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Nittany Lion CX |
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Written by Josh West
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Wednesday, 01 October 2008 |
Nittany Lion Cross UCI-C2
Fogelsville, PA
9/20/2008
 In anticipation of my first CX race of the season, I burned a vacation day on Thursday to breakdown and rebuild Major Jake. Stripped off the scavenged parts I used to hastily birth the Major two years ago and bolted on a crispy clean SRAM Force/Red drivetrain, a set of suprisingly powerful Tektro cantis (killer value!), some handlebars that actually fit, and some super fast vittoria tires. Took all day (with a break for Thursday night Belmont Plateau mtb action), but finally got it all strung up just after midnight.
With the exception of one commute when the road bike was down, I hadn't been on my CX bike since last season. Fast-forward to Saturday and I'll be on the CX bike for a proper first time, with the new build ta-boot. Arrived at the venue with almost no time for a warm-up. Traffic jam coming out of Philadelphia pushed me back about an hour. Yeah well. Luckily the new build was well dialed with no fine tuning required. No tuning meant I could squeeze in a 5 - 10 miunte w arm-up. Opted to spend the short warm-up on the course. Mostly so I could get a feel for the new drivetrain and tires.
Anyhow, pretty much rolled through the end of the warm-up lap and right to the starting line where most of the Elite Masters were already congregated and ready for call-ups. I was in no rush as I am not the call-up type. There were 46 of us at the start and all but about 10 got called up. As such, I was pretty much at the back of the line when we started.
The "prologue" start was a macadam straightaway that stretched for about 75 yds. As you can imagine, it was screaming fast and chaotic going into the first turn onto the grass course. I held on pretty good and settled in about two thirds back in the pack. Hung out there for about three laps. Really didn't get my heart rate up at all during the short warm-up so it took a few laps before I felt like I could mash any pedals.
Finally got things going a bit faster and passed a few riders. Also gained a few spots by choosing to run the two back-to-back sandpits. They sort of made a U-turn with a grass piece at the apex. The first pit was easy to roll but everyone stuttered as they lost momentum taking the turn into the second pit. Definitely faster to run them both and I proved it on every lap.
Usually I can pick up a spot or two running the barriers, but they were really straight forward on a nice flat section. Everyone seemed to handle them very smoothly. I picked it up a bit a the last two laps and passed four or five more riders to end up in 21st place (46 finishers). I am mostly racing CX to keep in shape during the MTB off-season, so anything in the top 50% in a UCI-C2 Cat 1/2/3 Masters race is a good day for me.
Josh
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