Steel City Endurance Racing

Kate cornering at Raccoon Cx

Sunday brought another beautiful morning, another beautiful race. And again, the ranks of the Steel City cyclocross racers are expanding! This time, Kate joined her husband and raced cyclocross (awesome job, Kate!). Joining Rachel, Stacie, and Ben, the Bennetts had a blast in Aliquippa. Read Kate’s race report.

Raccoon Cyclocross

Aliquippa, PA

October 25, 2009

Kate Bennett’s Race Report from Raccon Cyclocross

After two weeks of watching team mates race cx, I figured I better give it a try.  Luckily, SCE is a team that has no problem letting each other borrow equipment.  Thanks Suzanne!  Sunday morning was cool but dry.  The course at Raccoon creek encompasses grass, pavement, and a nice short route through the woods.  I think the course was about 3K.  Unfortunately, I had no idea how difficult it was to race through wet grass!  I was told that the most important part of cx racing is to position yourself for the start sprint. With seven women lined up at the start, I wasn’t too worried about placement, I just wanted to survive my first race!  Well, I really should have thought over the sprint start.  The shout, “start” was echoed across the field and I was still trying to clip into the pedals.  No worries, I quickly got behind JoAnne Dugavich and found my rhythm.  Over the baseball court, around the baseball fields, into the woods, running up stairs, riding through grassy fields, and then over a set of barriers constituted one lap.  Joanne and I traded spots, each pushing the other to pick it up.  After three laps, Joanne and I were lapped by the lead woman, Betsy Shogren.  Not too much of a surprise there, she passes most men on a race.  I was also lapped by my husband, Aaron, who was able to maintain the lead position in his group for a win!  After Betsy passed, Joanne and I had to finish one more lap.  Joanne yelled at me to pick it up and ride hard to the finish.  I did!   I looked behind but she was nowhere in sight.  I finished a solid 6th out of 7 women.  I was quite happy with my placement for my first race.  I was concerned that the barriers would pose a problem for me.  But I kept repeating over to myself, “Fast is slow, slow is smooth, smooth is fast.”  I made sure to set up early and gave myself plenty of time to run over the barriers.  It was fun!   Rachel and Stacie did well as always.  They earned 2nd and 3rd place finishes respectively.