'Cross

So I completed my second cross race yesterday... That gives me a 50% completion rate, which is really exceptionally low for an event as short as cross. This was my first Pro 1/2 race, and yeah, it sucked.

I crashed hard on the second lap after leaning my bike a little too far into a corner and clipping a pedal. I wasn't at the front or anything, but that pretty much ended my race, mostly because when I crashed, I hit my right shifter pretty hard on the ground and ended up with a whole lot of dirt jammed in there. I finished the race with a barely functioning rear shifter and a not really functioning at all rear brake. Good times.

When I upgraded, I expected to be able to ride with at least some of those guys, and I think that earlier in the year, I would have been able to. But I think that my snap is gone for the year, so I don't expect to be able to do a whole lot more racing this year. It's cool though... I am really excited about being able to just go and ride my bike. I want to get out in the woods before all of the leaves fall and it starts getting too bitterly cold.

And apparently when I crashed, I hurt my knee pretty badly. Bear in mind that this isn't the same knee that I was nursing before the race and trying to decide if I wanted to race on it. No no, this is my other, previously totally healthy knee. I didn't really notice it yesterday while I was racing, but sometime on the way home, my knee developed a baseball sized amount of swelling over the patella, making it pretty hard to bend it a lot at all. It's still just as swollen this morning. I need to stop crashing and just start riding.

Oh, so yeah. Julia did awesome in her first real 1/2/3 race with the chicks. She got a solid 8th after a bit of confusion about the number of laps caused her to misjudge how long she had still to race. But still, she killed it representing for SYCR. Jenna Bales Walker also held it down in the women's 4's, getting a solid 3rd place finish. Baker Bill went for the double on the day, killing it in both the masters and the men's 4's. Good stuff.