Thankfully, my first DNF was at a race that I was doing purely for fun. The plan was just to get down and dirty in the mud and have a little play time on my bike. Don’t get me wrong, it still totally sucked and bummed me out completely, but it wasn’t something I had spent a year training for or paid a $500 non-refundable entry fee to or anything like that. So you know, perspective I suppose.
Anyway, this DNF that I speak of happened on Saturday at the final Cross on the Rock event - the Ricky Bobby Cameron Cross - at Western Speedway.
It was quite the ordeal to even get to the event on Saturday morning, due to the fact that I only have road shoes and pedals and have been borrowing Kirsten’s mountain bike shoes and Shane’s mountain bike pedals for all my previous attempts at CX. Unfortunately, we discovered late Friday night that one of Shane’s pedals had seized onto his bike (nothing like leaving it to the last minute) and after many attempts to free it from his bike, many swear words uttered, one pedal wrench thrown, and even some bruised and cut knuckles, that thing wasn’t budging. So we went to bed.
When I got up Saturday morning, we made one last futile attempt to free Shane’s pedal from his bike. It did not work. My new plan was either to try to ride in my road shoes or borrow some flat pedals from my parents. Then Kirsten came through and said she could meet me at the speedway with her mountain bike pedals. The only problem now was a lack of time. I had pretty much already missed the ‘beginner pre-ride clinic’ but still had a shot at making the actual beginner race.
With about 15 minutes to spare, we made it to Western Speedway, got Kiki’s pedals on my bike, paid my registration fee, attached my number and headed down to the track to see if I could get a bit of a pre-ride in. I made it about 1/3 of the course before the announcer called for the beginners to meet at the start line.
I realized at that point how excited I was to race and give a good effort out on the frosty, muddy course.
The first stretch of the course was on the race track and through the grassy parts of the pit area before taking to the motocross track behind the oval. MUD PIT! It was sooo much fun! Some of the hills were a little scarier to descend than I expected (they look a lot bigger when you are cresting the top of them then they do from the stands) and I nearly crashed once or twice, but I was loving it. Even with the taste of dirt on my teeth, all was good.
As we came off the motocross track and back into the grassy parts of the oval, I made a bit of a mistake by not attempting to bunny hop a curb. I thought it was rather rounded and I could just ride over it, but unfortunately, I was wrong (or so I think, not 100% sure if that was the cause of what came next, but I have my suspicions). About 5-10 seconds later, my tire was flatter than flat. I had a fleeting thought that I should just keep going on my rim, but didn’t want to risk ruining it, and so with that I walked the rest of the course, back to the finish area to let the timers know I was out.
I should have attempted to change my tube, but realized in my panic to even get to the track that morning that I didn’t bring one that was the right size and just thought it would be a waste of time and a perfectly good tube. So, yep, after all it took to get there that morning, I got to ride almost one lap, and was done. DNF. Lame.
The day was not over though!
Next on the docket was the Gunner Shaw Memorial 10K Cross Country Classic at Thetis Lake. While I like this race and the giant puddles, and the lake finish (the lake finish is my favourite in fact), admittedly, I wasn’t super amped to be running it. I think I just wanted to keep riding my bike.
So, with this less than motivated attitude, I decided I wasn’t going to attempt to ‘race’ this event, but was just going to go out and try to run steady, have fun and enjoy myself.
After a short warm up (that consisted of running to and from the bathroom at the dog beach with Kirsten), it was time to go. It was cold, but it wasn’t snowy like last year, so that was nice.
My lungs burned with the cold air and I pushed myself – but not too hard. The puddles were awesome and muddy and somewhat smelly and overall, it was fun. But yep, I definitely didn't have much killer instinct to want to go out and run hard. So with that, I accomplished my last minute ‘goals’ - I found a steady pace and just cruised along and enjoyed myself (for the most part). Of course there were a few moments where I was cursing my decision to do the race (on the really big uphills probably) but overall, I had fun. [Fun seems to be my “word of the day” for this blog post, doesn’t it?]
Admittedly, I dogged it a bit on the last three hills and probably could have been slightly faster, but it was what it was and I wasn't too upset about not going out and trying to kill it. Oh, and I eeked out a PB over last year too, so that was a nice surprise.
Otherwise, training continues to tick along. Ironman and NZ are looming in my mind at all times….
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