2018 CACX / NABRA Championships: Roots, Ruts and Rocks

Say that one five times quickly.

There were these people, hikers I will call them, on the other side of the fence which, I assume, marked a boundary between park and forest. They were climbing this steep, eroded fire break; with a life's passion they were bent over and leaning forward, clutching walking sticks with a death grip, hoping to counter-balance the steepness of the grade. Noticing others bypassing the "short cut" in favor of a, or what I believed must be longer, less steep route to the same top, I said to myself, "huh, I wonder what that's all about." Every few steps those people taking the steeper route would stop and look back down slope where they could see some bike riders maneuvering along some kind of crazy, convoluted zig-zag course and I knew they were thinking, "huh, I wonder what that's all about."

Once I "discovered" the "upper" part of the course for the past weekend's CACX/NABRA Championships I thought, "wow, this is a great course." The opening paved section let you pick up speed, and was followed by those nice, soft, gradual grassy slopes, and then those dirt areas at the highest point of the course beneath those big, majestic, shade-giving pine trees. There were these steel-doored vaults that left you wondering what they hid, remants of walls that left you wondering about their histories. What's not to like?

But then I started to notice a whole lot of deep breathing, the kind you only hear when the couch-potato neighbor, who never fails to make a crack about your silly riding outfit, finally gets up and walks to the mailbox, or the kind you make after the first mile into your ride on a Monday evening, when you have only ridden twice during the past two weeks. I also noticed that the smiles seemed rather insincere, strained, forced. Could it be that not everyone saw the course the same way I did?

In some ways challenge is not a universal - what some might find challenging may not be quite the same task to others. I've got to think though, that the course at the Sylmar Veterans Memorial Park was widely regarded as among the more demanding on the SoCalCross Prestige Series calendar. It is a park I had never visited before, and is one that is blessed with an abundance challenge - grassy slopes, rooty trees, ground riven by erosion, sometimes rocky, sometimes slick with washed out turns. If the season turns out to be a little shorter than normal, the CACX/NABRA weekend did much to pack in the challenge heading into the final weekend, the the 2018 Prestige series finale. See you at MoVal. 

'round the tree

which line?

tight turns

I don't know, maybe he was going to miss the boat, but this pirate took off at a sudden, and dead, run which is what I had to do after the morning races