After getting home late on Saturday night after the SoCalCross Prestige Series race I swapped pedals over to my singlespeed bike and got my pit bike ready to go. It was late so I hit the pillow around 11:30pm.
Getting up at 6:00am wasn’t fun at all. I was a little sore from the crash and had a few little scabs up and down my right side. No problem though, I loaded the bikes and hit the road. Getting to Torrance for the Urban race was relatively quick. Only 80 miles. I got lucky and scored a space inside the park parking lot and made it over to the sign up area and got my number. There were only 5 of us signed up for the SingleSpeed A race. Disappointing but still, I don’t care if there are 5 or 55, I just want to race. The course at Entradero Park is evil. Pure and simple. Immediately after the start is a run up like no other I have experienced in my nearly 4 years of racing cx. Steep and sandy, almost like a sand dune! Then the ride down the other side is loose and sandy and really exciting. The rest of the course is pretty fast and normal as far as cx courses are built. I opted for a big gear on my bike figuring I could get in some good top speed on the flats and run up the climbs. Turns out I should have gone with my first gear choice. After 3 laps of hell I switched to my pit bike which has a much lower gear. This allowed me to ride up areas that were killing me on my race bike. After many laps of flogging I was caught and passed by the 1st and 2nd place racers. I was dragging with 2 to go but it was fun and I finished in 3rd. No flats and no mechanicals! That in itself is a victory!
