Cross Season Finale

One week after racing in 20 degree temps in mud and then frozen mud, I raced the So Cal Cross Prestige Series Finals in Woodland Hills. It was nearly 80 degrees. Quite a change! The course was fast and had some good climbs, and some good technical turns. I helped Dot with the kid's race and really enjoyed passing out children's books (Mike and the Bike) and CLIF z-bars afterwards (with my Santa Hat on).

The race started and I felt good. Hung with Coryn and Tonya who always have great starts. After a while I moved up into 2nd place and would remain their most of the race. I was happy I only rode 3.5 hours on Sat and not 5+ as I was originally planning. The high winds made my *easy* rode ride a bit tougher than I wanted.
2 laps into the race, I could not believe it when the announcer said "6 laps to go". I thought he was kidding. but he was NOT. I wasn't sure if I could hold my pace for 6 more laps (granted each lap was around 5 minutes, but had a super steep grinder climb that kept getting harder each lap). At one point I could see a train of girls forming to try to catch up to me, thankfully it dissolved, however Lana came up and was able to pass by me. I worked hard to catch back up, but in the end was 12 seconds behind her. I was also happy to only be 30 seconds behind Coryn who has been known to put MUCH larger gaps on us. Overall I was very pleased. It felt great to be in 2nd place most of the race, and to finish so close to the top 2. Would have preferred to stay in 2nd, but still enjoyed it while it lastest.
Thanks to Amy for feeding me, teammates from CICLE and friends from Backbone (Bert, Ryan, Vanessa, Vegas Bob) cheering for me! Thanks especially to Roger for being on the back 40 of the course where legs were burning! He took some great pix, some of which I posted here. Shout out to Bert for winning the singlespeed race, Vegas Bob for doing great in his first cross race ever and Brant for kicking butt once again this season!
Now it's time to focus on the soon approaching 2008 MTB season. It definatley feels nice to have a good level of fitness already at this point from doing base, lifting and also racing cross. I don't have to work back up from square one which I have had to do in past seasons. Somehow I managed NOT to burn out this year, so was able to keep on ridin'! I think we all learned alot in the 2006 season to help make 2007 a little less stressful! Hopefully 2008 will be even better... :)

The only issue at the moment is getting over the chest cold I brought back from NY (Greg has it too). Not a fun way to spend New Year's.

HAPPY NEW YEAR !!!