Cross Crusade: Sara Takes On the A’s

By Sara Johnson
Beaverton, Oregon

Well, I just raced my first cross crusade race…and I raced it as an A! Talk about crazy! Soo many people not just racing, but spectating too. The line up was crazy! 30 women in the A’s alone. I’m not even sure how many total women were racing. Luckily, the A’s get to go up to the front of the line. Since it was my first race, I hung back and started in the second line. It was a horrible start, every hole I saw would close up right as I started to take it. So, I was about 20 back in the beginning.

The race course was pretty fast and open in the beginning. Then they had us go up some huge mound of clay that had turned to concrete after the rain the night before. That was interesting to say the least! Coming down off the mound there were basically three tracks, and you picked one and were committed until you hit the bottom. Midway down, some girl went a*& over tea kettle right in front of me. Thankfully she was ok, and I missed running over her by a couple inches.

So now I’m in like 19th place??? Well, I just kept a good pace, tucked in behind some girl that looked like she knew what she was doing and just started passing people one by one. I ended up in 5th or 6th with 1.5 laps to go. Then I did what I NEVER do and I crashed! Damn! I actually went down twice in the same 180 degree sucky gravel corner, but the first time I got my foot out and basically just tapped the ground and bounced back into my pedal and started riding again. The next time around, not so lucky. I didn’t get my foot out and I went down….hard. Ouch, I left a bit of thigh, butt and elbow skin on that course. Didn’t rip my pretty shorts tho…yay for that!

Well, the crash also rammed my derailer into my spokes and twisted my shifter/brake levers so that my brakes were stuck on. While I was yanking the derailer out of my spokes, and twisting the levers back to semi straight, 5 girls passed me. Damn again. I tried to catch them the whole rest of the race, but my bike was basically a single speed and I was stuck in the drops the whole time because the bars twisted. I couldn’t pass them, but I also didn’t let anyone else get by me. I ended up 11th out of 30. Which, for my first major cross race, I think is pretty good.

Next weekend there is another one up in Washington. Got my bike all fixed up, got my new sweet 1600gram triple spoked wheel set from FSA and I’m ready to go. Making a whirlwind trip to Spokane friday night after work, visit babies and eek a quick ride in saturday and then drive to the race sight in Western Washington (a mere 6 hr drive) Sunday morning and race again. If nothing else I’ll be nice and rested from 6 hours of forced sitting.

Leavanworth Bike & Brew Festival

Ouch.

More: continued here

More Bikes and Brews!

By Erika Krumpleman
Hayden, Idaho

The Northwest "Indie Series" took me to the quaint, beautiful, (although somewhat cheezy) Bavarian town of Leavenworth, Washington. I was a bit nervous about how my body would work after crashing in the previous Wednesday night race and turning my right side into one large hematoma. With almost 5,000 feet of climbing, my legs would need to be there!

After the 4 hour drive to the race course, I had a good warm-up and was ready to go when I hear that the start was delayed by 30 minutes because one of the sport racers had crashed and needed to be carried off the course on a stretcher. So—do I keep warming up, or stand around and talk? Hmm—stand around and talk wins. After 30 minutes and halfheartedly warming up a 2^nd time, I hear the start has been delayed another 30 minutes because the racer is badly injured. After climbing 1600 feet each lap, the descent was fast and buff with an occasional hump (water bar) added in that sends many a rider on his or her head. By now I’m starting to think conservative descending might be in order. . Also—my mental focus is pretty much gone. We finally line up to start, I dash into the bushes for one last pee, and then we are off. I took off hard and led up the climb. One woman passed me at the top of the climb, but I quickly passed her on the downhill and did not see another woman from the open class for the rest of the race—pretty uneventful! I kept expecting Kristy Berg, a former pro downhiller to catch me on the descent, but surprisingly she never did.

Luckily my bruised and swollen right leg still worked! The best part about it was the pay out–$250.00!! This may sound pathetic, but I’ve never won that much before! In most races, the men’s payout is about 5 times the women’s, but in this race it was almost equal—yay for progress! It might actually pay for a few tanks of gas….

Thanks to Stan’s for making an incredibly light and strong set of purple nippled wheels! Less weight on the bike equals faster climbing!

It was also great to see teammate Kari Studley out there. She rode very strong considering the lack of fuel!

Thanks for reading!

Bikes and Brews

By Kari Studley
Bothell, Washington

Highlights of the race:

- Getting to ride my bike in the sun! it’s been POURING rain the last 10 days in Seattle. Yuck.

- Amazing views. I had to refrain from singing “The Hills Are Alive” from the Sound of Music as I enjoyed the panorama of mountains view.

- The sweet smell of Lupin and you ride through trails blanketed by the beautiful purple fragrant flower on either side.

- Sunshine! Sunshine! Sunshine!

- I won my first cowbell trophy! I’m a sucker for racing for t-shirts & cowbells, guess it’s a cross thing.

- Fun race atmosphere. Beer garden & bands and community turnout = fun!

- Perfect Kari-course (4 miles of Kari-grade climbing up, 4 mile single track downhill. Repeat 3 times.) I had a GREAT second lap!

- Erika Krumpelman WON her race in the open women category. Whoo hoo Erika!

The not-so-highlights:

- I won by default as the only other racer in my expert 19-34 age division had to leave emergently as her father crashed severely (rumored initially unconscious) and had to be carried out by stretcher by mountain rescue in his race prior to ours. I was very distracted the first lap thinking about her and her dad and hoping the very best for the whole family. (Please help me in sending good healing & well-being Bella vibes to them). So it was me in my <34 category against the 6 women expert 35+ category racers.

- Because the my race kept getting delayed by half hour increments (my race at noon became 12:30 to 1:00 and my race actually started at 1:15) for the rescue effort I kept having just enough time to not do anything productive for my race. I just want to clarify that his life/well-being is SOOO much more important than my silly race and I have no problem with being delayed (or canceled) for such reasons, but I’ve never had a situational delay like that or that long before my race. So I didn’t eat/fuel up enough to make up for that hour since I kept thinking I’d be racing in 20-30 minutes and didn’t want to suffer that consequence of indigestion.

- Hence my perfectly timed out food & warm up prep lasted me to what would have been a perfectly timed race finish according to the original plan. Or the end of lap two (of 3) for the revised plan. I had just solidified first out of all the expert women when just after the feedzone my hamstrings cramped really really badly to an almost paralyzing point (also a new experience while racing). And then just as I was able to get back into a normal cadence I completely food bonked (with 3 miles left of the climb and 7 miles total for the race). It’s really not pretty when I food bonk and I’ve never been that hungry before on the bike, much less, racing.

- So I tried to at least enjoy the scenery and not think about eating the plants and watch the lead 35+ expert woman pass me and take first overall for the expert women field (a matter of personal pride since I beat her by 8 minutes the last time we raced. But, kudos to her, as this was her hometown course and she definitely ate time into me on the downhill part).

24 hours later I still am hungry (I don’t think I ate enough the day before either, so I’ve learned my lesson). But very glad I at least got to go spend a day riding my bike in the sun, lupin flowers and spectacular views. We’re back to rain and clouds in Seattle. And a big plug for my Zeal Mistro sunglasses: not only are they the PERFECT tint for sunny & shady trails (a balance I’ve never been able to find before with previous sunglasses), they fit perfectly around my helmet, AND (most importantly!) I didn’t get a sun-headache that a Seattle-ite like me is often prone to when I go suddenly from no sun to tons of sun in a day.

Photo stolen from the collection of Sabine Dukes, because it looked pretty.

Firecracker at Falls City

by Shannon

So this past weekend my husband, Noah, and I headed to Portland, Oregon for a weekend of riding, racing and, well, family time. It was a beautiful weekend until the evening before the race in which it started pouring. It poured most of the night and most of the next day. We drove from Portland where my sister lives down to Falls City for the Firecracker MTB race. The race is held at a free ride park, that should tell you how the course is going to look. It was raining when we got there but I decided I needed to pre ride. So I went out and got some pre race mud. The course climbs on a fire road for some time before it turns left and heads up a muddy slippery pitch, in which at the top you get to climb over tree which is about waist high, unless you can ride the off camber slippery ladders that go up and down each side. You then hit the fire road again for about 1/2 mile until you make a right turn up a totally unridable climb. This was the longest hike a bike I have ever seen in a XC race and once again quite slippery. Once to the top more ladders to get over some more downed trees and then another fire road up. Once at the top it is fun downhill for about a mile, turns to fire road for a little then it turns left and goes straight down the hillside, crazy dhing. From there the DH is fun for a little a few more ladders one with a drop at the end then a fire road decent which makes a 180 and goes straight up a slipppery mudd climb back to the start finish. It sounds like a lot but it was all compacted in to all but 4.5 miles. Now to the race. I felt pretty good. The course is totally my husbands style so I felt a little strange with him on the sidelines watching Noah. I started pretty good, no one would go so I took lead and a couple of girls went with me. I let them by and hung on the rear wheel for awhile. We climbed up and up and when we finally got to the downhill one of the girls was downhilling like my husband, insanely fast. I was dropped. I was having problems with my glasses so I had to take them off. This turned out to be interesting because when we hit the fire road decent I was going so fast that it was like I was being attacked my a million little mud nazi’s. It was crazy, I couldn’t see anything, If I opened my eyes I would get splatted with mud and then my contacts would move all over. I decided then that I needed to put my glasses on before the Fire road next time, even if I couldn’t see out of them. I lost a lot of time the first laps trying to figure out the vision issue and just getting used to riding in the mud. I actually got caught by another girl, which pissed me off so I stepped up my downhilling the third and fourth lap. The awsome thing was that as muddy as it was my shifting stayed perfect and my brakes worked awsome the entire time like there wasn’t any mud at all. Got to love Easton and SRAM. My husband put on a Nobby Nik and a Skinny Jimmy so my climbing traction was awsome even though it was slick as snot, I could ride better than I could walk. So I kind of settled in the Second and third lap. I haven’t raced much there year and I think it was showing. I was unsure of how my body would do (especially my knee) so I settled in and I shouldn’t have. The last lap I decided I needed to go. So I cranked the climb. Just as hard as I could go 185 plus Heart rate the entire time, and pushed the downhill, testing my limits. I made some awsome time on the girls in front of me and put 3 minutes on the girl I passed at the begining of the lap. Now if I could just figure out how to get my mind and body to push that hard the entire way. It was a good race, I got 3rd to some amazing riders so I am happy. I was so caked in mud, about 1/4 inch on my bum and I couldn’t even unzip my jearsey because there was too much mud in the zipper. My face was unrecognizable. The best part about it was I got to race my mountain bike and race on some awsome trails improving my skills. After the road race last weekend I have realized my true passion lies with the nobby tires. I just LOVE mountain biking.

So for those wondering how my knee is doing, here is a little update. My friend is a rep for a certain bike company (name not to be disclosed) he gave me their newest pair of MTB Shoes to try. I switched over 2 weeks ago and have been riding them soley. They are very very stiff and seem to keep me more in alignment. Between that, Physical Therapy, icing twice a day, and motrin, my knee seems to be doing a little better. Maybe I am mental but it seems better. I still have pain when racing but it is tolerable for now. I am hoping this is a trend and I will be back to myself in the next month. I am just so happy to be racing at all right now, that placings don’t matter. They will come when they come. Welll Noah and I are off to support my husband this weekend for his first every solo 24 hour race. Should be fun!!! I will enjoy his pain I think after doing it solo last year. He He He.

Until next time…

Happy Trails.