I went to Kansas City yesterday and raced the Boss Cross. It is a long standing series that Jeremy Haynes has been promoting for the last dozen years at least. It used to be in small parks throughout the downtown KC area, but recently has moved into more “cross type” venues. I think I liked the urban crosses better, but now there are over 200 guys racing, so that doesn’t work out so well.

I didn’t decide to go to the race until nearly it was time to leave. I picked up Bill, then Brian and made our way, the hour, over to KC. The course was pretty good. It had a good mix of technical corners and riding sections, but it was pretty bumpy. And there were two sand runs that were way too long. Maybe 25 meters each, with no chance of riding any of it either way.

I won the race. I never really got going, but I never wasn’t going either. I was following Andrew Coe most of the first lap. We had a small gap on the rest of the field. Andrew screwed up riding this steep hill that was loose and I took over. I never felt like I had a big ability to punch it, but was more just dieseling around. The ground was rock hard, so it was pretty hard getting the right pressure down. I ended up with something like 27 psi front and rear. I never really folded my tires over, so maybe I could have went a little lowere.

My back started seizing up with about 15 minutes to go. I was running into lapped riders continually by then, so I was having to keep my head up. It seemed like I was lapping big groups always at the wrong spot. It didn’t really matter, I had a pretty good cushion and even when I was having bad laps, I wasn’t losing any time.

Anyway, I have a hard time figuring this sport out. It is super hard, as we all know. I don’t understand why I can do two cross races last weekend in Madison, and have no lower back issues and then this fairly flat race and be toast. Maybe it was the 22 running sand sections. It was slow as hell and painful. Plus, I don’t get how I got fairly smeared by two minutes, by two of these guys in St. Louis, John Schottler and Josh Johnson, both from Big Shark, and then beat them here when I felt like I was riding much worse. Even Andrew Coe’s time in St. Louis was a couple minutes faster than mine. Go figure.

So, I’m getting up in 5 and a half hours and am driving over to Lawrence to ride an 100 mile gravel road ride with a bunch of guys. It is sort of organized. And it has sort of become an annual tradition. It looks to be a pretty nice fall day with the high approaching 85. That is going to seem pretty hot. I could go to the Boss Cross #2, at the same venue, but the gravel road ride is just plain fun. Plus, I can probably use the miles. I’m not sure which one my back would approve of more. I guess I’ll see in a few hours.

Notice my number, 11. Couldn’t lose the race with that number.

Yesterday was perfect bike riding weather. I love the fall. The cool, crisp mornings that heat up to nearly perfect temperatures. That was yesterday here in Kansas.

I went over to Lawrence and did a perimeter loop of Douglas County on gravel with a bunch of other guys. There were probably 25 of us or so at the start. Some weren’t doing the full 100 miles, but wanted to get a good ride in before family obligations got in the way. Anyway, no matter how far you went, it was a real nice day to ride a bike.

I’ve done this ride the past 4 years and this was by far the nicest weather for it. Eastern Kansas isn’t as flat as one might think. It rolls pretty good. We rode on a lot of pretty primitive roads. They weren’t dirt, but they didn’t receive gravel or maintenance on any kind of routine basis. I love those roads. Only maybe 10 cars passed us the whole ride. It hasn’t rained here for a long while, so when a car did go by, there was quite a dust plume.

It was 65 miles before we stopped for lunch. That is a good way to split up a long ride. 2/3, 1/3. I never would normally stop and eat a full lunch out training, but this wasn’t training, it was riding.

Thom Leonard got a bunch of bread from WheatFields, brought cheese and meat. The only thing we were missing was red wine. It was hard getting going after lunch. A lot of guys decided to just roll back to town, so it all split into smaller groups, which was fine.

All and all, a perfect way to spend a Sunday. I have no regrets not going over to KC to defend my Boss Cross lead. I was/am mildly crippled from Saturday’s race. Probably all the running in the sand and the bumpy course. Whatever the reason, I made a good decision to spend the whole day out on my bike with friends.

This is a good example of what we call hedgerow here in Kansas. It is really Osage Orange trees, but we still call it hedge. The wood is super hard and dense. It was said back in the Indian day, that a good hedge bow was worth two horses. Shows how hard it would be to make a bow out of hedge back then.