New kids Cross

The New Kids Cross race, Day 2 in Tulsa, OK. This course was promised to be a totally different type of course than the night before and it was. We went from fine silty dirt with plenty of rocks to grass, gravel roads, and bike paths. Fridays course was compared to a mountain bike short track course with all the turns and today's course was more of a road race, long straights a sweeping turns, no bike handling required.

Going into the race I was less than excited. The bum knee, Friday nights DNF, and the course was just not that great for me. I a few concerns with the knee as well. The course had a barrier right in front a short, steep little run up combined with these 3 ginormous barriers. I knew I was going to have to go slow there.

With the horsepower in Tulsa this weekend it was critical that you were in the front two rows at the start. Friday night I wasn't and I watched a few people crash right at the start. In this race I went to make my last trip to the bathroom and when I came out my knee got all out of wack and it took a few minutes to get it settled down and get to the line. This did not help my start position at all. Last row with the 3's, this was going to suck.

So we get started and I moved up quite a bit. I could see Bill, Wink, Andrew, and the Tradewind guys all ahead of me in a big group. I got up to the group but the effort to get the saw me get gapped off. At this point I just about quit but I figured I could just ride around at a good pace for fitness. Bill was coming off the main group and waited for me to try to work together. For some reason it got me going and soon I could see that we were catching the main group ahead of us. About the time I was getting close Andrew hit the gas and blew the group apart and I started to pass riders from the group. With 2 laps to go I caught up to Steve and passed him for 4th. With Steve on my wheel it didn't take long for me to realize that I had a rear tire going down fast. Lucky for me that Trudy was there and noticed, she rallied the troops and Teammate Matt and Bill from Tradewind had my spare bike ready for me just in the nick of time. Thanks to everybody on that one! Took off with a lap and a half to go but I had lost 2 positions and they were too far ahead to catch. Kind of a bummer, 6th but I'll take it. I pretty much walked up the run up and barriers every lap so that's a good result.

The KCCX Team had a good day, Wink was 3rd, I was 6th, Will was 8th, and Bill 10th. Bill and I both got flats in the last 2 laps so results could of been a little better but 4 in the top 10 is pretty darn good.

Curly made the trip to Tulsa with the big boys. I'm sure he learned a few new words and creative ways to use them. Oh well, it's not like he didn't know them before!

Yep, those barriers were that tall! tough to get my knee to bend that far.

We had the setup this weekend. Pretty sweet having the trailer and not stuffing everything into a few cars.

Our week stock got pretty depleted after Friday night. We loaned out a bunch of wheels that ended up coming back flat. No wheels to left loan out on Saturday.

Today is the last day of the three day race weekend. We are back in KC for the Boulevard Cup race. Nice to be home but this has never been a great race course for me. But who knows what the course will be like this year. Maybe they will put a few turns in it and add a bit of bike handling into the mix. We shall see.......