OC Criss Cross and Ruts and Guts CX

Since the first week in September, there's been a lot of opportunities to participate in several cyclocross events. The Wednesday night practices have gotten huge with over 40 riders showing up the last few times. The race season officially started on October 2nd with a race that was promoted by the race team I'm on, Team Undiscovered. The race was at the Oklahoma Christian University campus on a field where the cross country team trains. A few sections were cleared out with a brush hog making them a little bumpy. There were a few people who complained that the course was too rough, but with the right air pressure in the tires, I thought it was a fine course.


I decided to do the masters 40+ race and the cat 123 race also. Every time I've tried to do 2 races back to back, it generally doesn't work out well, at least for cyclocross anyway.



The masters race was first. There was a decent turnout, maybe 12 or 13 riders. My plan was to ride conservatively till 20 minutes to go, then go hard to the end. I figured that would be the best way to have something saved up for the A race and hopefully get a good finish in the masters race.

The plan was going good for about 1/3 of the first lap. I thought the tempo of the race felt slow, so I attacked and opened a little gap. A couple of guys chased me the whole race, and by the end I was pretty smoked.

I managed to get the win, but I didn't have much left for the 123 race.

An even bigger field in the 123 race. I wouldn't have done the 123 "A" race if I had known how blown I would be after the masters race, but I was already registered, so I just raced it to train. The competition in the A races is at an all time high. The course was pretty short and Bryan Fawley was going super fast. He won the race by almost a lap and put 3 or 4 laps on me by the time it was over.


Biff Stephens took this photo. I stayed in the whole race and I'm not sure how I finished...probably 15th or 17th or somewhere in there. I don't know if it was the stress of doing both races, or working Sunday at the shop and being around a lot of people at the Schlegelfest thing, but Monday I started getting sick and it pretty much went downhill all week.

I had to miss the showdown at sundown race in Tulsa the following weekend, but the Wednesday before the ruts and guts race, I did the practice race and felt good enough to race on Friday.

The Friday night ruts and guts race in Broken Arrow was pretty awesome! Due to a huge cash payout, the turnout was very good. It was the biggest CX race I've done to date. The course was layed out really cool, but the only problem for me was the dust. There wasn't much wind and driving to the course, I knew I was getting close by the gigantic dust cloud floating off the highway.

I'm in the middle of building some new CX tubular wheels. Andy wasn't racing, so he let me borrow his zipp 404 tubulars w/ vittoria tires. Very nice. I did the masters race again. I think there were around 25 riders in our field. The race was going good. Another rider and myself were trading pulls in 3rd-4th, we were gaining on 2nd, when I slid out in a corner and crashed pretty good. It was 3 laps to go at that point and I dropped back to 7th I think. I made it back to 5th and almost 4th but not quite.


First time I was on a podium. I wanted to do better, but it was still a really fun race. My teamate Judson Copeland took these 3 photos. The double crossed races are this coming weekend, but I popped my thumb pretty good when I crashed. Its ok to ride my road bike, but its hard to grip the bars on bumps.