Wheeler Cyclocross

With Sam and the girls after the race... Sam is fast.. finished 2nd and is ready to move up to the B's

My wife's favorite shot... I have gotten better at getting back on and yes, aside from it looking pretty unattractive, there is very high exposure with this move.

Another blast of a time at the Wheeler Cyclocross race last weekend. I spent more time flailing on the ground this week than in weeks past, went down 4 times total but had a blast nonetheless and hopefully am learning something along the way. There were reportedly 65 riders at the start line which is just fine, unless you're a hack and have about 100 yards to gain position before going into a bottleneck hairpin turn. Critical to be up front here and I was not, was not in terrible position, was ahead of the wreck that really jammed it up, but was roughly midpack which still takes a bit to cram through the turn in no more than single or double file.

The rest of the race went well when I was able to stay upright, would gain some spots, go down, chase the same spots back down plus a few extra, go down, and so on.... Stuff I learned and still need to improve..

• Off camber dismounts on the uphill side are ackward - this spot on the course accounted for two of the crashes and am pretty sure is responsible for my legs feeling like they'd been grated with barbed wire for the next few days. I heard the A guys ride it, which certainly bodes well for my technical capabilities given I couldn't step off my bike here.


• Still learning what I can get away with cornering on different surfaces, as with previous crashes this year, got caught a couple of times thinking I could hold some lines that I couldn't and ended up with some all naturel sunblock, er, mud, up my entire left side. Lost my chain on both instances so need to figure out why that's happening, or just quit crashing...


• Still missing too often when I go to clip in, this is costly in a cross race.

Positives are that I think my conditioning is getting better and I'm still having more fun with these cross races than I've had on a bike since I was a little tike.