This post was written by Colin Cares on December 1, 2008
As I write this post, I’m doing one of the things I do best: killing time in airports. Normally I kill most of my airport time while chasing mountain bike races from February through August, but his year I’ve been drawn out of the travel off-season by that oh-so-difficult to define allure of cyclo-cross. This weekend, my quest for UCI points took me and my Cliff Bar Teammates Brady Kappius, Mitch Hoke, Troy Wells, and mechanic Dameon Shanks to the Jingle Cross Rock in frigid Iowa City, Iowa (cross promoters are far more clever with their race names than mountain bike promoters).
Frankly, the only place I dreaded more than an airport last black Friday was a shopping mall, but the Iowa venue turned out to be super cool and well worth the trek. Each day we raced through two barns; one was filled with sand (which I’m not too naive to believe wasn’t just mulched up manure) and the other contained four tight and precarious switchback turns. They also had Christmas lights and carols playing, which made for a surreal, though nice change from the frozen, slippery slog that was the rest of the race (for me, at least). We had to run a mud hill that was so large that the descent from it felt like a mountain bike descent minus the disk breaks, suspension, and fat tires. It was plenty sketchy in Saturday’s dry weather, but mother nature threw in snow, sleet, mud, and low 30 degree temps for an extra challenge on Sunday.
Though I might not have expected it, Iowa seems to have a great cross scene and plenty of enthusiastic, friendly, and fast locals. I’m already looking forward to next year’s Jingle Cross, maybe my fingers and toes will have warmed up by then.
Look forward to plenty more low-grade cell-phone pics to come.
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Posted under CYCLOCROSS
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