Another home race for the Folsom people, but the C league didn't have a big turnout for Sac CX #7 at Granite Bay Beach. I think we had only about 15 people show for the early morning race. Not sure what the cause of this was -- organization, course and weather were all top-notch. Oh well, their loss.
The morning started off cold again, but the light rain were had received the past two days was gone and a perfectly tacky course was left. I forgot my GPS unit again this week, but the course seemed longer (seemed like 9 minute laps or so) but faster than last week. I would have called it 55% singletrack, 20% sand and 25% pavement. We had no real climbs, but two "bumps" (see picture), one set of barriers and three sand pits. For those of you who raced the MTB Challenge races, this course was the first 1/2 or 1/3 of that race.
The course basically went: pavement start, hard right on path, hard left onto the singletrack, up and over the "bump", around the corner and over another "bump", then the barriers. Clearing those, it was pavement straighaway to the singletrack. The singletrack winded for a while until it hit a small sand pit. Beyond that was a short pavement uphill to a U-turn and more singletrack. This brought you to the first sandpit, short uphill and downhill into the second huuuuge sandpit then to the finish line. Brilliant course, great conditions, loved it.
I rode a mediocre race. Due to work pressures, I didn't get much training in during the week which made the first lap or two a living hell. Although I picked up the pace for the final two laps (catching one person), I really never challenged for a top 10 finish. I finished at around 35 minutes (winner came through in 29'). No major mishaps (due to my new tire kit -- see below) but the sand was a bear. I could go through the first and second sand pits alright, but the third one would just slow me down to a crawl. I felt like I lost a ton of time through it.
For this race, I finally changed my setup. Fearing mud after the rain on Thursday and Friday, I bought some Maxxis Mimo CX tires (700x35) and swapped them on for my Ritchey Speedmax. As you can see from the picture below (Speedmax on the left, Mimo on the right), the Mimo has a much better mud/moist tire with a little bit of a penalty on rolling resistance. As expected, it was excellent on the singletrack, worked pretty damn well in the sand and cornered on rails. I probably lot a bit on the pavement, but it was a tradeoff I would make again. I think I will keep these on for a while.
Post race beer: None :< . Although I was able to sneak this race in, I had to catch a flight to Australia later that day.
