Nittany Lion Cross

The cyclocross season is officially here!!!!! It kicked off today at the Trexlertown Velodrome near Allentown PA. Along with the new season is my upgrade to the B races. These include cat 2/3/4 racers. A nice advantage to upgrading my license is that B races start later - no more 5am departures for me!

Due to the lack of rain here in central PA it turned out to be a fast grass crit. The grass was super sketchy in the corners from all the lose dry dirt sitting on top of it. Smooth power transfer was going to be the name of the game.

I don't remember much from the actual race but I do remember starting to fade on the last lap. Then I saw a guy I train with at the Wednesday night CX training race and dialed in on him. I dragged myself up to him and passed him the last few corners. I just missed getting one more spot at the line by about 1/2 bike length.

At the end of the day I finished 29th. Looking back at last year's results I got the same exact result but in the beginner/slow guy (no disrespect to the 4's) category so that is a lot of improvement. I would like to see what I could do in the 4's but that would be sandbagging.

Another highlight of the day was meeting Joe Mulligan. We both share a passion for good beer and cyclocross (two of the greatest things in the world ATMO). He's recommended several good brands to me over the last year so it was nice to finally meet him in person.

I'm sure there will be plenty of pictures to come as there were plenty of photogs there today. I can't wait to see how bad I looked while suffering. :-)

If you're in the area of the Baltimore Zoo next weekend stop by for some awesome racing as rounds 2 and 3 of the MAC CX Series go down.

Thanks for reading!
Captain Crunch