Doyne Park Cx

Well, hopefully Doyne will be my worst cx race of the year. I had a decent start and was 5th of a five man lead group on the first lap. However, on the remount after the barriers my tubeless tire experiment officially failed and I burped a ton of air out of my rear. After that I couldn't take the corners as fast as the lead group anymore and slowly started to trail off.

I wasn't sure what to do about the tire, it was slowing me down, and in the off-chamber sections I was burping more air. I rode another lap on it and then on the trickiest off-chamber 180 turn it gave up the ghost. To this point I still hadn't lost any places. The My Wife Inc guys knew that section was a tire eater and so the pit was real close. I ran the 100 meters to the pit and got a new rear wheel.

My bike didn't cooperate though and the exchange was slow. My heart sank as groups of riders from my race as well as the P,1,2 passed by the pit while I was standing there. Two cx races in a row with flats. I knew when I got back on my bike that I was mentally out of the race. I kept riding, but I wasn't attacking until the last lap. And that was for practice more than anything else.

I went down in the same corner I flatted in 4 laps later and my leg locked up straight so I couldn't get out of the pedal. It was awkward to sort of limp-pull the bike up the hill. After that I had to watch for cramps when I got off the bike for the barriers. All in all, not a good race and a 7th place finish.

All of this is too bad because the course was sweet, the day was beautiful, and I was racing against a bunch of friends. Oh well, it just makes me more determined to get my tires figured out and race my butt off next weekend!

Lauren should have the pictures up soon.