but there was still snow on the course. The sun came out before my race started and all the snow would be gone by the end. The mud would definitely not be dried by the end.

This year's race was run in the opposite direction of the previous few years. This meant the spiral came early in the lap and I had to climb the steep side of the hill. On the first lap, the spiral backed the field up quite a bit as the switch from a right turn to left was quite tight this year. For the hill, I was glad for the spikes in my shoes so I could run up. On my third lap, I tried to climb it on my bike but I couldn't recover from a rear wheel slip about 3/4 of the way up. For the descents, I ran down the first little bit and mounted my bike on a little flat area. Most riders around me did the same thing. The whole way down was very, very slippery. The whole course was quite slippery and I lost count of the number of little slips and skids I had. Luckily, I didn't have any crashes.

I completed five laps in 42:21 for 10.1 km. The course was quite twisty and it seems my GPS might have missed about 400 m. I had an average speed of just 14.3 km/h with a maximum of 28.1 km/h. My average speed definitely took a hit from all the running up and down hills. I had an average heart rate of 152 bpm and a maximum of 187 bpm. The average is actually a little low as my GPS didn't record correctly for the first lap. My last four laps averaged 164 bpm each lap. I think I rode a little too relaxed and could definitely have had a higher heart rate. I sat behind one or two slower riders for much of the first lap and gave riders a lot of room to lap me on my last lap so I was giving up time in both of those situations. The only person I was really racing dropped out early on the third lap with a mechanical problem so I was on my own for most of my race.

The only other things to mention was that the new wheels felt very nice. It's a bit difficult to compare them with my old ones after one race, especially since I also changed my tires and this was my first wet race of the year. Also, it was good Marg wasn't around. Today's barriers seemed really high and I've had a few talks over the years about barrier heights with Marg. I agree that those of us with short legs are unfairly punished on really high barriers.