Heckler's Corner

Saturday of the Iowa State Cross Race was going to be a really good day. The original plan was to ride out to the race from Norwalk, watch/cheer/heckle riders and drink a couple of beers. For the ride there, I had the directions and everything necessary for the weather and riding.The start of the ride was good. I knew where i was going, wore just enough stuff to keep warm and the Masi was running as it should. I came to a red light in the east village and when it turned green and I got going again, my fucking chain snapped. After I coasted across  the street, the inevitable happened, the bike went airborne. When the bike landed, the first thing i noticed was the scraped up bar tape and flat front tire. Turns out it was much worse than that. There was a hole in the sidewall of the front tire (2 and a half sets of cross tires at home, so no big deal) and this:




Looks like it's new bar time.

After all that happened, I called and got someone to bring me a chain and ended up getting a ride the rest of the way to Lions park in Altoona. Once I got there, the ss/junior race was just getting over. I got there in time to see this in action:

Coaster brake action with sweet wide bars. It was also cool to see another Brew frame, I have a Brew bmx bike. The SSCXWC Raleigh ss cross bike was awesome too. It had the only acceptable use of a colored chain that I've seen so far, and I've seen plenty of bikes with colored chains. Watched the women's and 1/2  race from the finish line and ate some of the free food and drank a beer. It was very good.

For the 3 race, i headed to heckler's corner. Started with a couple of people climbing up top of the shelter , then it became beer can alley with a couple of beer cans containing dollar bills. The quantity of beer cans increased through out the race, as did the rider participation and volume. Overall, it was a  very fun race, even though I didn't even race and I'm gonna need new bars. At least I have one ride able bike...a 20" bmx bike.

All 9 Yards Cross

Ended up doing only saturday for multiple reasons, mainly to make up for all the studying I gave up to do all the cross/mtb rides locally. Also...I don't have job so i couldn't afford to, that'll be fixed soon enough. Hopefully.

Now onto the race. I ended up gettig 12th. When the race started out, I just missed out on the main breakaway group that probably had the top 10. If I could've stuck with that group, I probably would've been able to break the top 10 but i'm way out of the reach of getting a decent points position at this point so i'm not too concerned with that. Once the main breakaway group was out of site, I settled into a pace and was getting along good. On every hill, I mashed up it dancing on the pedals with my fresh Mud2 cross tire helping me along. I was eventually able to get comfortable enough to not need to use the brakes on most of the corners, though that wasn't doing much for my overall position just felt good to getting more comfortable on the bike and being able to trust my tires more. Mounting and remounting over the barriers is also getting much smoother, getting closer to getting the 'leap of faith' down.

As far as the hecklers go, I was a little disappointed. I did get cheered on and complimented on my Masi, but durig the race I ant to be broken down mentally so the pain of the race doesn't seem so bad and I can push it harder. However, I took some heckling lessons by the single barrier at the very top of the hill during the Cat 1/2 race and saw some proper heckling and took notes for future races.

Overall, my overal grade for the course is B+, hecklers C, my performance A+ (cos self confidence) and last but not least, free fat tire A+++