My FIRST Cyclo-cross Race

Today, I tried something new: a Cyclo-cross Race.

The race was at Swanson, so to say, in my neighborhood and a few people have been trying to talk me into doing one of these for a while.
Actually, I wanted to give it a try myself. I watched them race last year and it looked like fun, but tell you what, it looked much easier that it really is!!

The "weapon of choice" is a cyclo-cross bike, but I "only" have a MTB. Which works fine, but I think it is slower and gave me a bit of a disadvantage....

My good old hardtail. I love it! It is such a good bike:)
(Cannondale F800SL)

Cyclo-cross courses are set up, so you cannot ride everything. They force you to dismount your bike, carry them over or through the obstacle and then you have to mount it again. Sounds easy, doesn't it...well, it is not, because all of that is supposed to be done while in motion and it needs to be learnt.
I did practice the dismount, but I can't do the remount in motion yet and you loose a lot of time.

This course had two sand-pits that I couldn't ride through, other than that, I could ride everything, but I hadn't realized that those 30 min of racing are 30 min of 100 % power, like in a road crit. No brake, no time to take a breath nor get your heart rate down....and it was very warm today. I think it hit 80F and everybody got HOT!!!
I haven' t ridden much recently an I paid for it today...ouch!!! I came out with an average HR of 174, but I finished 2nd and I am ready to go back tomorrow for round TWO:)

Martin took all these great pictures and supported my race with lots of yelling and a big
COW BELL!! THANKS:)
Plus Mr. Whiskers was there as my Mascot as usual

My team teamFIRE had a good show and did some awesome racing!!