Georgia State Cyclocross Championships

After coming down with a nasty fever and sore throat on Thursday night, I thought my hopes of bringing the Georgia CX State Champion Jersey back to the Randall household were all but gone. Thankfully my fever subsided Friday afternoon and with the help of some extra strength Tylenol, we packed up the car Saturday morning and made the long drive to Savannah. Jayden slept the entire 4+ hour drive, even when we stopped to eat lunch. I actually had to wake her up to feed her when we were half way, for fear she'd wake when we were on the road again and turn into a ravenous, screaming velociraptor. She was so conked, we had to do everything short of dumping water on her to get her eyes to open.

When we got to the venue at the Savannah Speedway - a dirt stock car track - I found that the course was flat and extremely sandy. There were a lot of sandy corners and if you overcooked any of them, you'd be on the ground and likely out of contention. There was also a short section of the course that had some BMX style humps that were pretty fun, although I wasn't going to try to jump anything on my cross bike. I was a little worried about Sunday's race because the course didn't seem like one that favored any of my strengths...it was fast, flat, and only had two short off-the-bike sections.

Only 6 girls lined up at the start (as opposed to the 12 we had at the previous race I did), 5 from Georgia and Kim F. from Tennessee. Only the Georgia residents were eligible for the jersey, and we knew Kim would likely just ride away from all of us, so it was a race for second place in the race AND the State Champion Jersey.

Becca went out hard after Kim and I could tell she meant business. I hopped on her wheel to save some energy and see what she had going on. After she lost her momentum in the first corner, I passed her and took the lead. We went back and forth with her coming around me on the straights and me passing in the corners for much of the first lap.





After she came around for one last attack, I let her burn some energy and then counter attacked right before a twisty section. I was accelerating faster out of the corners so I built up a few second gap.

Once I hit the back side of the course where the BMX humps were, I gunned it again, gaining a few more seconds.



I repeated this process each lap, and gained a couple precious seconds in each corner. I was suprised that I actually felt decent, and while I couldn't power away and come close to catching Kim, I was able to ride pretty steady the entire race.

When I had two laps to go, I rode hard, thinking I'd be passed the men's leaders and would be done with my race on that same lap. Funny enough, I was about 10 seconds too fast and had to ride another lap - which I complained about as I rode by Chris...



It turned out that Becca had been caught by the guys, so she couldn't chase anymore and I could have rode that last lap as a cool down and the outcome would have been the same. However, I was nervous and wasn't 100% certain she had been caught so I still kept pushing...no getting pipped at the line for me this time!

So I was actually second in the race, but was the first Georgia resident so I got to take home the Jersey. Here's the Georgia State Champs Podium - finally I'm on the tall block!



This is what it feels like when you do a cross race with a head cold...



So I'm wondering how many more colds there are at Jayden's school that we are going to get before we can all be healthy again. I'm tired of being up to my elbows in snot!