US National CycloCross Championships 2012…

…found the biggest baddest cats in the cyclocross world and ran with ‘em thru frozen ruts, mud, slop and tears this past weekend at the US National Cyclocross Championships

Can’t begin to say enough about how much fun the weekend was regardless of how the racing went.  Madison/Verona WI played host to 5 days of almost non stop cyclocross racing.

I raced both Saturday & Sunday --  in a master category and then the Elite/Pro race.  Each  day had it’s highlights & low lights. 

The conditions could have been said to be really good or really bad.  While the weather was fantastic for what early January conditions could have been, it made for very challenging course terrain that alternated between slop & mud, and frozen ruts that had become a mainstay from the previous days races.

Certainly some of the most challenging conditions I’ve ever had to ride in for the entire length of a race.  Sat’s 10am masters race had the pleasure/displeasure of racing through frozen mud ruts in the early laps of the 6 laps race that eventually began to melt into gooey mud in the last laps as the temperatures heated up.

Plan to better recap things later, in both races I deemed a success in that I progressed up from where my call up starting positions were, but the between the size of the race fields and the course conditions, the further you started in the back it made for all that much more carnage to work around & slowed you to move up. 

Gotta say nice work to a few of my midwest fellow competitors in the races I participated in –  Tyler Jenema, Chris Smith, Matt Peterson, Jesse Reints, CJ Falkner, Hollywood Henderson and both Brian Matter & Tristan Schouten to name just a few. 

I gotta toss out a bunch of big thank you’s to my support that I got on Saturday, and the many shouts from many friends on Sunday.  When there are thousands of people lining the course and in every section there’s someone yelling your name & urging you on it’s a super cool feeling.  Thank you to every one of you that was out there!  I hope the show was worth it.  Once in awhile I’d get a chance to look up from the treacherous ground to see your face & give a smile of thanks.  Never underestimate how much your cheers help.  Whether it was you guys from the U.P. Cross, friends from North, or many others I’ve connected with through Mt Biking and Cross racing the past several years – thanks again it was really appreciated.

Thanks to the my coach Gordy Paulson, who’s been a great guy to work with this past year and who’s keen sense of what’s needed (and not needed) for training  even made it possible to arrive in reasonable racing shape after 12 long months of training & racing.  And lastly to The Ski Hut for the great support this past season in my cyclocross efforts, much appreciation out to those guys!

Here’s a couple pictures from Chris Schmidt but check just run a google search and it’ll yield a ton of videos and other pictures from the weekend.