Psycho Cross/OBRA State Champs: A New Way To Race Bikes

all photos courtesy of Will Sullivan Cycling

Over the past few seasons of both road and cyclocross I've gone into every race with a clean bike, a well prepared body and a plan.  I've been doing a little experimenting this season.  Part of it is out of laziness, time constraints, motivation and the willingness to try something new.  I didn't really plan it, it just kind of happened.

In the past, I'd always follow the exact same ritual starting about 36 hours before my race but this year I've showed up with dirty bikes, bags packed half an hour before leaving the house and eat whatever the hell I felt like the night before.  Yep, big change of plans.

well that's cute.  Maybe I'll make
this face more often

These past two weeks I've showed up concentrating on having fun and enjoying my hour in the mud, rather than how far down the list I want to find my name on that results sheet.  And so far it's actually worked out pretty well.

Today I made a conscious effort to line up dead last.  I just wanted to have fun and I do that when I get to pass people.  I went through the first corner with one person behind me and 19 in front.

I rode steady, stayed upright, laid down power where I could and passed anyone that crashed.  No idea on the final result but I'm guessing somewhere 12-15th in a stacked field.  The biggest thing about this new approach is that I finish a race happy.  Instead of focusing on just missing a top-20 result instead I get to look at how many people I passed and the lines I nailed every time.  No one is ever going to pay me to do this so I may as well enjoy it if I'm going to commit so much time to it.

The icing on the cake today was a pretty awesome battle with Matt Fox (Silverado/Sunnyside).  I had the legs and would gap him off on the straight sections but he was always right there breathing down my neck on the techy stuff.  Lucky for me I was able to ride the techy stuff clean(ly?) every lap and there was a quarter-mile straight stretch leading into the finish.  I managed to hold him off but it was nice to finally have a back-and-forth with another racer.

Overall a really fun race but I'm a little bummed attendance was so low.  Sal and the Psycho Cross crew do an awesome job of putting this series on, I really hope it sticks around.  Come on people, do races outside of the Cross Crusade series!