knowing when to cut an run

Chagrin River Valley Cyclocross two day race extravadanza was this past weekend. I only raced the first one on Saturday. Not having a car left my subject to a friend and fellow racer, having to pick me up at 10:30am to drive out to the course. Not having any idea how long it took to do misfits styled make up left me waking up at 7:30. Not wanting to get makeup on anything made the morning awkward as hell. As it turns out it only took about 20 minutes, which left me with about 2 and half hours to eat some cereal and not get make up on anything. The latter I failed at repeatedly. There was nothing special about the race other than I had finally gotten my endurance level up enough to not feel like I was going to simultaneously explode both my lungs and my heart and croak mid lap; and instead had energy to challenge people passing me and control my bike through the really technical parts, of which there was a ton. An entire section of the course was dedicated to this gnarly mud rutted single track romp through the woods which was eating roadies alive. Every time I entered that part of the course at least one person in front of me hit the deck in a slow motion panicked loss of balance, leaving me to either go off course into the pricker bushes to circumvent their inexperience, or dismount and jump them. Which leds me to my next little tid bit of learning in my first season of cyclocross. Running seems to be damned important. I think a big part of why this race went sooo much easier for me than the previous few was that I've been running two days a week instead of training in the park or on the boring ass indoor trainer. Originally when I would dismount I could hardly go more than a few yards running and would get back on the bike more tired than before. And now after a few weeks of run/jogging I can trot with the best. Which I believe, in hindsight, is a strategic advantage, such as in situations of this muddy rutted single track course where I often had to run a good 15-20 yards before finding a good place to remount my 25 year old Centurion tourer single speed conversion cross bike. I don't know where I placed in the race, somewhere in the middle, but it finally felt like the first race at Wendy Park, just awesome.

Later on that day I attempted an alleycat downtown. It was to be a 2 manifest slug-out between Cleveland's messenger and fakenger finest. I made it through the first manifest in the lead group of three (including myself Guy S. and Jay Karp.) with plenty of time to spare, and 19 miles behind use, when I gambled on a lift bridge being down and lost. With about 20 more miles of riding to do, and being sooo exhausted I could hardly hold a conversation with my g/f on the phone while waiting for the bridge to come back down I threw in the towel and headed home. And entered Halloween night as The Shadow, most people though I was a 30's gangster or a vampire.

deciding this is the best time to hang up the cx bike, .500 avg of postive post race attitude is more the good enough for me