So this was my first season back to CX racing after a few years of retirement.
It was so much fun.
PGH has a cool cross scene. A local coach Chris Mayhew puts on weekly cross practices on Wednesday nights in Frick Park.
Cross practice was good as it got me in to working on my starts, the weakest part of my CX game. I will work on this shit over the winter.
I did a race out in Philly called the Phelps School CX. That was wet and messy.
The next race was the month of mud CX race in Grove City. That was really fun and I won my race.
Then I didn’t race again for 6 weeks. But Team Freddie Fu, speedgoat and Trek of PGH put on the Murrysville CX Classic.
It was 35F and raining. The weather was down right miserable. Perfect temps for riding in the muddy grassy fields. The course had tons of turns and off camber sections. It was really fun.
I carpooled out there with my buddy Joe, his girl and my internet buddy Brian. Brian won the race, cool.
This guy in the photo below is good people. We raced neck and neck the whole time. He wrecked in the last lap and I got em! He tried to out sprint me and I barely won at the line. When the race was over, high fives and name exchanging. That’s the best thing about cross. You can be rivals with a dude you have never met for 45 minutes then at the end its all smiles and laughs.
So for next year I will be serious about cross and actually do a bit of training and see if I can get a decent finish in the B races.
Either way cross season was totally fun. I got the racing bug again, I met tons of cool people(soupie, aaron, ben, vaughn, brad, beardo…people without blogs for me to link to…) and made some new friends. So maybe I’ll do a few mtn bike races this fall.
-Joe