FPA Scene

St. Cloud Pork Chop Hill Challenge (or something like that). Sunday Sept. 23rd

Course Description: Typical city park on the banks of the Mississippi. Flat over “knotty-soil” to downhill, back up to barrier and steep run up; back down to double barriers. Flat for a stint to long ride-able hill, back down, turn 180 to final double barriers and run-up. Repeat. It’s a bumpy course

Isnt the saying; “never show up at a gun fight with a knife”? It should be; “never show up late to your first coss race.” I had 5 minutes to warm up. I didn’t mean to arrive late, but I did. So I got 1/2 lap warm-up in.

Anyways, I lined up second row. Whistle blows and we’re off. I remember thinking, “Here we go-first cross race of the season”. I started great. Right up in the lead group-maybe top 10/15. Quickly it thinned out and I remember looking behind me and seeing a large gap.

I did very well for 10-15 minutes. I felt strong. I made some rookie mistakes, took bad lines, but had some smooth barrier transitions to make those up.

On Friday, I got the idea of adding a small chain ring. I usually run a single ring up front, but thought the addition would help on this particularly hilly course.

Well, I dropped my chain. Twice. It got all tangled-up in my crank and I lost some major positions.

So I spent the rest of the race fighting the great cross-wall-of-pain. Everything hurt. It was HOT and I wasn’t a happy camper.

But the minute I finished, and crawled under a tree’s shadow, I was much better. And after I had a beer, I was even better.

First race done.