Jingle Cross Report

Not much to speak of on the results side of things from Jingle Cross, but the weekend was about as good as it could have been considering I was creepin'.



Anywho, my dad decided to come out to the races with me and it turned out to be almost necessary to have someone working the pits for you, so that was nice. Plus it was some quality time with him away from work. He learned the ropes of pitting pretty quickly and seemed to be enjoying it. The only problem was that he was tied to the pits all race and couldn't do his usual sprinting around the course yelling for me like you may have witnessed before.



So about the racing. Friday I ripped my rear derailleur off a long way from a spare bike and so I DNF'd.


Saturday we spent all morning at Lowes and the local bike shop Geoff's Bike and Ski, trying to get my other bike working again. Long story, but with some handy mechanic work, we got it up and "functioning" with a whopping 30 minutes to spare. Yeah that's right, I got to the race 30 min before the start. Never done that in a cross race before. So I got kitted, guessed on a tire pressure and tried to guess what would be around each corner for the first lap. It didn't really matter in the end because I went pretty slow and was a non-factor in the race.



Sunday we took our sweet time in the hotel and ate a nice breakfast and rolled to the course plenty early, but non of that really mattered because I had shit for legs again. Not really sure why, but it was more than an inconvenience all weekend. It was quite apparent that was was going nowhere fast and really wanted to save myself the embarrassment and drop out, but I really needed the workout anyway, so I kept trying and kept going backwards. I do want to give a huge thank you to Brian and all the guys from Geoff's Bike and Ski for getting a massive cheering block together for me on Sunday. After all that time we spent together working on my bike on Saturday, we became pals and so Brian told his pals that he and I were now pals and before I knew it I had an embarrassingly large gallery running with me and following my slow ass all over that course, causing a scene and slapping my but on the regular. It was pretty crazy that I went to Iowa knowing no one other than a few of my competitors and my dad, and by Sunday had a mob of about 30 people yelling for me. Thanks a lot guys! You made a pretty miserable day on the bike a whole lot better!

Next update will be coming from Portland. See ya out there!