I’ve been racing bikes for a really long time. So long that I hardly recognize that a lot of the thoughts and worries I have don’t even occur to the “normal” person.

A cyclists life is pretty weather dependent. Maybe it is because I’m out in the weather more than the average person, I don’t know, but the weather does affect what I do on a daily basis and where I’m currently located at any given time.

The weather here in Kansas has been stellar the last few days. October is a good month though. The average high for the month is 69 and the average low is 44. Not bad.

It has been pretty extremely windy the last few days. The highs have been in the upper 80’s, so the wind is coming from the South at 30 mph. I don’t mind the wind too much. I actually like to race in windy conditions. Makes the day interesting.

I did the 70 mile gravel ride to Lawrence again yesterday. This time with Bill. He flatted both his front Tufo tubular and rear clincher, so we had to ride back on the road. The road was so much more exposed and the cross wind made the ride much harder than riding on the gravel.

So, I’m sitting here in super pleasant, fall conditions and am looking at the weather in Colorado and am having a hard time getting motivated into arranging a trip out that direction. In Ft. Collins, it’s supposed to rain/snow all weekend and be in the 40’s. That is cyclo-x racing weather, not cyclo-x watching weather. Well, it is cyclo-x watching weather if that is what you’re really into at the moment, but I’m not right now. And Steamboat isn’t any better.

Today it is crazy windy again. I used to always ride MTB on days like today, but I’m thinking about just riding over to Lawrence again on gravel. That would make close to 325 miles this week on gravel and I still have another day left. There are a couple cross races down in Texas with pretty good prize money this weekend. I doubt I could get anyone else too excited for that. Or maybe I’ll get motivated and head West to watch some guys get dirty and ride my MTB up in the mountains.

It hasn't rained here for weeks and the ground is cracking like crazy.

The ponds out in the country are so low that Bromont comes back looking like a pig.

Steamboat weather isn't much different than Ft. Collins.

Okay. I’ve been looking at the ranking system that USAC is using and can’t really figure it out at all. I’m pretty good with numbers, but these numbers are baffling. I’ve sent a bunch of emails to USAC and only have one returned. They corrected part of the issue, but just created or maybe more accurately, exposed another. Here’s an example below. This is cut from the USAC website for the Jingle Cross UCI race last year. Here is the Elite results and ranking points awarded. Remember the lower points are better.

Now here are the results from the Master’s 35+ race.

Supposedly the higher quality the field, the lower the ranking points. Here in the Elite race, you have arguably 5 of the top 10 cross racers in the country. And in the Master’s race you have a bunch of Master’s guys. Not close to the same quality of field. But, the first two places in the Master’s race received a better ranking score than the winner of the Elite race.

I think I’ll eventually talk to someone at USAC that knows something about this ranking system, but it would be nice to be better informed before talking. So, if anyone has an interest in trying to figure out this new algorithm and could explain it to me in layman’s terms, I’d be more than happy to listen.