KS State Championships

KS State Championships were Saturday in Topeka. Last year I raced the day before the state championships (Capital Cup) but not the following day, so I was at least somewhat familiar with the park the race was being held at. However, the course was much different than what was used for Capital Cup last year; while Capital Cup was an all-out power couse, this one was more technical yet still flowed REALLY well.

This was really the first cool cross race of the year (high 40s and cloudy), so it took me a while to get warmed up. Even once I finished my normal warm-up, my legs still didn't feel like they were awake yet. While warming up, I also noticed that more and more fast guys were showing up. David Neidinger jokingly made a comment that we might be fighting for last place today. Even though we both knew that was a bit of an exaggeration, we knew the field was stacked.

I got a first row start because of KBAR points (even if I wouldn't have had the points, getting on the first row isn't hard when the field isn't huge) and got a mediocre start. Through the long straight paved section, I came into the first corner around 9th place. I lost a few positions once we hit the grass and the subsequent technical sections. I could immediately tell that I didn't warm up as well as I should have - my legs just didn't seem to have any energy. For the first two laps, I simply watched 7th - 11th place ride away from me.

Finally, about three laps in my legs woke up and I started to feel better. I made up ground and passed 11th place one lap later. For the first few laps, there were four guys riding together fighting for 7th place, but by this time Adam Mills and and Bill Marshall had put a gap into Michael Smith and Bill Stolte. I was slowly gaining on Michael and Bill S. and eventually caught them with 2 laps to go. I put in a hard dig right at the start/finish and had a 2-3 second gap going into the technical section. Bill was riding this section MUCH faster than me and caught back up to me (note to self - ride more mountain bike this year!). When we hit the pavement with 1 to go,I hit the gas again and got a good 5-10 second gap this time. Bill was gaining on me again, but I was confident that I could hold him off since the finishing stretch was paved and straight. However, I heard him get tangled up riding the small barriers at the end, which allowed me to soft pedal in for 9th place on the day.

A fun day on the bike. Next weekend is Lost Trail CX (check it out... supposedly the course is like a Euro world cup course on the Kansas prairie), then hopefully at least one of the Christmas week races (probably Cross off the old year). I'm pretty much done doing anymore real training for cx this year though - from here on out it's going to be base miles and commuting.