On Sunday I competed in my first cyclocross race. I had picked up a cyclocross bike
from my main man Jack at the Velo Resource a few weeks ago. My initial plan was to only give cyclocross a shot this year if I didn't make it to Kona, but I decided that there was still enough time to make it worth my while. Over the past few weeks, I'm been riding my cross bike quite a bit. I've been working a lot of my mount and dismounts, but still have a lot of work to do there. Nonetheless, I was really excited to take part in a race where I had no expectations and just wanted to have some fun. Overall, I was very happy with how it went. There were only 20-25 people in my race, but I started in the back obviously. I got a terrible start because I could have sworn the guy said 1 minute till the start and the horn went off 5-10 seconds later. I think I hit the first set of barriers in 3rd to last! I was a bit passive on my first lap and didn't want to piss anybody off. However, I stepped it up after that. I passed a lot of people and ended up in 7th I believe (still waiting for the results to be posted). There were 4 guys way out in front, but I finished pretty close to 2 other guys. I'm pretty sure I was the second cat 5 guy. I didn't crash at all which was cool. I definitely was weaker than others on the technical stuff, but did a lot of passing/catching up on the straightaways. All and all, I had a blast! I'm really looking forward to Fitchburg in a few weeks. :)