Sweat Shaker

Saturday was a rough Sweat Shaker for me.  MMCC hosts a pretty cool race overall, and the weather held out for the most part.  The Pro/Expert category quickly separated into the fast and the not quite so fast groups.  John and Chad from NCCS split off the front with Jeff in tow, leaving Andy Brown, myself, and one other rolling through the first few miles together.  After a short while it was just Andy and me, and we put in a relatively fast first lap in 48 minutes.  Things were rolling right along and it looked like Andy and I would fight out 4th and 5th place for the day.

And then I felt the ever-so-frequent race day cramps again (?)... Since this seems to happen in almost every race I've done in the past two years that isn't a 'cross race I know enough to back things off as soon as that happens.  So I let Andy roll away, hoping my legs would quickly fall in line and I'd be able to resume the chase.

Well that never happened and I ended up getting caught by the eventual 5th place rider a few miles from the finish.  And then to add insult to injury, with about 500m to go I briefly lost my balance after taking a shortcut against a tree, and when I unclipped my leg seized up like a rock.  There goes 6th place...

So with less than a month until the first 'cross race I'm pretty much looking forward to that!  Good thing 'cross races are short enough that cramping hasn't ever really been an issue.  Waiting on tires from Specialized (see CXMagazine's review) and the season to start...