Adrenalin CX

A baby seal walks into a club and says, "Ow."

My CX training and racing so far has been severely hampered by Pampers. Ha ha. Meaning, I have a new born son in my life. The kid is awesome, so much fun and…I’m not at all tired from lack of sleep /s. Don’t EVER let your wife hear you say you’re tired. Here’s why - when you’re snoozing away at 3AM and she’s up feeding your little bundle of joy she wants to punch you in the face. Nothing against your face, but it’s closer than your balls. I penciled (nothing in stone w/kids) Adrenalin CX as a must do early season race keeping to the Team tradition of supporting non-Bubble events. Before the race the good folks at Team Adrenalin released a course map and description of the venue. I love when they do this. It gives me an opportunity to practice/train specifics and pre-ride. Most noteworthy in there narrative was “long run-up” and I practiced accordingly – go fast, jump off bike, run, jump on bike, “nutter? no”, smile, repeat. An aside: having a kid means I’m supposed to be faster! Watch out.

Game day 
I got an excellent call-up. I was fully expecting to start at the back, but because of new rules brought from Borg assimilation I got was called quickly. If you haven’t noticed, call-up rankings have changed significantly under Borg rule:

• The rankings are based on your BEST five results over the past year. If you ate dirt, raced sick, wife had a baby it won't be counted against you.
• Mid-week racing doesn't count in the new system. When Crossresults.com managed rankings B2B races were included.
• Racing up a category doesn't help unless you beat racers ranked ahead of you or do better than a race in your top 5.
• Racking up Cross Cup points in the hinterlands hoping to better your call-up is a thing of the past. This is unfortunate because non-bubble races become less attractive to some. The reason is quality points given to a race are based on the top five racers in the event. (confused yet?)

Because I had one good race at the end of last year I was sitting pretty in the second row. Unfortunately, I squandered my position quickly and although in the top ten on lap two, I went backwards forthwith. Crashing several times didn't help, but not crashing wouldn't have hurt (double entendre!?) my result. Overall the course was cool with long flat stretches (but not too long), bunny-hops, kickers, grass, sand and so forth – a real mixed bag of tricks. What sucked (for me) were stretches of bumps and a sharp turn to a run-up with barriers. These barriers wouldn't normally be a problem as it’s not my first rodeo. Anyways, I crashed twice at these barriers after specifically practicing my-uh-run-ups. First tearing a tendon in my thumb making my last three laps…interesting, second provoking thoughts of baby seals….

First lap: Baby seals. Aren't we cute? 

Said barriers: Here’s how it’s done son. 

“Hey look, a baby seal, get ‘em” 

Teammates watched, entertained and concerned. 

Post-race laughs enjoyed at my expense. 

Overall this was a great race put on by Team Adrenalin, DBC et al. They nailed the course design, expo, timing, etc. Maximum fun. Can’t wait to do this again. 

Pictures courtesy of Pedaldancer.com.

(Disclaimer: no actual baby seals were harmed; this happens.)