2009 Blogs
I flew to Australia with a solid head on my shoulders, feeling confident in the training I had done in the preceding weeks and looking forward to good legs at a world class race. Little did my coach, Ben and I know that I should have been spending those weeks hucking myself off cliffs and preparing myself for a mix between downhill and trials racing. I left the US on Thursday the 27th and arrived in the capital of Australia, Canberra on the morning of Saturday the 29th. A crew of us rode to the venue, as it was about 8k from our hotel. Keen to check out the course, we ignored the threatening clouds which came back to nip us with pelting hail! Beyond being stung from hail, frozen from numbing wind, I was also flabbergasted by the first 3k of the course. I kept desperately looking at Marc (Gullickson, the cross-country coach) with hope that he would say "oops, we're on the downhill course!"
The course began with a fun little twisty-turny single track climb, with dirt I would compare to riding in CO or CA...dry and ventilated, but tacky so you could rail it. This dropped you out onto a fire-road climb which looked ideal for passing before dropping back into single track. The second single track section looked yummy, as it had some rocks and maneuvering sections, but it was stuff I could handle no problem. And it was straight up, lung bursting, just giving er' to get the pedals turned over; appropriately named Cardiac Climb. For the first few minutes I was licking my chops. Then it all went downhill...literally, into Cadaver Corner. When the climb topped out, you immediately went rocketing into this slick boulder field descent. If your butt wasn't back, you'd go over the bars.
Look closely to see what I mean:
From this drop it started a mellow pitch of a climb which switch-backed a bunch and was plagued with big boulders where weight distribution was key. It's this fine tuned movement of picking the weight up off the front wheel then quickly moving forward and kicking the back wheel up...supposed to be fine tuned but mine was roughly hacked. I tried and tried to make this section flawless because with my legs feeling climby, I thought this could be a section to excel on. Unfortunately I never linked the whole section together...just bits and pieces, and a whole lot of most-excellent cyclocross mounts and dismounts. Finally I had a brief 2 seconds to take a deep breath before more internal whimpering.
Next was the "Hammerhead", and I think I would rather come face to face with a hammerhead shark than come to face this drop again. It was an infestation of medium sized boulders, all placed inconveniently enough, serving as the lead-out to two vertical granite rock roll-ins. And the B-line didn't hold much more optimism for me. I hammered my head on this section, literally and figuratively. I crashed enough times to know what not to do, but actually nailed it a few times (the B-line that is...I never bucked up enough to go cliff jumping). Eventually this section became fun in a drugged sort of way. It challenged me so much that I kept wanting to try it again and again, because each time it would be a tad bit better. By race day, I had the "cautious" B-line down pretty well. At this juncture, we're only a third of the way through the course! Good news is, it gets fun from here. The nightmare stuff is out of the way. Shortly after Hammerhead, there was another triple rock drop which was mellower. It took some time to actually attempt it, but it was tons faster than the B-line, and gave me the opportunity to go head over teacup a few times too. From here the course turned into a mock-luge for the majority. A wicked fast banked descent, into some fun whoopty-doos, into a dual slalom type track that gave the opportunity for you to go head-to-head and try for a pass. This dropped you into a field where the tech and feed zone was. Then a 600m fire-road section into twisting single track on that grippy dirt. From here it was all about rhythm from berm to berm and jump to jump, bringing you back down to the event village for the 6k of fun to begin again.
I've raced cyclocross at an international level, so I know what a fast start is, and this I was definitely expecting. Unfortunately call-up was based on UCI points, which I was at the bottom of the totem pole on. But the field was only 35-deep, and sitting 4th row really ain't that shabby. For the start there was a fire-road extension to allow a drawn out fight before entering the single track. This fire road seemed to be narrower on race day. I was darting back and forth to sneak up the sides, but always found myself brushing the fence or getting washed and pinched out. The roadie and 'cross rider in me kept looking for those gaps to squeeze into up the middle, but mtb bars are so wide! I moved up a bit but still entered the single track around 20th or further back. Cardiac Climb was wicked bogged down and people were basically track standing so I decided to dismount and jog it, which allowed me to pass a couple, especially as people were flailing like wet noodles through Cadaver Corner. All that technical death-like stuff was a cluster on this first lap so I even ran down the A-line of Hammerhead, again moving in front of people who refused to step out of their pedals. Finally the field spread out and we weren't nipping at each others wheels too bad. Chloe (Forsman, the other US rider) and I were together for a bit until the second time on Cadaver when she left me wrestling with my own bike.
It quickly became a game of the emerging-gutsier-Amy versus the cookie-monster-Amy. In the final lap there was a sizable gap in front of and behind me, so it was all about keeping the power on the pedals and riding the technical stuff as smooth as crunchy peanut butter. In the end I finished 18th, about 10 minutes back of newly crowned Polish World Champion, Aleksandra Dawidowicz. Although my legs are battered and various shades of black and blue and pink, although my bike looks as though it careened off a rapidly moving truck, although the course will continue to haunt me, although I am still in disbelief and utterly humbled by the technical abilities of everyone who congregated in Stromlo Forest Park for the 2009 World Championships, I am still in one piece and had a great many laughs with athletes from all sorts of disciplines...downhill, trials, 4x, and cross-country. I walk away knowing I have a lot of work to do, but I look forward to building on the improvements I made in the short amount of time I dabbled on this course.
Thank you for reading. And thanks also to all who made this possible: Coach Ben Ollett, massage therapist Ed Westhead, Excel Sports, Kona, Stan's NoTubes, Schlamm, Oakley, Lake Shoes, Skins, Fizik, USA Cycling, Webcor Builders.
The course began with a fun little twisty-turny single track climb, with dirt I would compare to riding in CO or CA...dry and ventilated, but tacky so you could rail it. This dropped you out onto a fire-road climb which looked ideal for passing before dropping back into single track. The second single track section looked yummy, as it had some rocks and maneuvering sections, but it was stuff I could handle no problem. And it was straight up, lung bursting, just giving er' to get the pedals turned over; appropriately named Cardiac Climb. For the first few minutes I was licking my chops. Then it all went downhill...literally, into Cadaver Corner. When the climb topped out, you immediately went rocketing into this slick boulder field descent. If your butt wasn't back, you'd go over the bars.
Look closely to see what I mean:
From this drop it started a mellow pitch of a climb which switch-backed a bunch and was plagued with big boulders where weight distribution was key. It's this fine tuned movement of picking the weight up off the front wheel then quickly moving forward and kicking the back wheel up...supposed to be fine tuned but mine was roughly hacked. I tried and tried to make this section flawless because with my legs feeling climby, I thought this could be a section to excel on. Unfortunately I never linked the whole section together...just bits and pieces, and a whole lot of most-excellent cyclocross mounts and dismounts. Finally I had a brief 2 seconds to take a deep breath before more internal whimpering.
Next was the "Hammerhead", and I think I would rather come face to face with a hammerhead shark than come to face this drop again. It was an infestation of medium sized boulders, all placed inconveniently enough, serving as the lead-out to two vertical granite rock roll-ins. And the B-line didn't hold much more optimism for me. I hammered my head on this section, literally and figuratively. I crashed enough times to know what not to do, but actually nailed it a few times (the B-line that is...I never bucked up enough to go cliff jumping). Eventually this section became fun in a drugged sort of way. It challenged me so much that I kept wanting to try it again and again, because each time it would be a tad bit better. By race day, I had the "cautious" B-line down pretty well. At this juncture, we're only a third of the way through the course! Good news is, it gets fun from here. The nightmare stuff is out of the way. Shortly after Hammerhead, there was another triple rock drop which was mellower. It took some time to actually attempt it, but it was tons faster than the B-line, and gave me the opportunity to go head over teacup a few times too. From here the course turned into a mock-luge for the majority. A wicked fast banked descent, into some fun whoopty-doos, into a dual slalom type track that gave the opportunity for you to go head-to-head and try for a pass. This dropped you into a field where the tech and feed zone was. Then a 600m fire-road section into twisting single track on that grippy dirt. From here it was all about rhythm from berm to berm and jump to jump, bringing you back down to the event village for the 6k of fun to begin again.I've raced cyclocross at an international level, so I know what a fast start is, and this I was definitely expecting. Unfortunately call-up was based on UCI points, which I was at the bottom of the totem pole on. But the field was only 35-deep, and sitting 4th row really ain't that shabby. For the start there was a fire-road extension to allow a drawn out fight before entering the single track. This fire road seemed to be narrower on race day. I was darting back and forth to sneak up the sides, but always found myself brushing the fence or getting washed and pinched out. The roadie and 'cross rider in me kept looking for those gaps to squeeze into up the middle, but mtb bars are so wide! I moved up a bit but still entered the single track around 20th or further back. Cardiac Climb was wicked bogged down and people were basically track standing so I decided to dismount and jog it, which allowed me to pass a couple, especially as people were flailing like wet noodles through Cadaver Corner. All that technical death-like stuff was a cluster on this first lap so I even ran down the A-line of Hammerhead, again moving in front of people who refused to step out of their pedals. Finally the field spread out and we weren't nipping at each others wheels too bad. Chloe (Forsman, the other US rider) and I were together for a bit until the second time on Cadaver when she left me wrestling with my own bike.
It quickly became a game of the emerging-gutsier-Amy versus the cookie-monster-Amy. In the final lap there was a sizable gap in front of and behind me, so it was all about keeping the power on the pedals and riding the technical stuff as smooth as crunchy peanut butter. In the end I finished 18th, about 10 minutes back of newly crowned Polish World Champion, Aleksandra Dawidowicz. Although my legs are battered and various shades of black and blue and pink, although my bike looks as though it careened off a rapidly moving truck, although the course will continue to haunt me, although I am still in disbelief and utterly humbled by the technical abilities of everyone who congregated in Stromlo Forest Park for the 2009 World Championships, I am still in one piece and had a great many laughs with athletes from all sorts of disciplines...downhill, trials, 4x, and cross-country. I walk away knowing I have a lot of work to do, but I look forward to building on the improvements I made in the short amount of time I dabbled on this course.
Thank you for reading. And thanks also to all who made this possible: Coach Ben Ollett, massage therapist Ed Westhead, Excel Sports, Kona, Stan's NoTubes, Schlamm, Oakley, Lake Shoes, Skins, Fizik, USA Cycling, Webcor Builders.