Sacramento CX Season Wrap Up

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Originally uploaded by JN56

Well the 2009 Sacramento CycloCross Series wrapped up on January 16th and I'm already looking forward to next year. I've been meaning to write-up a short post for a while now but just haven't had the time.

I completed 4 out of 5 total races and finished up 13th overall out of 100+ Men's C racers. Not too bad for my first full season of cross. Next year I'll race in the 35+ B group. This will be good for a number of reasons. One, I won't have to get up so early as these races are usually just after noon. And two it will be easier for me to bring Lex to the races so he can do the kids races held at noon. He had a total blast on the Granite Bay course ripping through the sand and mud. And the third reason will be to race in my age group and not worry about 18 year old kids blowing me out of the water. The competition won't be easy, but at least it should be more balanced for me.

2010 Cyclocross World Championships

Here's a nice collection of videos from the 2010 Cyclocross World Championships in Tabor, Czech Republic.

Check out the 1 lap helmet cam video! Super sketchy corners...

http://www.cyclingfans.com/node/600

Surf City Cyclo-X Tomorrow

Anywhere near Santa Cruz and like bicycles? Come on down to Aptos High School off Freedom Blvd. tomorrow to see some crazy cyclocross action. Its the finale of the Surf City Cyclo-X season and should be a day of great races and fun.

I'm planning on getting out there with my kids and my cameras to see what kind of cool action shots I might be able to get.

Here's the course, my only question is where is everyone going to park?

View Aptos High School in a larger map

2009 Sacramento Cyclocross Race #1 Report

From Sacramento CX Race 01 - Del Paso Park

First of all I'm glad my race (Men's C) was at 9:30AM yesterday, as it was a scorcher by mid-morning. Decided not to bring the trainer and just warm up on course. The course was at Renfree Park just off I-80 & Watt Ave exit. Starting stretch was all hard packed dirt with enough room for 2 maybe 3 bikes wide. I was in the 2nd row on the starting line, should have been in 1st row. After the start it was a mad dash and a huge cloud of dust (think Northstar). Couldn't see a damn thing in front of me for about 1 minute until it got strung out a bit. There was one long straight dirt section, a decent left hand turn that you could pedal through, or drift a bit, depending on how fast you entered.. Then a long flat straight stretch of dirt heading back toward the grassy area of the park. There were a few sandy areas 1-2" deep that you could easily avoid or just plow right through. A sharpish left turn over a small wooden retaining block onto the grass. Then two sets of barriers to hop over, a bunch of tight switch backs in the grass. I went down quickly in one turn where a guy on a mountain bike couldn't quite make one of the sharp turns. I rolled up on his back wheel, buzzed his tire then tipped over. He had pretty much come to a complete stop. So I just hopped off and pushed my bike through the remaining turns and quickly remounted and headed back into the dirt section. The dirt was pretty much all about maintaining your speed and not letting any one pass you, big ring hammering! The then grassy sections was where guys were starting to hurt, and you could easily pass them as their momentum slowed. Tire pressure was key on Sunday. Started off high, then after a few practice laps lowered it down to about 55 front 60 rear. I ran the WTB Cross Wolf tires, which I was very happy with. They hooked up well, and rolled really fast on the hardpack. Everyone kept saying the Michelin Mud II's were the tire to run around Sacramento, but my buddy ended up with 2 flats on them, so dunno... I ended up 19th out of 50. Not too bad for very little training over the past month. Next race is October 11th. Oh and in some of the photos, it may look like I'm missing some teeth. No I haven't gone full redneck, it was just dirt crusted on to them...

Great race course! Thanks to Team BEER and SacramentoCX for putting it all together!

Some Sweet POV Cyclo-Action

Transrockies 2008 Stage 4 - VIO POV.1 from sportkamery.cz on Vimeo.

via Helmet Cam Central.

Granite Bay Cyclocross Video

Here is a video from the Granite Bay Cyclocross race on 12/21/2008. This is the "C" group which started around 9:45AM.

You can see me power through the sand pit at about 5:30 into the video!


Granite Bay Beach - 2008 from Sporza Intern on Vimeo.

Granite Bay Cyclocross 12/21/2008

Here are some photos from the cyclycross race out at Granite Bay today. I'm not in any of these photos as the guy who took them raced in my group. Hopefully I'll be able to dig up a few photos of myself later as others post them. It was a fun race. We got soaking wet, muddy and sandy! The course was great. A huge thanks to Riche Maile and http://sacramentocx.com/ for putting together another great course. Also thanks to the Sacramento Golden Wheelmen for hosting the race. It was indeed a true cyclocross experience today.

I started off in the front row, managed to hang onto 3rd place for about the first half of the first lap, then had to slow down a bit. Didn't want to blow up too soon. There were two good straight away sections, and the rest of the course was tight, twisty, muddy, and sandy singletrack! There was one huge sand pit which I managed to power through on 2 laps. Dabbed on one lap, and on the final lap I just knew I didn't have enough gas left to power through. So I shouldered the bike and ran. At the end of the race I quickly changed out of my muddy, sandy wet clothes. That was a huge struggle in and of itself. Glad I brought some hot tea for an after race warmup! I had a blast and am really starting to dig cyclocross!

This photo right here, pretty much sums up how we all looked after racing today.

Mega Seatpost!

Check out the amount of seatpost showing on Ryan Trebon's Kona-FSA Major Jake pro cyclocross bike. Wow, now that's Impressive! What a huge bike. I like their comment about "would be thieves would have a better chance fitting into the triangle"..

Local Junior Racing Cross in Europe

This is a neat article by Jeremy Ferguson. He's a local junior road racer here in Rocklin, CA. He did very well at many of the NorCal races last year. Great to see him getting such amazing life experiences racing over in Europe at such a young age. I think we'll be seeing a lot more of him in the future.