Did you really need to Strava your .5mi walk with your dog? Prepare for a not-very-long blog today. It’s a very busy week, and I’ve got a million thoughts bouncing around my head with no real direction or bucket to trap them in. AKA; This is just a personal recap blog, and not my best effort. No hot takes, sorry.
In the theme of #StravaEverything, Crystal & I again descended on the madness that is MFG (More Effin’ Grass) cyclocross with the Homegrown Racing team, this time at one of the few beaches in Washington! I’ve done a handful of cross races in the Midwest and Utah, but something about these Washington courses is more fun. It’s probably the lack of clay in the soil, which slows you down and destroys your bike on a rainy Midwest cross day. Anyhow, the PNW scene is fun enough that I’d like to give the Midwest cross-racing another go someday, if only for the larger and more competitive fields. I’m not winning these PNW races by a long shot, but it would be fun to race people rather than ride in no-man’s land for 30-45 minutes. Is cross dying? I’m not sure. It seems a lot of cycle sports are and aren’t, depending on if you read Pinkbike.com or Escape Collective comment sections.
Crystal and I are still sharing a cross bike, a clapped but perfectly functional 2012 Giant TCX. It’s a real anomaly of a bike. In the stand, it’s got loose parts, bad bearings, and meh brakes, but as soon as you’re riding it, all those problems disappear, and I feel fully confident riding it at max pace for an hour. In this most recent race, I stuck with the lead group for 1.5 laps before crashing and dropping a chain, letting a quick 20-second gap open. I passed a couple of people in the subsequent laps but never caught back on, ending up 6th, about 2 minutes off the leader. The course was insanely fun, with 2 huge but rideable sand pits, and 4 punchy climbs followed by rooty and rutty descents every lap. These courses are my favorite because I thrive in settings that allow short recovery and punchy efforts, and they have the highest degree of difficulty.
Crystal did amazing, as usual. She piloted the shared rig to a 2nd place(!) finish among 10 women in the Cat3 event. Mind you, her first EVER cyclocross race was 2 weekends ago in the beginner category (2 steps down from Cat3). I’m hoping she gets her own cross bike soon and starts racing Cat1... she’s fast enough! I recently lost my GPS watch charger, so in the spirit of #StravaEverything, we shared an Apple Watch for the racing, and last I checked, Crystal still has the QOM on all the segments!
What’s going on this week? Casey is very busy with work and watching our friends Corgi’s! We'll be carving pumpkins and watching "not-so-scary" movies on Friday THE 13th. On Saturday, there’s local cyclocross racing followed up with a cider-drinking fundraiser, and finally, a Molly Tuttle concert. And on Sunday, we chill and recover from the festivities, probably.
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