What a Weekend....

What a weekend, completely consumed by one event, but very worth it.

Saturday I woke up early to get a ride in. Headed out on the oh so sweet Blue RC8, went through Busse to get to Tonne Rd. where I did a few intervals and then back through Busse to home. No computer on the Blue so I don't know how far or how fast, but I got a solid 2 hours in and it felt great. Quick shower afterwards and I headed out to Hawthorn Woods to set up for Psycho Cross '08! Setting up a cross course is tough! Road courses are easy, the riders stay on the road and you let them know when to turn. But cross courses zig zag across open fields so every inch of it needs to be taped or flagged. This means that we stuck about a million stakes in the ground, a zillion little flags and ran miles of caution tape! There were less than 10 of us, and we were out there for about 5 hours completing the 1.7 mile course. But I did have a nice suprise waiting for me in the mail when I got home....my new CD's! Way to go USPS!

Sunday was another early wake-up to get out to the course by 7:30 to finish up last minute things before the races started at 10. Luckily Ted's wife brought coffee for all of the sleepy volunteers! :) We had everything set up in time so we were able to take care of all of the racers showing up for registration. First race up was the masters race, 30+, 40+ and 50+ all one the course at the same time with staggered starts. It was tough figuring out who was leading for each race. I should mention that the course we set up was tough!!! About 200m into the course the racers encountered a toboggan hill, that most chose to ride up, then they came down, then they turned right around, had to get off the bike and jump over a barrier, and then run back up the toboggan hill. A few of the super hard core riders chose to get on the bike and somehow ride up the hill with no momentum going into it. I don't know how they did it. The rest of the course was fairly flat and not super twisty, but the grass was apparently very bumpy so there wasn't much of a rest through the course. A few sections of pavement to rest on, but that was it. Vince, the shop owner, was out there racing on his new Blue cross bike (love it!) and let us know during each lap that it was tough! He offered to let me use his bike so I could race in the women's race, but after the power test on thursday, intervals saturday morning then spending all day saturday building the course, there wasn't really anything left in my legs to attempt to race cross for the first time! Maybe next time!

The rest of the day went well. Had some super hard core women show up. One of the women is pretty well known out on the road and showed up for her first cross race of the season and dominated her field. Very exciting. Then the Men's 1,2,3 race went out. These guys are fast!! Their race was an hour long, and by then it was pretty hot, you could see the hurt in some of their faces. The star of this race was the guy who had raced earlier in the day and won the 50+ race. He was out there absolutely dominating all of the younger guys, in his 2nd race of the day! For a large portion of the race he had a 30sec - 1 min lead! He wa eventually caught and came in 2nd I believe. Still very impressive!

The racing ended around 4pm, and then the not so fun part started. Cleaning up the course. Remember those zillions of flags and stakes? Yeah we had to walk the whole course and pick them all up. And by this point, not many volunteers were left so I think there were about 5 of us out there picking it all up. Got it done though and then I was done. Completely. My body said no more, it was time to go home. Stopped at Whole Foods and picked up some goodness for dinner, and then laziness ensued.

So apparently all it takes to help out with a cross race is about 18 hours of my time, miles and miles of walking around, carrying lots of stuff, placing zillions of flags, standing for hours and cheering, walking some more miles to pick up the zillions of flags, and a slight sunburn. All in all, I'd say it was worth it. :) Although I am still completely exhausted today.

And I of course forgot to take pictures...but if you're interested, one of the racer's daughters took tons of pictures during the Masters race and they can be found here.