It’s not enough to succeed, others must fail

Maybe their chain comes off in the first minute of the race. Perhaps it’s a flat half way through the race. They could always pre-reg and just fail to show up. Inevitably there are moments in cyclocross when someone else’s failure ends in your success. In my case, that is certainly relative. The slower you are, the more you relish these moments. Trying my best to race single speed this year has meant the competition is fast. Seriously- fast.

 

gazelle v. lion – lion fairs slightly better

Lion of Fairfax was no exception. With an open SS field that raced late in the day relatively close to SF brought out a good field. As the day progressed, everyone I saw with a SS bike looked faster than me. It was supposed to be a rest week, so that helps too. The course was about the same as in the past but with the addition of some pump track type features on the back side out behind the school. With as much up and down there was, riding it SS was challenging but very do-able. About 30 seconds into the race, a SSer dropped his chain (not sure how, isn’t this a reason to be racing SS?).  A lap or two later I see a sad soul flatted on the side of the course. So I’m two spots (?) out of DFL at this point.

(feeling the run up – stolen from MASH, i.e. those fast guys)

Can’t remember too much of the first half of the race honestly, so why don’t I just run down of the second half:

• ~35:00- the three SS leaders caught me (after passing through the entire B’s field, yeah, fast).
• ~40:00 – fitness is gone
• ~45:00 – (of a “45 minute” race) lap card says “2 Laps”
• ~45:30 – ow, did someone hit me in the back with a baseball bat?
• ~60:00 – and we’re done, I’m going to go lie of the ground for a bit

I could have raced faster. Definitely hit a wall where my fitness disappeared. I could use some more of that. At least I could pretend I was pulling off to the side to let people lapping me race unimpeded. At the end of the day, I raced single speed cyclocross and I wasn’t DFL.