Category A 45+u00a0u00a0

Having ridden little over the past couple of months but wanting to get out and race the last local CX race for me this year, I hopped into the 45+ A field of the last Sacramento CX race of the year. Only 10 minutes from my house at Granite Beach on the edge of Folsom Lake. The organizers had to do some rerouting the night before because of the recent rain and snow causing water levels in the lake to rise and not wanting to make us swim with our bikes (running with the bikes is enough apparently). All sand all the time for this course but recent rain made the surface pretty tacky so the organizers did a good job churning up some descents and climbs to make them super sandy and make folks opt to try to ride or run, as well as some tricky rock sections.

I started second row given Iu2019ve missed half of the races but was top 3 quickly after the start. The photo is early in the first lap when I was riding 2^nd place. Unfortunately, poor fitness and riding my backup bike with cantilever brakes, a tendency to dive corners, pedals that are hard to get back into with sand, and some skipping gears meant even with pretty decent riding I found myself eating it in the sand a few times on a descent and falling back further and further. Settled into between 5^th-9^th place for the middle part of the race and then got my act together a bit the last two laps to finish 7^th place. In the Sac CX series I had a 3^rd, 2^nd, 3^rd, then a 7^th place. All good, I am glad to hang up the race bikes and do some fun riding and training for the next few months.

Cheers,

Kyle Ashton