Rain in LA!! What the.... Left cold, wet Victoria for......at least it was warm and wet. Final race of the Cross After Dark series Saturday night, another UCI race Sunday morning and SSCXWC Sunday night lead to a jam packed weekend! And as usual we did you quick in and out trip. After flight delays, yippee San Fransisco fog/rain.
After a day of just a little rain, the course seemed to be drying up nicely. Pre-ride on my dry tires was awesome and the flat CXLA course looked like it was going to be fast! It started raining shortly into my warm up, but no panic, it's really sandy so conditions should stay half decent for a while. Wow, couldn't have been more wrong with that one!! I couldn't believe how fast the conditions of the course turned really really really slippery. I was sorely missing my Kenda Kwickers on this one. A good wipe out coming out the BMX course and I lost contact with the lead group. After that I found myself tip toeing around all the corners, perfecting the fish tail!! And in a great battle with a couple of girls for 8th to 10th. I know I wasn't the only one having troubles with the mud, it was about an inch layer of grease sitting on top of the hard pack underneath.....just like riding on ice. I made my one and only move on the last long straight away in the final lap and managed to put a small gap on those two to nab the 8th place spot.
Some yummy greasy Chinese food for supper (didn't sit so good the next morning), Regan did a great job of cleaning all the bikes and we were in bed by 2am. Only to have to get back up at 7:30 to make our 12 noon start. Talk about a quick turn around, I think everyone was hurting today!
I decided to run the Kwickers on Sunday, and after not even a half lap pre-ride (which was all I could get my bike through, sticky gluey peanut butter mud did not make my bike happy....and impossible to clean) we converted my pit bike to a single speed. Had a great race on Sunday, blew up a little in the last 2 laps, but it was fun being able to ride up at the front for the first couple of laps. Pepper roared by me in the final lap (and put some good time into me) and I finished 7th place.
Another quick turn around, change into dry clothes and easy spin on the trainer, and it was SSCXWC time! I've wanted to do this for a couple of years now, but it just never worked out, so when I found out it was with the UCI races this year I was really stoked! Few little mods to the course; whisky short cut through a minivan (I have perfected the barrel roll) and the sesspool of filth (ewwwww) and a lot of very rowdy fans. There were some awesome costumes out there, I personally sported a Norwegian jumpsuit/pajama/I don't really know what it was....but it was comfortable! Waldo aka Pepper was coming on strong, until she took one too many whisky short cuts. The very itsy bitsy bikini with lace body suit made a late charge and ended up only 200m behind me at the finish. I didn't catch anything in the sess pool (there was some money filled condoms and a bike frame), but I had an absolute blast. Shortly following the mens single speed race I was kidnapped and taken straight to east Hollywood for the coveted SSCXWC tattoo!! What a story :-)
Thank you Dorothy Wong for organizing CXLA and Murphy Mack for the SSCXWC. Huge thank you to Matt and Joan Wehn for the yet again awesome home stay, and Regan for looking after all the bikes!! It was great having almost the whole team there together again!!! Looking forward to rocking the X-Fire disc again in the mud this weekend in Bend!!
