Ft. Buenaventura race report

One detail I left out of my race report last week was that I slightly bent my handlebars on one of my four crashes (two warming up, two during the race).  The bend wasn’t too bad; hardly noticeable in fact.  The drops were just slightly bent inward on the right side.  There was only one more race in the cyclocross season so I decided I would replace them after that. 

My handlebars had a different plan.  Saturday’s race course was the sloppiest mud bog I’ve ever willfully ridden my bike through.  Repeatedly.  Someone said it was like riding through creamy peanut butter for 60 minutes.  The mud made it slow and sucked power from my legs. 

There was a log, maybe 10 inches in diameter, across the trail at the south end of the course.  My brother, who did his first ever cyclocross race that morning—and did remarkably  well considering his full suspension 29er mountain bike was undoubtedly the heaviest bike on the course—told me that most racers were dismounting and running over the log but that it was rideable. 

When my group came to the log in the first lap somebody in front dismounted and ran over the log.  That caused a bottleneck so all of us behind had to get off and do the same thing.  The next time around the group had spread out enough that I decided to ride it.  I picked my front wheel up and put it on top of the log.  My momentum carried me forward and, at the exact instant my back wheel hit the log, my front wheel hit the ground.  Also in that exact instant, my handlebars decided that seven and a half years of abuse is all they would take.  They snapped at the right side, right at the stem.  Next thing I knew I was picking myself up out of the mud.

I stood there perplexed for a minute.  I think I was slightly relieved that I wouldn’t have to keep racing in those conditions.  Finally I got back on and rode (yes, I could still ride with my left hand on the bars and my right hand on the stem.  The only tricky part was getting through the mud.) backwards along the course back to the pit area. 

I would have been content to drop out and go home, but Dan, one of my teammates, offered his bike to me.  It was too small but we raised the seat as much as possible and I set out for a lap.   Meanwhile, Dan tracked down Racer’s single speed, which is my size, and had it waiting for me the next time I came through the pit. 

It turns out the single speed was the ideal bike for racing in those conditions—you were right Jon—because there are no derailleurs to get gunked up in the mud.   I rode hard, crashed only once more, never had my chain fall off, and even passed a couple competitors to finish 10th out of 13. 

It’s been a costly season.  I hope I learned a few things, like maybe that when it snows like is has the past two Saturdays to leave the bike at home and bring out the skis.

I should have more photos of the race soon.