Okay, so it’s not a million dollars, but anytime you walk away from a bike race with a few bucks in your pocket, it’s a big deal. Tate won the Crosstober Cyclocross Race in Sun Valley yesterday. He is too modest to say this, so I will say it for him. If you have ridden with Tate, you know he is very talented, hard working, and is often at his best in difficult conditions. A cross race with a 100 meter sandpit would be a pretty tough sell for me. I asked to Tate to write something up for the blog. His story is below.
This weekend I travelled to Hailey Idaho to race Crosstober festival, which is held in conjunction with the 10th annual October festival of Sun Valley. The racecourse was fast and technical it included a 100-meter sandpit (which couldn’t be ridden), an 8 stair run up, and 3 barriers. Unfortunately due to the fact that I didn’t do the time trial the night before I was forced to start on the last row of a packed field. After having talked with Tim Meikle a lot this week on race strategy I decided that this would be a great opportunity to try out a few new tactics and they worked perfectly. Instead of killing myself on the first lap to get to the front then being exhausted once I got there I decided to ride it at an uncomfortable pace passing people when I could while still realizing that there were 60 minutes of racing ahead of me. By lap 3 I was getting in the grove of the course, and with 2 laps ago I attacked my field and managed to get away on one of the long straight a ways into the headwind. All things considered it was an amazing course super fun. Everyone needs to put it on their calendar for next year. On a side note the spectators were awesome I don’t doubt that Octoberfest had something to do with it but regardless it was fun plus I got paid big time for the win and won a first place belt buckle. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures to share due to the fact that I travelled alone and didn’t want to wait till 6pm for the podium awards.
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