Jingle Cross Iowa City Day 3. 2011.

The rain had stopped, but it had felt much colder. The mud was thicker too, many more broken bikes today. The start was much better today. Instead of making that left into a 180d right, we just made a sweeping left 90d turn and looped around real easy into a nice mud pit.

I was 4th into the holeshot and moved up to 3rd before the 2nd mud pit. We got to the runup and I sucked again, but not as bad as last time. I kept in the top 9 and the descent I passed a few riders.

The descent was much easier today, it was fresh grass and you didn't have to run any of it. The bottom was a mud hole. The worst kind that just caked up your bike. After that section was the gravel section, perfect, you get rocks into the mud and poof, off goes your derailleur, thats what happened to me after the 1st lap. I jumped on my ss, it had my beloved piranhas on it, 3 seasons old, worn down really good. It was hard but I finished the race with it. With 1 lap to go my wheels were barely turning. The side knobs of the tires were grabbing the mud the wheels barely turned with it all over the rear brake and bottom bracket. I ran up to the top of the hill for the last time getting passed by 1 guy at the top where he could ride and my ss could not. At the bottom of the hill I could see the next rider coming, he was 5 seconds back going into the circle of death, coming out I still had the gap but when we hit the gravel into the finish he simply shifted up and pedaled around me while I spun in for 8th.

The pros were switching bikes every lap, you had to, I wish I had a geared bike and maybe an extra derailleur and hanger in the pit, probably would have been top 5 pretty easily.

Next year, jingle cross will be the weekend before thanksgiving, I am looking forward to it.

If you are going, here's what you need to be doing to train for it.


2 times a week, every week in october. Go to Eaton and Cambridge in KCK. Run up cambridge as fast as you can with your bike over your shoulder. Get to the top do 15 10 second max efforts with 15 seconds rest in between. Do 5 sets. If you plan on racing elite, do 8 sets.