Interlocken – Boulder Racing #2

This was my third time racing this coarse. It’s just a few minutes North of my house so it’s as close to home as a race is going to be. We get a chance to race on one of those rare surfaces in the fall in Colorado, green grass. It would be easy if it was just grass but I swear they must have doubled the watering schedule leading up to the race. The ground was nice and soft and quickly turned to a soft muddy mush making the race a power sucking slog fest. During my warm-up, even the 35 open race looked slow, we were going to be crawling.

I raced Xilinx solely because I knew (as they published on the race flyer) that call-ups for Interlocken would be based on Xilinx results. So I blew myself out cutting though the crowds at Xilinx just so I’d have a good start position and a shot at Interlocken. It paid off in a big way, front row call up! In front of 120 racers! That’s about 30 more racers than the biggest race I’ve been in before. I don’t care how fast you are, you start in the back of that bad boy and you’ll never see the front. If your racing to win, your race would be over the second the whistle blew.

We started right into the “bowl of pain”. A barrier followed by a steep climb with a cut across some off camber mud then a right dropping down into volleyball court sand. We made an immediate u-turn back into the other side of the volleyball sand then back up the muddy hill. Another muddy off camber cut and your out with a short break on some pavement before dropping down for a muddy grass climb up the back side of the course.

A group of four jumped off the front and we let them go. I was pretty sure they’d come back. Two of them came back quick. We bridged up but I couldn’t quite hold the pace and road the majority of the race in 4th hoping the conditions would eventually slow them down. Sadly that didn’t happen. The course was so full of people, racers getting lapped, ladies and 45+ guys warming up. I couldn’t tell what was going on in our race; it was a little out of control. I knew who was in front of me but had no idea what was happening behind, so I set out to make sure no one passed me. I was successful until near the end when one guy came flying by. Sure enough he was in our group and I finished up in 5th. A great result in a boulder race with 120 guys vying for the prize (If your racing for a prize in this group your crazy!)

Check out the video of our first lap thorough the "bowl of pain".

Boulder CX Series #2 - SM35+ cat 4 - Start from Dale Riley on Vimeo.

For more good links, see 303cycling

Next race, the first Colorado CX Cup points race.