My report will be fairly short, I'm hoping Shea will write up a more comprehensive one since it was his first CX race on his newly built up cross rig.
We got out to DeKalb around noon because we didn't pre-register and there were only 10-20 spots left in the 4B's and 4A's was filled. Luckily we registered with 10 spots remaining. After pre-riding the course and warming up we went over to the start area around 2:45 along with the other 70+ 4B's. They called up the top ten finishers from Jackson Park, Austin from RVB was going to take Cushman's 8th place spot since Dave was out of town .. They called the rest of us up and I got a spot in the 2nd row on the far right, which was ideal since about 30 yards down there was a hard left hand turn. Shea and Austin were right behind me. Start whistle goes and I make it to the turn pretty close to the front and through the first couple of turns I see there's about 5 people in front of me, Chase Wolford from Rhythm Racing (rides for IIT too) is in the lead. Heading out to the baseball fields and the off-camber twist and turn I realized I couldn't hold my current pace and had to back off a little. On the first pavement section I hear someone coming up and cheer me on and I see out of the corner of my eye it's an RVB'er and I'm like, "go, go, I can't keep up .." and Austin flies by me. Somewhere near the start of the 2nd lap as my lungs are screaming and my legs are going unresponsive I see a monkey kit coming up and I shout, "come on Shea, get up here!" He eventually did and then passed me. I kept Shea in my sights and we got to cheer each other on through the multiple switchback sections. Overall, after sitting pretty good in 6th in the first 5 minutes of the race, I lost 6 more spots and ended up in 12th. Shea did great and got 9th! My lungs still hurt, but I'm still smiling by how much fun it was and how well Shea did.
Lessons learned:
- Pre-register, save $5!
- Plan your start position based on the first turn, don't get boxed in going into the first turn.
- Go hard at the start, but not too hard where you blow up and hang on for dear life for the rest of the race.
- Have fun and try to get some of the cash hand-ups from spectators (someone was giving out $20's)!
pics from jasonhenry (half acre cycling) on flickr.com
damn, the new oakley's look good ..
it may look like I'm going fast, but I'm not, I'm barely able to pedal ..
JPC
p.s. zens, witry and pollard, all the xXx'ers and cycle smithy racers were calling you guys out .. wondering where you were, maybe next year?
2 comments:
Yeah fools! We don't care if you gots CPA exams or whatever. Get your monkey arses out for cross.
I would love to be racing cross with you guys, i will be out there next year when i can swing buying another bike.
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