JDoug's Cycling OCD: Grote Prijs

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Grote Prijs

Racing CX at night is about as much fun as you can have with your lycra on! I really have not found the time to get up to some of the regional races, so this was a first for me and it was a blast.. Had the temperature been colder I might be singing a different tune, but it was perfect.

The course was pretty much the same as last year; Fast!! As mentioned in previous posts I do prefer a bit more climbing in CX courses, but this was fun none-the-less..

Lined up with the 3/4's thinking it was going to be a small field after looking at the Boxing Day X results, but this was not the case. 26 people lined up which surprised me a little bit.

The combination of being a shorter 30min race, relatively flat with quite a bit of pavement and gravel I knew it was going to be hard to keep up with the roadies on this one. The start was on the pavement and I hit the grass about mid pack where the lead group took off with about 6 or 8 in the group. I told SC before the race I was just going to hold his wheel and have him pull me the whole race, but that did not work out for me. Too bad too, he won the race.. Good job dude, you better be careful or were going to see your mug all over bagger....

Anyway, I was not feeling too bad considering I have not raced in about a month, I started picking off folks who had fallen off the lead group. Most of the race I ended up like most of my mountain bike races, too slow to be in the lead group, but fast enough to be ahead of the slower traffic. So I find myself in no-mans land riding by myself.

After a couple of laps I did get some company, Roger and Mark came by battling for 1st and 2nd in the Singlespeed race. Considering they started after us the thought of them catching me and leaving me behind did not settle well with me so I made sure I hung out with them for the rest of the race. The three of us did about 3 or 4 laps together when Mark finally faded a bit. I am sure having his front end slide out every lap did not help his cause very much.

Last lap Roger took off, I had a 3/4 guy just a little too close for comfort so I headed off to catch him. Got on his wheel and cruised in to finish 8 out of 26. RESULTS HERE

I did notice that a couple of laps into it KBrocket was not that far behind.. I am not kidding you fellas, if your not careful she will be beating you soon, she is getting better every month... She already beat half of you last night!!

After the race I stuck around for a little and watched the Open dudes... You know, most of the time when you watch people race that are faster than you. You can't really tell just by watching from sidelines. Dude, no joke Tilford was flying out there, it was quite a display..

I did get a (rather poor quality) video of Tilford and another guy going over the barriers which was impressive. The guy that came in 2nd, he was flying over those things...