Banger weekend seeing SydCX peoples and hanging out with Dijon, CrossBoss and Coach Spiro. I believe Team #FYC kept up the reputation that was created last year.
I’d say on balance I make more friends each time I go up, and thats accounting for the ‘loss’ of potential friends that my spirited encouragement contributes.
Spiro - you should have seen our setup on Sunday… van parked at the top of the long run-up with assorted metal blaring all day and Spiro modelling various oakley models on his jet plane trainer.
Finished with photos from Saturday! They can all be found at my Flickr. Will continue to work on the photos from Sunday and will have those up in the next couple of days.
Theyre some great photos.
I took a couple, none as nice, but I got a couple of Alex and lorday. Also a guy rolling his tubular off I think. Flickr: blobbarrett007’s Photostream
that guy = The Unit = Paul vdP, easy winner of ‘most combative’ prize for the day. He was getting super loose bridging back from sliding out twice in the final lap.
I love the fact that you could barely hear the announcer over the crowd in the final lap…
So how about a write up from the first time cx-er because it’s too early to go to bed and the ITT is as boring as bat shit.
Preperation for this was meant to start friday night after track, by switching my tyres to some knobbies and onto a smaller chainring, but I fell asleep instead. Woke up later than I wanted and packed all my things into the mighty golf - except for my track pump and tyre levers, needed to change my tyres. Got to the event, registered into b grade cross, and then instead of doing a recon run, I crossed my casseroll. I pinned a number on some dudes back in exchange for tyre levers, did the tyre/chainring thing. Now 35c CX tyres and 39:18 ratio I was set… and I borrowed someone elses pump and put 40 psi in the tyres.
As for the race it was a bit of a shitfight for me. I went out pretty hard, and got a few extra places through some corners, then proceded to crash at the first of the bmx sections. This was probably the first crash of about 20.
For the first 15 minutes I gained a spot or two then crashed then tried to get that spot back. I started feeling pretty dam hopeless and was been overtaken after about 20 minutes by everyone, I was battling it out for last when I had to walk a little pinch and thereby learning I had pulled the wheel and which was now rubbing on both the chainstay and brake caliper thus fuck eveyone. When reaching the bottom of the stairs, which happened to be part of the track closest to my car, I then went about confusing the shit out of the spectators by jumping the bunting, running to the car and grabbing a spanner. Fixed the bike, dropped the spanner 3 times before handing it off to someone and finished the race in DFL (unlike the few other DNF due to mechainicals). This earned me a mini fibre flare rear light, which was the second best thing of the day after watching Jono’s kid running a riot with my spanner post race. Also thanks to Rowan for finding my lost race number that I didn’t know I had lost, in a tree.
Things I had leanred:
I need to keep up with Alex
I can’t lean skinny tyres over like mountain bike tyres
Hanging out with cyclist all day is rad (Ben, Rowan, guy who owned the zukas cycles, Jono, whoever else I missed.)
Saturday night was spent cleaning, then truing the not true rear wheel and finally tightening the track nuts on the rear wheel to tight as they will go.
Sunday I felt good, was wearing my fiasco fluro, got a recon lap out with a mate who was also racing b grade on a single speed and crafty was commentating.
After briefing Alex on the track and almost missing the role call for b grade I was off those a great start. Me and Alex ended up together. I felt I had the edge on the corners and techy parts, and I just had to hold his wheel on the grassy flats. This was working great until he dismounted for a barrier on the back straight and I defiantly bunny hopped the barrier. Fuck yeah, eat my dust sucker… no wait … I crashed and lost his wheel. Then flatted half a lap later. Then heckled everyone else for the rest of the day.
Finally uploaded my photos from Sunday in Sydney. The course on Sunday was ace for photos and the amount of people bunnyhopping shit was rad. There’s the whole set over at my Flickr as usual. Really looking forward to the weekend in Melbourne. Many of you planning on coming down?
