3 fun races and some good training this Halloween weekend

Our team was split on what we were going to do this last weekend. Our van and trailor was being used by the school and everyone seemed to want to do their own thing. A couple of us headed to Purdue for the first set of collegiate cyclocross races in the MidWest. The Purdue cycling team was kind enough to host us for the weekend, and that helped out a lot!

It rained all day Friday and Saturday morning had some really strong winds and some cold windchill, but the course was still in pretty good shape. It featured 3 sand pits, 1 set of barriers, and a creek jump. All in all, it was a great course with a bit of everything; short/steep climbs, twisty sections, and decent length power straights.

The collegiate races were first on the schedule and the field was small enough for everyone to get a front row start. I managed to clip in right away and sprinted for the first turn and was the first rider to go into the sand pits. The people behind me messed up and that opened up a gap that thanks to the strong winds, I was able to hold and open up for the rest of the race. I was pretty happy when my last lap finally came around and I was able to take it easy and start recovering for the elite race which was about 3 hours later.

It was a good day for the LWC crew since we swept the podium, racking up some points.


The elite race featured an even smaller turn out, but it was much more fun with the money primes in the long sand pit run!


Made some money in the sand pit which I later used to buy some McDonalds pies 2/$1 and some cookies 3/$1.

I was surprised by how well I felt during that second race and I was able to beat the impressively large field of 4 guys to take win #2 and my first ever elite cyclocross win. Not sure if it really counts, but I'm going to pretend it does.


Sunday featured the course being reversed with much drier and less windy conditions. So it was fast. My teammate, Matt, and Chris Uberti (purdue) had a really strong start and I had to play catch up on the first lap. The reverse course seemed to have less places to really power the course and it had a lot of technical downhill turns that could only be taken at a certain speed, so it was hard to find places to make up time. I put in an all out attack going into the largest hill on the start of the second lap and pinned it from then on, trying to open up a gap. It was really nerve-racking on this course with everyone being so close behind most of the time, but again it was really good experience and I held off for win #3.

It was an odd transition going from a USGP weekend to these smaller races, but I really liked it. While it's good to be against the stacked competition in the UCI races, I still feel like I lack a lot of cross experience and I was glad to get the opportunity to do some more close racing in smaller fields where there's less stress when you mess up a little bit.

Next weekend will be the second set of collegiate races at Mizzou, only this time we will have the full force of our LWC CX team that was ranked 3rd at nationals last year. I'm looking forward to seeing how I stack up against everyone else.


photo credit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andymj/collections/72157622714674436/