Racing slightly dirty.

(image: Alan)
Yesterday I raced my bike. It was a really super bumpy course, and I let too much air out of my front tire at the start line, and I was on an MTB while most of the ladies were on CX bikes, and it made for an interesting day.
As usual I had a great start and came like 5-6th through the holeshot. Naturally I saw some women around me who I remembered couldn't corner, so I took an inside line through the first s-turn. Tamara threw me an elbow, which I stupidly leaned back on to. Duh. In short order it was clear to me that I couldn't ride away from this one, since we were both leaning on eachother and one of us was either going to have to fall down or foot down. We rode around that corner into the tape and Tamara put a foot down. I sort of felt bad about it, but I knew I had the skillz to pull it off, but it felt dirty.
Half a lap later, Tamara was coming to make her move, but I picked a line that I guess she was headed to. She shouted at me, something about "did you do that on purpose?" It's true, she got boxed out, but I replied that she needs to pick a line that someone isn't already in. I'm super confident about my handling on that MTB now- particularly on a CX course- and I wasn't going to just be nice.
There was an awesome double-sandtrap that I rode into every time, but out of only once. The steep lip to get out of it kept catching my bottom bracket and I had to foot down to get over it. But I still felt super strong in the sand and my handling... wow, I'm starting to think I can do this. All the CX bike women were braking on the bumpy downhills and I was just flying down 'em, killer bees in full effect. I made some good time up there, too.
(image: this guy.) Two laps later, I knew I had too little air in that front tire and it was sort of rolling out every time I railed a corner. Well, it happened when a Sandra was in front of me, and my front wheel steered itself directly into her rear wheel, and pushed her to a bad outside line. Ugh. She had to unclip and foot down but I recovered and made a pass. Eep. That also didn't feel right.
Coming into the sand on the last lap, someone had built a little pile of sand with golf balls and a dollar in it on the lip. I stopped to grab the dollar but got a handfull of sand with a dollar hidden in it. Then someone handed me a beer, and before I knew it, both hands were full, I wasn't holding my bike at all, and Sandra was still coming. Shiz! I pulled the dollar from the sand with my teeth, then put that in the hand with the beer, then got riding again. I handed the beer and dollar to a guy near our team tent and kept riding. I guess there was a heated discussion about whether that was for him to hold or for him to have-- he passed 'em along to my teammates assuming it was a "hold on to this" but a teammate drank the beer anyway.
As I rode that last half-lap I felt really bad about the MTB dirtiness I had offered up to those women. I was sort of scared someone would protest. I decided that it wasn't right that I rode into Sandra AND took that opportunity to pass her. Just before the finish, I sat up and waited about 10 sec and let her pass me at the line. I at least felt a little better. I think I was 18th out of 30. I had really hoped to break the top half of the field today, but whatever. There were 5 Half Acre women racing today (5!) and it was really, really fun cheering eachother on as we doubled back and saw the blue. Congrats to Sarah, Erica, Jen, and Ariel on racing awesome!
Later, there were chicken fight beer handups, hot tub shenanegans, and other good times. Then we went to Chipotle. It was a good day.