Date: October 20, 2002
Event: Central Coast Cyclocross #2
Category: Masters 35+ A
Place: Dunno. They had me doing twice the # of laps.
Field: 20
Team mates: Mike, Matt, Funke, Sarah

“Dang! I need to finish my cyclocross bike…”

Those were the words tumbling through my head each time we hit the flats and the cross bikes would pull ahead. My mountain bike, equipped with nice fat knobby tires and a squishy front suspension, was no match. Maybe I should have used some skinny tires and pumped up the shock… Nah. Too lazy to mess with it. I’m just out here for fun. :’)

This course was fun. The short quick and steep climb suited the mountain biker in me. The fast dusty bumpy descent also brought a grin to my face. Hitting the flat roadie sections was a bummer. But, they gave me a chance to spin and bring the heart rate down from max to sub-max.

I really wanted to bunny hop the single barrier before the gopher hole grass section. Two chainring grinding attempts influenced me to dismount and run the darn thing. Argh.

Midrace, a Santa Cruz racer and myself had fun trading places. It was almost comical, my taking the lead on the climb and he taking the lead on the flats. But unluckily, he got a flat tire. Sorry my friend.

Around five laps remaining I could see a rider in a red Clif jersey slowly gaining on me. Crappola! The leader was going to catch me. Well, maybe I should work a bit harder. Yeah, make him try to catch me. Yeah, that’s what I will do. Make the leader work harder! Hahahahhahaa… Gosh I was silly. He caught me anyways. But maybe, just maybe, I made him suffer a bit more.

Within two more laps several more in the lead group caught me. Oh well. I decided to pick up the pace and chase these leaders for the rest of the race. Before long the finish was in sight and I hammered my way up and around through it.

Afterwards, I grabbed my video gear and lined up with the women. Off they went and I after them. In the group was one women riding a BMX bike. Way to go! I chased around for several laps and then dropped out so I could shoot some stationary footage.

Once the women’s race was over I hung around for the Men’s A race. It was getting hot and I figured Matt or Funke would need feeds. The race started off at a really high pace. Funke was right up there in 3rd coming around the first lap. The lead rider though was on fire and soon took off and put a 30+ second gap on the pack.

Now for the weirdest part. Rod, one of the CCCX guys, while working the lap cards and calling numbers got into a verbal yelling match with some people on the other side of the course. This kept escalating until one of the guys came over and got in Rod’s face. This is all happening while the race is going on and riders are flying by. I had to walk over and separate the two. It finally settled down but not without some damage to the CCCX image (note, there’s now an apology posted from Rod on the cccx web site).

Ignoring that incident, it was another great day of racing.

Until next time.

Cheers!