Alpha Cross #1

Today was the first of two races put on by the guys from Alpha Bicycle Company, a great little shop down in the Denver Tech Center area off of I-25 and Arapahoe. The race venue was a dirt lot behind the City of Centennial's city offices. Because of the high heat and little moisture we've seen lately, much of the course was very loose dirt, which was almost the consistency of sand, and other sections of significant washboard due to small patches of grass holding the loose dirt and sand in place.

With a Boulder Racing race the previous day, and a good distance to travel, registration for the Cat. 4 race was 24 racers (compared to 62 on Saturday). With the call ups based on last year's BCR points then on registration order, I landed a third row start position, which was the last row for our race. I took an outside position for the start, slipped a pedal but then cut a line across the pack to get an inside position through turn 1 and turn 2 leading into the dirt. This put me around 8th wheel but riders balled up in a quick, loose drop at turn 3 and some charging put me into 3rd or 4th wheel. Spencer, from the Clif Bar Development team, was off the front and I sat in behind a Vitamin Cottage rider and a Primal Wear rider down through the back of the course.

As the course wrapped back uphill towards the start finish, I made a move to put me into second wheel and charged ahead. I would hold second position for the remainder of the race watching Spencer hang anywhere from 20-40 seconds ahead of me. I could tell on the last lap that he was slowing down but not enough for me to make the catch.

With 2.5 laps to go, coming through a hairpin section, the rider in 3rd calls out, "Are we holding 2nd and 3rd?" I respond, "Yeah" followed with a a few extra pedal strokes to try and open up a bigger gap thinking he was about to come charging and pass me in the final laps but it never happened. I crossed the line in 2nd place, 20 or so seconds from 1st, to take my first podium spot in a cross race (although there was no podium).

Other race reports:
Mountain Flyer's Race Report