It's been since the Boulder Cup/Halloween weekend since I pulled a double. I forgot how much that hurts. Headed up to Loveland for the E2 Cross of the North race Saturday, then out to Lyons for the Boulder Cyclocross Series final.
The Cross of the North race was a really good one. a great venue (think a heated building to warm up in, change in and power wash your bike in.....), and a VERY well run race, that the promoters put a BUNCH of work into (Think plowing a full course, bobcat work, and all that...). Those guys put on a great show, too bad they only managed to drag 159 riders up there to race. The bubble effect remains in full form.
Had a great race up there, even taking into account the mere 30 rider beer-drinkin-dads field. At 9:05, it was still full-on COLD and the course was 100% frozen rut central, with a packed snow topping. Got a front row call up on my pre-reg hip number, after Tim Madden was only able to draw ONE rider off the top 40 of the Crossresults.com list. Managed to grab 6th off the first snow section into a gnarly "BMX hump/drop/run-up/drop hump" section. Here's Dan Farrell "dropping in" on that little Gem in the 35+ race.
Seems as if the rider right behind me balked at the nasty drop and shut it down behind me. this sprung the front 6 free. It quickly split into single riders in the tough, slick conditions. It started to melt about 1 lap in to our race, and each lap was a new adventure as the course started changing fast. I held off a late charge form a couple of people, mostly by just making fewer driving errors, to hold out for a 7th place out of 28 finishers. By far my best percentile placing of the year. Felt good to finally get a decent race in.
Here is the first lap seatpost cam for the Cross of the north race.
I was talked into running front AND rear cameras for this race by my teammate Johnny D. Am going to cobble together a "Coming & Going" kinda production off that, but will take some time. Watch for it.
Today's Lyons race was HARD. Technical, snowy, and nasty. In other words, really cool. Pulled a 29th out, in spite of feeling blown from racing the day before. That same teammate pulled out a podium finish in 3rd today, and 2 other teammates in the points. A great day for the HPM crew today.
I'll have more on the Lyons race later this week, but for now I need to go to bed.......
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