Monday, October 08, 2007

Cross Crusade #1: Alpenrose Dairy

Cross Crusade #1
Alpenrose Dairy
October 7, 2007


The 2007 Cross Crusade kicked off yesterday at Alpenrose Dairy. Apparently 1078 people raced , reportedly the largest single gathering of cross racers anywhere in world (this is total unsubstantiated rumor that I read on the internets, but I'm going with it)

After a morning of race prep that consisted of: Making pancakes, picking up groceries at the local market and playing "dragon" and "pirate" at the local playground with the kids, I was ready to race! I left the house at 12:15 for the 2:00 race and got to the venue with just enough time to register and ride around the neighborhood for a warm up.

The course was a challenging mix of bumpy downhills, tight turns, staircases, runups and other obstacles. It was also quite a bit drier than last week at Barlow which made the course waaay faster. As an example, last week in 60 minutes I clocked 8 miles on the cyclometer. This week I hit 14.

My field consisted of 67 guys - I did 7 laps and ended up in 21st place. Although not as impressive sounding of a result as last week, it was actually a better one. The field was much tougher and larger than last week, so my placing was actually higher as a % of total racers.

Interestingly enough, I placed 21st last year at Alpenrose in the Bs. I feel much better about this placing as opposed to how I felt about my result last year.

Next week is Hornings - one of my favorite courses. I'll be riding the single speed category on my Soma Juice 29er vs Master As.

A note on equipment - The Stans Notubes system saved my wheels again at least a couple of times, though I was running way to low of pressure for as fast of a course.

dp

2 comments:

Patrick said...

Yawn.... Enough already with the Stan's. Some of these cats just aren't going to get it. I saw 3 flats on tubies last week. I ran 38 PSI how about you?

Daniel said...

I was running like 34 which was waaay to low. I wish I had about 40 PSI in there. I anticipated the course being a bit more soggy I think.