Hello from Down South.  I’m new to team, but excited to be a part of it.  I had hoped to fly the Crossniacs colors Halloween Weekend.  However, I crashed hard at a local race; who would have thought that a WET, MUDDY, old concrete velodrome would be slippery?  I ended up with road rash, bruises and a sprained wrist in a splint.  Splint came off last Friday and I was stoked to fly the crossniacs banner in Bimingham, AL. 

The Sun finally came out and we had a mostly dry course for the first time this season.  That is a good thing for me.  Especially when you add a mostly flat course with just enough technical sections and dismounts to throw off the true roadies.  The race was at a cool venue right downtown in Birmingham.  It was an old iron works factory that has been turned into a museum/historic landmark.  It was cool to be racing under the bridges and around the old foundry buildings. You can find some links for pictures at bamacross.com. Margot had some great shots that really show the chracter of the course.

 Usually I get a good start and then start to fade with a profound lack of fitness.  However, this day I couldn’t get clipped in and ended up around 15th off the line.  I guess not too bad since that left about 60 guys behind me.  After the bottleneck at the first runup the leaders were gone.  So, I settled in with a group of about 5 or 6 guys.  We rode together for about 2 laps, but no one really seemed like they wanted to work together.  I tried to get some guys to pull through and start a chase, but didn’t seem to work. 

So,  I hit the gas on a “fireroad” on the back side and kept the speed up through some barriers.  I managed to leave this little group behind and started working on catching some guys.  The course was really cool, with some nice 180 turns and chicanes.  It had one short runup on some concrete stairs and then a nice zigzag up, down and back up through some soft foundry dirt that was almost like volcanic sand.  The technical sections and dismounts allowed me to reel in some guys and then I hung on on the fast pavement sections.  I was able to move up through some guys and ended up alone in 10th.  Best finish of the year out of a pretty big field.  I turned right around and did the CX3/4 race immediately after I finished.  Not sure of my final placing as I left before the results were up.  But I know I wasn’t last and I wasn’t lapped.  I guess that shows that even though I am out of shape, I am starting to race myself into a little bit of fitness.  Hopefully that will bode well for the rest of the season.

We don’t have the numbers down south like cross crusade, etc., but we are growing and CX4 has been having 45 to 70 guys each race.  For me, that seems like a lot.  In the few Cat 5 crits that I have done, they usually limit the field to 50, and from my old MTB days the fields never seemed to be that big.  So, it takes a lot to get used to that and to work through that many guys.  The Bamacross guys did a great job and it was a great day.  Looking at a double this next weekend with a Bamacross race on Saturday night and then a Georgia series race on Sunday.

Like I said, excited to be a part of the Crossniacs movement.   Talk to ya’ll later.

David