Winter

Winter is here, finally. Saturday morning I loaded my cross race stuff, including my pop up canopy and heater, into the truck and headed for Eureka. It was snowing lightly on Crescent City hill, snowing heavily on the Redwood Park bypass and raining heavily at lower elevations. It reminded me of something I always tell people new to the Pacific Northwest. If you plan an outdoor activity and the forecast is for shitty weather, just go do it anyway. It almost always works out. By the time I got to Eureka the weather was almost nice. It didn't rain at all while I was at the race. It rained hard as I was getting ready to leave the race. Perfect.
The race was called Bogstomp and was held out on Elk River, enlarge the picture and you can see route from my Garmin. It was on the Wrigley property which was an apple orchard until Pacific Lumber Company raped the forest and caused the river to flood every year killing the apple trees. There's a book's worth of story about that. As a child I used to ride my bike out there to go fishing and sneak into the old abandoned town of Falk. The race course was two sections of single track through the woods connected by old road sections. The single track was so muddy that I, as well as most of the other racers, ran it carrying our bikes. Even the roads were muddy to the point that you couldn't ride a straight line. It was the muddiest race I have ever done. Muddiest cyclocross race anyway. The Horning's MTB race was muddier. It was fun though and rewarding to finish. I think the some people abondoned the effort. I raced the long race, 50 minutes. It took me slightly over an hour. It was fun to meet new people who like to race bikes. I beat a couple of people.
That was my last race of the year. It even snowed at my house today, at sea level, so I didn't ride. I now need to figure out my training for the next month and a half. I probably won't race again until the Cherry Pie road race in February. Base building I guess.