Town Hall Cross Report

Egad! It's been almost a month since the race, but it was a fantastic day of racing, and deserves its rightful place in the web logs.

After many months of hard planning, behind the scenes work by Chris, Greg, and others, the day of the race finally arrived. Thankfully, all of the hard work paid off and everything went very smoothly. The fantastic weather was definitely a huge bonus. Four weeks later, and we still hear people talking about that "brutal Town Hall" course. Keep up the chatter, we'll bring it back next year.

Besides being our first sponsored race, I was excited about the course because of the significant elevation change. This was pretty unique for a cross race, and should suit skinny people like myself.



The course was definitely tough, the steep climb broke up the race quickly, and we were all strung out. I sat in 4th place for most of the race, and was slowly closing in on 3rd. By the end I finished only 20 seconds behind him, and I think with one more lap I could have got it. I'm feeling more comfortable in the B races, and soon I'll be able to upgrade to Cat 3.

Genuinely one of the most fun courses I've ever ridden, next year should bring some even better competition. Watching the 'A' main race go was very impressive, Bill Elliston flatted just after the pit entrance, and had to ride the entire climb and descent on basically his rims. When he finally got a new bike, he was minutes behind the next rider. Watching him take off after the field was an amazing show of power and smooth handling. He worked his way all the way up to 3rd place.

After the race, I had a serious conversation with Dave about his future career as a heckler. I tried to convince him that if was going to take this seriously, he should quit bike racing to focus on heckling full time. One more beer and I could have convinced him.



Marten

Whirlybird cyclocross race report

Last year I raced the "C" race, as my second cyclocross race, this year, I thought I'd try the B race. As a result of having no MAC series points, and waiting until late to register, I was seeded 8 rows back out of 12 rows in a large field of about 100 riders. I didn't have high expectations for the race, but decided to just try and race as hard as I could, and see where I ended up.

The start was a huge congested cluster of racers all trying to pass early, especially before the first time through the "Omega" thing. I was disappointed to see that the organizers had removed the "crop circle' thing from last year, it was a unique feature to this race. Going through the tight turns of the Omega was so congested that the inside line came to almost a complete stand still, and many people had to dismount. Finally we got through, but the lines were so spread out, the back of the field was far, far, away from the front.

Picture after the barriers.

The rocky section was sort of frightening, flying down at high speed, and hitting a boulder field while trying to turn and feeling the bike sliding all over the place. I definitely bottomed out several times HARD, but thankfully the tubeless arrangement held up. I think many of the DNF'ers were probably due to flats on some of these tough spots.

Rolled in at 43rd out of 74 finishers. Apparently, the winner of the race (bib #363) was staged on my same row (bib #360)! So no excuses....

Really looking forward to our home race the next week, the hill is going to be tough...