Chilly Cross

I traveled up to Bellingham today to race the last cross race in WA. For the first time in while I went to this race solo. It was kinda fun, but lonely. I really like racing with my family but Chad had to work so I dropped Holden off at my brother's house and headed up north.

The weather was pretty good. It was about 38 degrees but clear ski. The course was awesome!! I really like racing at Cornwall park. It has a little bit of everything and this year they ran the course backwards from last year and added in some new area's. Overall I have to say that I like this course layout the best so far.

My race start time was 10:30am. There were 5 Elite women on the line. Not bad for 3 weeks after Nats and no local racing here at home since then. This was the last race of a smaller series so the first row was the girls that had raced all the races and then myself and Corrie Middleton from Collision One lined up on the back row since we had not done any of the other races in this series.

We started about 30 sec behind the 45+ Cat 3 men and I decided to not go out all crazy and just sit on a couple girls wheels to get a feel for how everyone was riding. We went into this wooded section with 2 little log dismounts. We all were able to ride them, but Courtney McFadden with Western University had a little bobble so I decided to kick it in and attack. We went into this longer climb and I started opening up a gap and started running into the guys that were in front of us. We came through the start finish area and I had about a 10 sec gap on Courtney so I started pushing it. There was this big open grass section with some good corners that were slippery mud so I used my technical skills to open up my gap even more.

I started to focus on getting as many guys as I could that started in front of us. So I spent the rest of the race just going after the guys, and got quite a few of them. Not sure where I ended up finishing with them but I had a blast and really love riding with those guys. They are all so nice and so encouraging when I go by them, and I know they hate it!! So thank you guys for always pushing me and cheering me on out there, it really helps.

So I held on and opened up my gap to around 2min and got the win with Courtney finishing in 2nd. It was such a great course, and fun to have a lower key race with less stress. I had a pretty bad head cold over the last 2 weeks so I was nervous that was going to hinder me, it did but just a little bit. And my hand, holy cow it was awesome!! I raced with no brace and it felt almost 100%!! I was so excited to be able to ride again and have full strength and be able to shift without the brace getting in the way!!

I am only just shy of 8 weeks after surgery and I can hardly tell it ever happened!! Thank you again Dr. Weil and Orthopedic Specialists of Seattle! You guys rock and made the end of my season possible!! Thank you so much to everyone that worked with me. I really appreciate it!

So now it is time to just hit the gym and get in some longer runs and riding a few days a week to take a break and then I will be out on the Mountain bike more this year to build up my muscle strength for the 2011 cross season. So I will see you all out on the road and off road this spring and summer.

I will update as things happen,

Kristi