Spooky Cross

Spooky Cross has changed a lot - it got new management last year and now this year get a brand new venue. Previously run on the Living History Farms property ie: forest, I was skeptical about the move to a park in Altoona. It turned out to be pretty well arranged and there's a lot of property here. 

It was a two-day race and it's always fun to see what changes from one day to the next. A quick rundown on that would be that day-1 had no large barriers, no sand, no off-camber sections, and huge amounts of riding in a straight line on pavement. Basically designed for all the road-racers to get their fix on a course that's not so hard.  Day 2 saw the addition of a couple pairs of max-height barriers, some extra tech. from hill switchbacks and a large reduction in the road riding by removal of an entire section that did nothing but add distance. Much better - I'm guessing there were at least a few verbalized complaints about the first day's arrangement. It was all good in any case.

Myself staged. This event used rank staging so I was in the 3rd row on day one and 2nd row on day two. As far as riding goes, I had a much better 2nd day. On day-1, my legs felt perfect for the first lap and then were suddenly so shot that I felt like I had to cut my speed in half. The next day, they felt great the whole time, weird. 

This is the Altoona Aquatic Center, which is technically the property this whole thing is on I think. 

Corrine doing some warming up. 

Staged and ready to roll. These events were running tight - almost no time for pre-riding between races.

Corrine currently beating some Nebraskans -

There was some equipment carnage early-on. This one was a tubular tire which rolled completely off the rim (these are supposed to be glued on). 

Hecklers.

Corrine doing some crushing--

And a finish on the podium to round out the day!

Night Cap!!

We'd all been looking forward to this one for a while and it delivered as usual. The only downside was, if you were Cody, then you may have tried to register after the race capacity limit had been reached at 100 riders. The existence of this limit was only made known on the bikeiowa.com website late the night before and it wasn't on the flier or anything. I'd seen this one hit the 70s before but wouldn't have guessed we'd need an artificial cap. There was a waiting list to fill slots left by no-shows which helped, but there weren't enough no-shows to let Cody in.

Men 4/5 went off right before sunset and it actually wasn't too cold yet. The leg and arm warmers were about right. This one was another category-staged mass start, which is kinda poor because I'm still in my auto-demoted category-5 and I have to ride through a big chunk of the 4's to get into a comfortable position. This whole split category start thing works much better when staging is done by USA Cycling rank. Fortunately, I'm good at start sprinting and got way up there before we made it onto the main course. Several other 5's went with me and then back half of the 4's kinda balled-up in a pile behind us. 

There was a nice stretch of tarmac (yes I really have been watching that much Top-Gear) to really fry your legs right after a tough climb.

Topping the big climb here. A fair amount of people were dismounting to run up it. It was pretty close to the practical limit for my gearing, especially since there was a corner at the bottom and you could only carry so much speed into it. 

With a couple races in between, Corrine went out well after dark. I ate hamburgers.

Mechanic pit! We've been making sure to keep a B-bike in the pit after the Bobber's Cross ordeal. It seems to reason that if we always put one in there, then we'll never need it? It was all manner of professional here - there was even a SRAM truck doing free repairs. 

Start!

As you can see, there are lot of turns and lots of two-way traffic, this place really is great.

Corrine heading into the big climb, well placed in the group.

I have no idea what this is...

The band was the best yet and actually played the whole time this year!

Finishing up a lap.

Corrine doing some passing. 

And also eating hamburgers...

Bobber's Cross ie: Tubeless Revolution

And so it began. Corrine decided to double-up on races at this one, racing her usual CX-4 and also the Pro/Open race. We mass started again so I didn't get to see any of the first race but while she was well out in front, Corrine flatted about seven minutes in. Far enough ahead of second place to spend time trying to re-inflate the tire with a C02 before second even got there, it was not salvageable and there was no bike in the pit to run to (I was riding it). There was a fast change up a hill from pavement to small fist-
sized rip-rap and I'm guessing the rim pinched it on there.

Corrine's Pro/Open race started immediately after mine so she found someone (thanks Scott) to replace the tube and was good to go, finishing the open race without incident. The wheels which came on her new Foundry CX bike turned out to be tubeless-ready so that was easy. They're all setup now and should be pretty well indestructible against puncturing or pinching.

Government anyway.

Corrine and I went for a night training ride to check out the whole shutdown thing around Red Rock. All of the roads and trails are blocked.

Shhhh, you can ride around the fences. The water level in the river down here is extremely low. 

IMBC #10 Lake Ahquabi State Championships

This is the MTB racing season finale, at Lake Ahquabi. Absolutely perfect weather and a great turnout in participation. Everybody was mass-started in short waves so I don't really have any pictures of actual racing. It was a great time with the, now standard, pot-luck feast afterward. Corrine and Cody both came away with first place finishes and State Champion titles while I finished up 6th and almost got a 3rd place State title due to a rule where you must have a valid annual license to receive a state award. Enough people didn't have current licenses that they made it back to 5th before finding a 3rd overall.

Before any race venue pictures, we have a couple pictures taken during the trip. This one ran extremely high on the WTF-factor scale. Here you have a woman who is driving along, reading a book which is resting on the steering wheel. She's got this figured out pretty well and only has to look up every 20 seconds or so. She even knew to anticipate stop lights and could continue reading while stopping. The truly amazing thing is that, if you look closely, you can see there is a mug of coffee and also a bowl of cereal on the dash to the right of the instrument cluster. After she stopped at a stop light (without looking) she proceeded to take a sip of coffee and replace the mug back up on the dash. 

Here's her license plate number. If you see her around, make sure to honk a couple time to wake her up.