Blunt Park 'Cross - Women's Reports
Blunt Park Womens Open
18 Starters
Teri Carilli 9th
Kathy Martin 12th
Michele Archambault 13th
[Teri Carilli]
The course had a small amount of pavement, some nice muddy, single track trails through the woods with 4 natural barriers (logs – one was easily rideable on a cx bike), a very twisty section on grass including what I called the “Death Spiral” and a set of three barriers on off camber hill. The start was a 100yd sprint on pavement with a 180 left turn onto grass/dirt/mud. It had rained all morning and the women’s race was the last of the day. The rain had ended by race time but the course was pretty much all mud – all the grass had been scrubbed off by the previous racers. This was a course designed just for me. I hate dry grassy crit type courses.
My goal for the race was just to remember what a cx race felt like. ;-) My head certainly wasn’t in it as I ended up in the second row and on the wrong side of the road (left) for the left hand turn hole shot. The master men 55+ would be starting 10 sec behind us. At the whistle, the woman in front of me blew getting into her pedal and totally spun the bike 180 degrees on the wet pavement and ended up facing me! (a neat trick I’d never seen before.) Trying to avoid her while she was riding directly at me was also a neat trick I never had the pleasure of trying to attempt before. By the time we got that sorted out, the whistle blew for the master men’s field. Total swarming resulting in what felt to me like total chaos. As we hit the grass, I found myself at the back of the men’s field. I spent the rest of the race just trying to ride smoothly and concentrate on passing people – pick one off, aim for the next, repeat. I had biffed it on the “easy” log in warm up so was a little gun shy every time we came to it but happily rode it each lap without incident.
Fun race. Glad it was available as an alternative to VT.
[Kathy Martin]
Wow, that was the muddiest race I have ever done! Since it was an Open Women’s race, we were the last race of the day and the course had turned into mud soup. Race goal: Stay upright.
I got a decent start and took a good line into the first corner and from then on out it was mud for the rest of the lap. There were at total of 6 places where you had to dismount, some big logs, the one set of off-camber barriers (3 barriers!), and a muddy uphill/downhill chicane. There were also three very large watery mud puddles (I swear that half of Michele’s bike disappeared into one). I wasn’t handling the muddy chicanes and 180s very well and soon found myself near the back of the race and on my own.
Not much to report, since I was just trying to stay upright, except that on the last lap, I decided to go a little harder and came screaming into one of the log dismounts, preparing to do an awesome running dismount, only to find out that I was actually clipped in with my left foot and I went down HARD! As I got back on my bike, I could hear Todd R in my head saying, “You can stay clipped in if your coming slowly into the barriers, but definitely not when your riding fast.” Yep. That took all the wind out of my sails and I went into self-preservation mode for the rest of the race.
Lessons learned. 1) Find out if there is a bike wash and wash the mud out of your brakes before you race! Both Michele and I started the race with our bikes caked in mud and while everything still worked, it would have been much nicer to start with clean equipment (especially the brakes) 2) While it’s awesome to clip into your pedals even if they’re caked in mud, beware that you might actually be clipped in even if you didn’t try to clip in, therefore, always unclip left foot before coming fast into a dismount 3) Good equipment is a wonderful thing. I had zero mechanical problems in spite of the horrible conditions. A fall in warm up and later on falling in the race resulted in both of my shifter mechanisms being submerged and encased in mud. The bike shifted perfectly with no issues at all for the entire race and as for my pedals, I could clip in every time.
I sort of enjoy riding through mud, but that was rather ridiculous! Hopefully it’ll be drier for Gloucester next week.