Jingle Cross Rock

I just got back from the annual Jingle Cross Rock races in Iowa City. I’ve been going to this race now for 4 years and it’s always been an extremely hard weekend of racing and is great prep leading into Nationals and Belgium. The past two years Jingle Cross has been 3 days of racing with the first race being Friday night. Not sure what I think of racing cross at 8:00 pm in late November but it never turns out to be that bad and I always have a great time racing at night. This year the conditions were dry due to frozen ground and ice made for some slick corners and a sketchy decent down Mt. Krumpet. My call-up wasn’t great and I started in the back. I had a bit of slow start getting thru all the traffic but by the end of the first two laps I finally reached the top 20 only to find the gaps were pretty big between the lead groups due to the technical nature of the course that night. Realizing I wasn’t going any where I ended up riding tempo and maintained my position. This being my first race back from my crash in Ft. Collins, I was taking it pretty conservative and finished 18th.

Saturday is the big running day of the weekend and probably not my best suited day. Temps were warmer and the course was tacky. The notorious run up Mt. Krumpet lived up to its reputation with shin-high mud in places which made for a very hard slog up the hill. Started the day feeling flat and once again in the back of starting grid. It took nearly two laps to reach the top 20. After about 45 minutes I decided to bag it and save it for Sunday’s C1 race.

We arrived early to the course on Sunday to find everything frozen solid. The course quickly thawed as the day warmed up to the low 50’s and by 2:30 conditions became much faster than races earlier in the day. The layout of the course was a bit different than the previous days with a bit more pedaling which seemed to suit me. My legs felt much better and rested from the day before. Finally got a good call-up and started third row. I started fast with good positioning going off the pavement only to find myself on the ground in the middle of a pile-up. I got up kind of slow due to getting the wind knocked out of me but linked up with Steve Tilford who reminded me that it was a long race and not to panic and just stay steady. Steve helped pull me around in the windy sections which saved a lot of energy for later in the race. He was big help in keeping the pace steady yet really fast and we worked ourselves back up to the top 20 with about 3 to go. I felt pretty good and decided to put in a good dig to reach the group going for the last few UCI points. In the end, it was too far and I ended 19th. Very frustrating to say the least, but all in all felt like I had a good race coming back from DFL after the crash.

The rest of the KCCX team had a great weekend with Tom Price sweeping the Masters 45+ and Bill Marshall placing top 10 all three days in the 35+.  Luke had a good showing in the Cat 2's also finishing top 10 all three days.   We all made it back to Kansas by 10:30 Sunday night for 1 day of work and repacking before the team leaves for the last USGP in Portland, OR and then Nationals the following weekend in Bend. Can you say road trip…


Climbing Mt. Krumpt on Day 2 (phote by Keith Walburg)



Steve dropping me on the down hill!