Competing at the Cyclocross World Championships in Saint Wendel Germany was a truly amazing experience. The atmosphere was distinctively different from any race I have done before. The typical European drunken cyclocross hoard was out in full force but it now had a patriotic buzz. Normally the course is surrounded by a sea of gray and black. At worlds the swarm of spectators was full of colour as huge groups of people dressed to support their favourite country. From a Swiss group bearing cowbells after the decent to a line of flag bearing Belgium supporters on the first climb. I felt proud to be representing my country on the World stage.

The course was extremely muddy on Thursday when we first got on course. I thought it was perfect. Unfortunately with temperatures were trending down causing the course to freeze overnight. The race organizers had the foresight to see that some of the large sections of deep frozen ruts would be unrideable so they used a tractor to smooth out some of the sections. For the women’s race in the morning frozen ruts were causing lots flats despite most riders choosing to run higher tire pressure. 25-28psi was the typical range. By 2:00 in the afternoon when the men’s race started the course sections in direct sun were thawing out creating a slippery mix of mud and frozen ruts.

The start of the race was just like any other major race. Lining up in the 2nd to last row you are at the mercy of the field. Sometimes everything goes smoothly and you don’t lose much time to the leaders and are able to move up. Other times crashes and bottle necks put riders gridded in the rear at a huge disadvantage. Unfortunately this was of the second kind of starts. A minute in at the first rutted muddy section a rider slid size ways and went down taking out the back dozen riders. I got going again reasonably quickly but the course was fast and making up any time was a tall order. For the first time since the race in Luxembourg in on January 1st my legs felt decent. They were better than decent, they were good and I started catching riders. Sadly with the short lap and the liberally enforced 80% rule I ran out of time and was pulled after six laps to finish 46th.

Going into the race I had the goal of finishing in the top forty and this was definitely attainable had I been able to avoid going down at the start. My hamstring has been a major issue for the past few weeks and I was worried that it was going to be a problem. Thankfully it wasn’t a factor so I guess time off the bike combined with stretching and massage did the job.

World Championships is the only cyclocross race where riders have to come to the race as a national team. So for the biggest race of the year riders turn in the pro team clothing for the colors of their nation. I think it is a great way of distinguishing worlds from the other races. However this does create the potential for issues as riders have to use their National team’s accommodation, mechanics and race support. As a smaller and less experienced cyclocross nation Team Canada was not without issue. The Canadian juniors have great potential and there is no reason why Canada cannot become a stronger cyclocross nation like we are on the mountain and road disciplines. Hopefully worlds was a learning experience for the team like it was for me and will bring about positive change so we can come back bigger, stronger and faster next year.

It has been a long season from September to February with twenty seven races in seven different countries. It wouldn’t have been possible without the support of my friends and family as well as my coach; Elliot Bassett and my sponsors; CyclocrossRacing.com, Blue Competition Cycles, Rolf Prima Wheels, Oak Bay Bikes, Schwalbe, Aviawest and Ryders.

Just two more races next weekend and then back to Victoria, BC for some time with friends off the bike before starting it all over again.

The weekend of January 8-9th is National Championships weekend on the Cyclocross Calendar. Canada had their Nationals back in November so I used the weekend off from racing to take a much needed break. My Aunt and her family live in Switzerland so I took four days away from the bike to spend some time in the Alps and mentally recharge. It was great to visit with my cousins Simon and Alexis for an activity filled visit with lots of sledding, hiking, hockey, and tennis.

Back in Belgium it was straight to business. With only three weeks till World Championships the plan was to do two weeks of hard training with a one week taper to peak for Worlds. Unfortunately this meant training through the Pont-Chateau and Hoogerheide World Cups. The first week of this build went as planned and included a couple long hard rides and some solid intervals. Going into Pont-Chateau I knew that I wouldn’t be fresh but with an easy day of pre-riding the day before I was optimistic.

The forty eight rider field was relatively small for a World Cup and after preriding the course I thought that it suited my strengths. My optimism for a good result was growing. The course was mostly grass with lots of elevation change and sweeping off camber corners that were a little slick. It was a super fun course to ride. I have done a few world cups this year so I think I would have know what to expect but I am always blown away by how fast the starts are. After the first couple corners Team Canada (Derrick, Shaun and myself) were off the back of the field. Derrick and I were able to work together to catch a group of six riders by the end of the lap. At the end of lap one I was pretty much at the back of the field but was only 14seconds behind the leader. I felt ok but was definitely missing my top gear. By the fifth lap I was in no man’s land by myself and was starting to crawl into the pain cave. The next five laps I suffered and despite just gutting myself on the main climb I was going painfully slow. In the end I finished 42nd and was disappointed with my result even though it took everything I had to finish were I did.

Loaded up the van after the race and started the seven hour drive home.
(Gregg + 5 riders + 10 bikes + 36 wheels + tent + bags = A very tightly packed little van)

Monday I felt horrible. No riding. Tuesday I felt worse. No riding. I went and got a blood test from the team doctor for the AM Post Sean Kelly Pro road team. Wednesday felt a little better. One hour super easy on the trainer. Results from the blood test was that I was fatigued and fighting a virus. Doc suggested I take the week very easy. Thursday was an attempted Hoogerheide course pre-ride but the course was closed due to an effort to keep the muddy course from becoming unrideable. Friday feeling a bit better but still no riding.

Hopefully all the resting will pay off and I will be ready to get after it in Hoogerheide and Saint Wendel.

Here are links to a couple recent interviews:
Podium Insight
Canadian Cycling Magazine
Cross Crazy

There are six UCI races in Belgium between December 26th and January 2nd.This is commonly known as the “Holy Week” of cyclocross.

Zolder World Cup – December 26th
I talked about this in a previous post. Quick recap: Super snowy, riders crashing everywhere. Finished 49th.

SuperPrestige Diegem – December 27th
Racing through town under the lights. Huge crowds and an amazing atmosphere. I ended up riding with mostly Americans and was happy with how I rode to finish 34th, the second North American behind Jonathan Page.

GVA Azencross – December 29th
After a day of laundry, cleaning bikes and resting up I was ready to get after it once again. The Azencross course was really cool and despite all the mud and frozen ruts preriding was fairly fun. With the temperature around zero and three races doing battle on the course earlier in the day most of the snow had melted and the wet ground had been kneaded into deep mud by the time the elite men hit the course. About one hundred meters into the race Gerben De Knegt unclipped mid acceleration and caused a huge pile up. Once we turned off the pavement and hit the mud more chaos ensued as riders crashed into each other forcing most of the field to run. My start wasn’t great but I was able to move up to a group of Americans that I seem to usually end up riding with. Strange to travel to a different continent only to race the same guys, that being said I am super happy they are here because it makes my race more dynamic. Highlight of the race was getting to repeatedly ride the BMX style roller section.

Sylvester Cross – December 30th
Sylvester Cross was the most North American style UCI course I have seen in Belgium. It was mostly flat, primarily grass and pavement with a small sand section and a little mud. The race was not a series race so most of the big teams only had a couple riders in attendance and as a result the atmosphere was much more relaxed than a World Cup or SuperPrestige series race. With fewer big team riders the racer parking lot was less chaotic and we parked our little van between Stybar and Albert. The race was fast and with the less technical course the speeds were high. Despite repeatedly spinning my hardest gear (46×11) I wasn’t able to hang with some of the Belgium riders that I was beating at the B races a few weeks earlier and my legs felt like this was the fourth race in five days.

Grand Prix Hotel Threeland – January 1st
Officially cyclocross holy week would definitely include GP Sven Nys GVA on New Years day. However, everyone in the house received start money for the Hotel Threeland race in Luxembourg so early Saturday morning we packed up the RV and headed to Luxembourg. Jonathan Page told us to bring our 28tooth cassettes and he wasn’t joking. The course looked more like a mountain bike circuit than a cross race. The main climb was massive with some off road running in the middle. The descents were long and fast with some high speed muddy off camber corners. On a mountain bike the descents would have been normal, on a cross bike they were scary. After the preride Davy, Shaun, and Gabby were all complaining about the course and some said the start money wasn’t enough to justify having to ride this course. I came into the RV with a grin on my face and said I loved it. Usually when you love the course and almost everyone else hates it good things happen. I started OK and was riding the flat mud section really well so I could use the section as a break if I was in a group or a place to close gaps if I was by myself. The descent was sketchy but I tried to let the bike roll and find the rut of least resistance. Despite some close calls I managed to keep it upright so I guess it worked. I heard the sweet sound of the bell lap (first time at a UCI race in Europe) and knew I was going to get to finish. I had a battle with another rider on the last lap top fifteen place but he got by me just after the pit and held it to the line so I finished 16th.

Fidea Cyclo-cross Tervuren – January 2nd
After the race in Luxembourg my right hip flexor was a little sore but on the morning of the 2nd it was very sore to the point that it hurt to walk. I made the call to take a pass on Tervuren and as I sat on the couch watching everyone trudge though the deep mud I knew I had made the right call.

For most of these races we were able to use a massive RV. Rolling pro style in the RV made me realize why all the pros have them. With the typical race parking nightmare and the need to preride before the women’s race virtually all of the elite men arrive at least three hours before the start. Having a warm dry place to sit around and get dressed is amazing with the temperate hovering around freezing. Not to mention the lack of public bathrooms and the large number of fans that hangout in the rider area. Putting on chamois cream in front of a large crowd gets old pretty quick. Thanks again Rick.

Next couple days is relaxing and eating good food in Switzerland with my aunt and her family before gearing up for the Pont Chateau World Cup.

My first race after recovering from my training block was the Kalmthout World Cup. I went into the race pretty optimistic and felt that the solid miles I had put in the weeks earlier would pay dividends at this race. The course was relatively flat but was super twisty. There was also a fair amount of snow on the ground and just one line was ridden in so the course was essentially single track making passing difficult. In typical World Cup fashion the first corner was chaos and with all the twist and turns the pack strung out and where you queued up after the first couple turns was pretty close to where you were going to finish. I felt ok but didn’t have much snap and after getting bumped around in the first couple corners I ended up close to the back. I managed to pick off a few riders and bridged to a group with Brian Matter and Mark LaLonde. Despite finishing near the back of the race I felt like we were actually going pretty fast and were only going about 30seconds a lap slower than the leaders. After watching the race coverage it was pretty obvious that I definitely wasn’t pushing it enough in the corners.

The week of Christmas was pretty chill, hung out with my roomies and did some group trainer/roller riders. Christmas in Europe has a warm family feel too it which is a nice contrast to the commercialized version in North America. It would have been nice to be home visiting with friends and family but with the Zolder World Cup on Boxing Day most of Christmas was spent prepping to race. On the 23rd five of us drove out to Zolder to preride the World Cup course and we were amazed how ill prepared the race organizers were for the snow. The course had close to a foot of snow and huge sections were un-ride able. They didn’t have any snowploughs and were using a forklift with a traffic barrier tipped on its side and a quad pulling a fence to try and clear the course. Neither were working.

By race day they had managed to chip away the ice from the start finish but most of the course wasn’t much better than our preride a few days earlier and some sections were even worse. I crashed six times preriding three laps. Four of the crashes were just on straight sections of snow. The snow was rutted and it was like riding in mud or sand but less predictable because of hard frozen chunks mixed in. You would be cruising along and then your front wheel would slide to a 45 degree angle or washout completely. There were two steep descents and I crashed twice on those, so I tested running them on the third lap. With a 50/50 success rate I made the call that I would run them in the race. The start at the previous weekend at Kalmthout was military order compared to the Zolder start. I started fifth row beside Lars Boom and I have absolutely no idea how he managed to hit the first corner in fourth. I felt like I started pretty well and hit the first corner around 40th when a rider beside me crashed and took me out. The next three minutes was running, crashing, bottlenecks, and riders remounting and not being able to clip in because the soles of their shoes were packed full of ice from all the running. In the first lap I lost 2:44 to Lars Boom who started beside me. After the first lap chaos the field was spread out and I was able ride the climbs and run the two descents. This was essentially the opposite of most riders around me but it seemed to be working pretty well as I moved up a few places each lap. I ended up having a massive battle with Paul Voss from Team Milram. He was faster on the open sections and I was faster in the technical parts so we went back and forth with a fair amount of bumping and a few words of “encouragement”. I was having fun. He got away from me a little on our last lap and it looked like it was going to take the last coveted top fifty and with it the prize money and UCI points. However my descent running skills paid off when he had a huge bail on the last descent and I was able to run by him and another rider to finish 49th.

Drive home. Laundry. Eat. Clean bikes. Sleep. Eat. Drive to the race.

I was pretty stiff and sore from the World Cup crash fest and was not emotionally invested in the Diegem SuperPrestige the following day. The course was hilly which I liked and my plan was to ride the first few laps as hard as I could and not worry about exploding later in the race. After the starting chaos I was in a group with all of the Americans (excluding JP who was way up the field) and a few Euros. My legs didn’t feel great but I put my race plan into action and distanced myself from Team America and was gaining a little ground on the next group. After spending some time between the two groups I started to crack and Team America was bringing me back when we were pulled. I finished 34th.

On the drive home I realized that I get zero benefit from racing against Albert and Nys because after three corners they are long gone. What I need to do is race against other guys my speed which is why it is so nice having all of the Americans over here for the Christmas block of racing. Back in October I traveled across the continent for a weekend of racing against a group of Americans like the group I raced in Diegem but instead of racing for the win at a MAC or Verge Series race we were racing for 34th at a SuperPrestige. I get to race against this great group of Americans six times in eight days never having to drive more than two hours. In my opinion that is the biggest value of racing in Belgium not getting to race against Albert and Nys.

An interesting note is that with Jonathan Page, Brian Matter, and myself racing on Blue bikes the small company Blue Competition Cycles is the second most prominent North American brand in the European Pro Cyclocross scene next to Giant.

Another side note is that I have officially made the Canadian Cyclocross National Team and will be representing Canada at the 2011 Cyclocross World Championships in St. Wendel.

Relaxing day today and then off to battle again tomorrow at Azencross.

The Koksijde World Cup was my fifth consecutive weekend of racing and between races I had not done much training. I decided to pass on the World Cup round in Spain and instead do an endurance block of training. The logistics of doing the Spanish round were pretty crazy. Plus flying with bikes, car rental, and hotel was going to make it a really expensive race. There also ended up be a baggage handler strike in Spain the weekend of the race so getting there might not have been possible.

The three days after Koksijde I took really easy and did a tourist day in Brugge before beginning my nine day block of training. My initial plan was to primarily focus on getting in steady base miles but my coach Elliot at Mountain Endurance convinced me to include some intensity to keep me sharp for the upcoming races. Unfortunately the weather did not cooperate and I was forced to log a lot of miles in really ugly conditions. On one particularly nasty four hour ride in freezing conditions I passed a cross country skier on the snowy path that I was riding. Being from a ski town I can officially say skiing in Belgium is atrocious.

The conditions for my whole training block were pretty ugly and it seemed ironic that I came to Belgium to train and race cyclocross while all the Belgium cyclocross riders leave Belgium and go to Majorca Spain to train. I embraced the HTFU mentality and logged over thirty hours of training in what is now officially the coldest start to winter in Beligum since 1875. It was actually not that bad considering that at the same time parts of Western Canada were the second coldest place on earth with only Antarctica being colder.

To finish off my training cycle I raced a non-UCI elite race in Uitbergen on Sunday. The “B” races in Belgium are for riders who don’t have series contracts with the GVA or SP series and are not ranked in the top fifty in the World. These “B” races are surprisingly fast. I had Saturday to recover for the race and was determined to break the top ten. The course was dead flat, windy, and almost all soggy field with some mud sections. After racing in Belgium for a month I think it is funny how my perception of what is considered a muddy course has changed. A cross course here is NOT muddy if it meets these two criteria: 1) All mud sections are ride able. 2) After one lap your socks are still somewhat dry. Shaun and I decided that Uitbergen was not a muddy course (I still raced on Rhinos).

At the start of the race I was able to make the lead group of seven riders and after a few laps we had a large gap over the rest of the field. The group contained three rides from the SDC – Rogelli Cycling Team and they skilfully used team tactics to successfully work over the group. In hindsight I probably spent too much time chasing because I was pretty gassed by the last lap attacks and rolled across the line in sixth. I was still happy with how I raced and pleased with how my legs felt considering my recent hard training.

Now the focus is rest and recovery before the Kalmthout World Cup this Sunday and the crazy Christmas block of racing. I am excited to have the US Euro Cross Camp guys In Belgium for the next couple weeks of races. It is a really good group of guys and I am looking forward to racing with them.

Last Saturday I raced my first Cyclocross World Cup in Koksijde Belgium. On the Wednesday before the race I went to Koksijde with Rene Birkenfeld to do some training on the new course which will be used for the 2010 World Cup and 2012 World Championship. Before hitting the course we warmed up on the roads around town and along the beach. Rene swerved onto the beach and tried to ride an impossibly deep sand section. I thought he was just joking around but it was actually a good representation of the sand on the course. We were the first riders on the course and my first impression was that the course was ridiculously hard. Virtually all sand section where unrideable and I dismounting 10+ times a lap, I was starting to regret signing up for the race. We broke down sections of the course and tried different lines. With some other riders now on course lines were forming and some sections were becoming consistently rideable. By the end of the practice session I only needed to dismount five times a lap and I left the course pretty optimistic.

Friday it poured and Friday night it snowed.

On race day the course was a different animal. Some sections were ridden in nicely but others had huge ruts and most of the fast dry grass sections were now a slog though deep mud.

Growing up in Northern BC I can handle the cold and I have fun getting dirty so I was feeling good going to the starting line. Of the sixty rider field I was called up around fiftieth. The start went down the paved start/finish straight though a muddy corner and then up a steep sandy climb that nobody was able to ride. Everyone knew traffic was going to stack up bad at the climb so the start was a mad dash. I started reasonably well and made it through the bottleneck ok but lost ground for the rest of the first lap as I struggled with trying to ride the sand amongst a huge amount of traffic.
After the first lap things became less chaotic and I started to ride better and pick up riders. Going into the race I wanted to finish in the top fifty for some solid UCI points and prize money. I also had the goal finishing on the lead lap but each time through the start finish I could see that I was losing just over a minute a lap, finishing on the lead lap was not going to happen. At the start of lap five my bike was starting to run pretty rough as the sand and mud had effectively tarred and feathered my steed. However the pitting lane was slower so pitting cost about five seconds. Up to this point in the race I hadn’t been pitting and had been using it as a way to pass some of the riders around since passing elsewhere on the course was hard. I figured there was a good chance we would be pulled at the end of lap five so opted not to pit in order to try and move up among the five other riders I was battling with. After 45min of racing at the end of lap five I was pulled, finishing 46th.

All Cyclocross World Cups have chip timing with a detailed breakdown of each riders lap times. Looking at the lap times my first lap was my slowest by over 15seconds and I lost a lot of time and places in the first lap. All subsequent lap times were more consistent and I was moving up every lap.

Overall my first CX World Cup experience was a good one. The fans were crazy and I had a huge cheering section of guys at one of the sand pits that were cheering “Le Mustache”. I think I represented the Movember stash well.

The weekdays between the weekend races was spent training with my house mates Rene Birkenfeld, Gabby Day and Shaun Adamson. Rene and I did some great cyclocross skills practice at the nearby lake. After the ride when I was trying to clean the sand and mud off my bike I realized that my equipment is taking some heavy abuse here.

On Saturday I opted to do a local pro race for riders not ranked in the top fifty in the world. The race was in the town of Laarne and turned out to be one of the bigger “B” races. Based on my world rank I was called to the line first but was not able to hold that position for long. The course was through a corn field and not a North American style course. It was very bumpy with a bunch of man-made ditches that were hard to ride. I rode reasonably well and finished 14th out of the fifty or so elite racers. For just a little local race it was comparable to a UCI pro race in the US with 500+ spectators.

Sunday was the Superprestige Gavere. It is a cyclocross classic and is considered the Paris-Roubaix of cyclocross. The promise of crashes and lack of rain brought out hoards of fans. The technical course was hilly with lots of slippery rutted descents, preriding I was able to ride everything and loved it. At the start line I was optimistic that I could have a good race. Unfortunately it was not my day and I was plagued with problems from the start. A huge pedal slip at the start left me standing with both feet on the ground as the field rode away. I was able to re-catch the field and move up a few places but ended up in no mans land, chasing a good group in front of me with stragglers losing ground behind. On the 4th lap my derailleur hanger broke off and I had to run to the pit zone.
I have two matching Blue Norcross SL bikes which are super nice bikes but I only have one pair of Dugast Rhino tubular tires, the gold standard for mud tires. So in the pit I had to take my other bike which had mix condition tire, they packed up with mud and the descents were like trying to steer a truck with bald tires down a hill in a snow storm. I had a pretty good crash, glancing off a crash pad into a tree. The crash unhooked my rear brake making the next descent even more sketchy. I finished the lap but all the issues cost me a lot of time and was I pulled, finishing 27th. The crash was apparently the best one of the day because it was replayed in slow-motion on TV a few times. http://bit.ly/aq9NwN @ 8:40

Next up is World Cup Round #3 in Koksijde Belgium. On Wednesday Rene and I did a training session on the course and it is the most technical and sandy course I have ever seen. There are no courses like this in North America and I don’t have much experience riding sand so the training session was a huge help. The Koksijde course also happens to the to be the 2012 World Championship course so the more practice I can get in the sand the better.

A few days after arriving in Belgium I decided to do my first race, the Superprestige Hamme-Zogge. It had rained steadily since my arrival and there was widespread flooding the weekend of the race. I actually found this a little bit encouraging because it meant that this huge amount of rain was not normal. It did however mean that the race was going to be mud fest.

The major crosses races here are held in little towns and a huge number of spectators (10,000+) come out the big races like the Superprestige series. There are no large parking lots here and as a result parking was controlled chaos. As an elite racers we were directed by the police to the premium parking area but they said there might not be room because we are late. The elite race wasn’t till 3:00 in the afternoon and we arrived just before noon which by North American standards is super early. That being said most elite riders have big RV’s that their team mechanics drive to the race early in the morning so I guess by comparison we were late. We ended up parking in the loading dock for a grocery store.

I have 37 UCI points and am ranking 104 in the world which got me number plate 41 and a call up to the start line around 35th out of the 45 starters. The course was very technical with three huge flyovers and tons of mud. There was so much deep mud that all the riders were forced to run major sections of the course. Of the nine minute lap I probably spent four minutes running. I was with a bit of a group for the first couple laps but with the tough conditions riders around me got spread out and I ended up riding a fair amount by myself. Under the 80% rule I was pulled with three laps to go and finished 28th. The news paper title the next days was “Sven Nys Swims to Victory.” It was an eye opening experience and once I become adjusted to the racing here I am sure that I can do better.

Three days after the New Jersey races and the Wednesday before Canadian Nationals I woke up with a horrible headache, fever, and full body ache. I was bed ridden Wednesday and Thursday and on Friday I went to a walk in Clinic to Aurora to get some antibiotics with the hope that I could kill off whatever was making me sick. For Nationals I was feeling better but was still weak and not a hundred percent. I needed to finish in the top five to secure a spot on the Canadian National team for worlds and I had to crawl deep in the pain cave to fight through to a fifth place finish.

I am now in Oudenaarde Belgium calling The ChainStay home for the next three months. I have a pretty ambitious schedule planned with five Worlds Cups, World Champs and a number of Superprestige and GVA series races. It is pouring rain right now and I am mounting my mud tires. It is going to be a fun winter.

After a few weeks back in Victoria consisting of training, building bikes, and generally getting stuff organized I flew to Toronto on October 27th for a couple weeks of racing on the East coast before heading to Europe. The time in Victoria was a much needed rest and chance to recharge after a pretty intense racing circuit in September. I also need to let my brain recover from my concussion in LA. My roommate Daniel had also given himself a concussion from challenging a boxer to a couple rounds so we had fun sitting around icing or heads.

In Toronto I picked up my rental car and began the drive to New Jersey where I was schedule to do two UCI races as prep for Canadian Nationals the following weekend. The weather was really nice and everything went smoothly except for the boarder crossing. Apparently driving a rental van across the boarder by yourself with two big bike boxes in the back raises some flags. I got integrated in a back room while the van was searched by a bunch of agents. 15min later I was back on the road. Fortunately I have fair number of relatives in New Jersey so upon arrival I was very well taken care of and had a great time visiting with family I hadn’t seen in years

Beacon Cross – MAC Round #7 – UCI C2
This was a pretty crazy course and I was told that it is a classic in the Mid Atlantic Cyclocross series. It was fast and twisty with a run up through an outdoor amphitheater. We were running up the seats so each step was around 24inches. The short guys found it pretty tough. Once the starting gun went off I was immediately reminded that I had not raced for a few weeks and that I definitely needed this races as a prep for Nationals. My plan was to race aggressively so when I got to the lead group towards the end of the second lap I immediately attacked which resulted in some immediate counter attacks, the group getting split up and me getting dropped from the front. The course was really fast so apparently sitting in the draft made a difference so there were some fresh legs at the front. Not smart racing on my part. Wes and myself dangled 5-10sec behind the lead group of four for the rest of the race until the last lap when things split a part a little and I ended up 5th. A good result, my second career UCI podium, but a little frustrating because I knew I was capable of placing better.

Highland Park CX – MAC Round #8 – UCI C2
A really nice thing about Cyclocross is the weekend double races, rather than dwelling on the mistakes you made on Saturday’s race you can instead refocus on Sunday’s. I went into Sunday’s race knowing more about my opponents and confident I could do better. At both these races there were a fair number of top ranked riders so based on my world rank I was called start line 12th. Starting on the second row in a fast field it takes some time to pick my way around people and get to the front. By the end of the first lap I bridged to what I thought was the lead group bringing a few riders with me. However two guys were already up the road and our large group of eight was going decently quick but bringing back on the leaders. Learning from Saturday’s race I sat in and saved my bullets. The course had one large climb on it and I decided that would be the place to attack. With 4laps to go I attacked on the climb and dropped our group from eight down to four, I then pulled the rest of the lap to make sure the dropped riders wouldn’t catch back on and to see if I could pull back some time on the leaders. I brought back a few seconds but they had a big gap and it looked like we would be sprinting for 3rd. I sat in and waiting for the sprint. On the last lap the leader flatted and we were now going to be sprinting for 2nd. I led out the sprint and it was really close with three of us doing a bike throw at the line. Adam Myerson nipped me but I was able to hang on for 3rd by inches. As soon as I crossed the line and turned to the other guys and said “damn that was fun”. Close racing is so much more fun and at these races the front ten guys are all pretty equal.