Tuesday night cyclocross #6

The last Tuesday night cyclocross turned out to be the most fun one for me. I decided to run a much higher tire pressure since I was having issues with my tires on grass at the 35-40 psi I was at in my previous six races. The grass was firm so I decided to pump them all the way up to 60 psi and they felt great. It seemed I had more grip in the corners and on the many off-cambre sections. I also enjoyed the course which, though lacking in technical turns, had a number of good, sweeping turns and the first barrier placed parallel along the slope of the hill that I've ever experienced. It turned out to be a great challenge to many as most cyclists dismount on the left side of their bike and that was the downhill side. For 'cross dismounts, I usually swing my right leg off the bike and coast with my left foot on the pedal so I had no troubles with this barrier. I did see a few racers crash through the barrier and I was able to make up a lot of time on the racers around me every time we went over it. During the race, I was always fighting for position with a number of other racers around me. While starting my last lap, I think I heard Corey yelling at me to chase down a rider a little ways in front of me. I had noticed on the previous laps that he had difficulties in the corners, relative to me, and was quite slow over the barrier. I caught him on the first few corners and made an easy pass over the barrier. I didn't, however, ride hard enough after getting back on my bike and he caught and passed me on the gradual uphill leading to the second barrier. I lost a little more ground on the dip section as I rode the wrong line in order to let someone from one of the higher categories through. I tried to keep the gap with the rider ahead during the straighter sections of the course and I closed some of the gap while going through the two sets of corners. By the final set of corners, I was right on the rider's back wheel. Despite not being in a big enough gear and not being able to change gears because I took the really bumpy line to the finish, I was able to get ahead by a wheel in the sprint for well back in the pack. I ended up 14th out of 19 racers. I finished the 6.3 km course in 21 minutes with lap times of 5:10, 5:13, 5:15 and 5:09 plus the run up at the start. A negative split of just six seconds on my last lap probably shows that I was mostly waiting for the final sprint finish instead of really picking up the pace on the final lap. I had an average speed of 17.6 km/h with a maximum of 30.7 km/h. My average heart rate was 166 bpm with a maximum of 179 bpm.