Blue Goose Cyclocross - Idaho Falls

The inaugural Blue Goose Cyclocross is now history, but for one sunny afternoon in early November, Freeman Park in Idaho Falls made a nearly perfect venue for European style cyclocross.

The course itself circumnavigated the periphery of the park in a counter-clockwise fashion.  Owing to the park’s location along a bluff on the east bank of the Snake River, this led to plenty of off-camber left hand turns.  The course itself was defined by the usual perimeter tape and spray painted ground, but in many sections a path had been cleared through the blanket of Cottonwood leaves helping direct the racers through the course, and adding a degree of late fall “authenticity” to the event.  

A pretty good turnout

The start was a run-up past the south pavilion and from there turned quickly around trees and across the access road down to the river and then along the banks through a couple of short sand-pit sections.  The trail then snaked its way up along a creek bed before swinging high and then down again into a gully and across the creek bed (or alternately along a bridge) before turning north at the east edge of the park. 

Jeff - last lap!

Markings coming out of the gully were a bit confusing and once with my head down and hammering away I followed the white spray-painted trail off course, directly east, and had to make a looping course correction back to the next major obstacle – the BIG sand pit.

This pit was long, wide and deep enough that afterward I’m still trying to figure out what it’s used for when not intimidating cyclocross racers. (Tate reports it’s a sand volleyball court.) Fortunately, there was a straight run-up through the grass that let you pick up the speed before plowing through.  By the end I felt like I was carrying a shovel load of sand on my front wheel.

Tony in good form

The backside of the course moving west followed the tarmac trail allowing for some much needed rest, before dropping off again into some off camber S-turns. Then the course turned south again along the river before driving tightly uphill through the leaves and then down and up steeply once more to meet the three course barriers. 

Everyone had some trouble with these beasts as they were near the top of the hill and required that you keep pedaling right up to the brink.  Other than Tate who looked like he floated over these things, the rest of us had to renegotiate our attack strategy every lap.  Not only was the hill steep and the barriers closely spaced, but they were tall.  Tony’s assessment was that they came up to his chin.

Zach tearing it up

The good news was that after the barriers, it was a long downhill and then a couple of turns into the finish straightaway.  In the end we did seven laps, each about 1.4 miles, nearly 7 minutes per lap.  And like most CX races it was all out, all the time.

I wasn’t around for the earlier races, but the combined expert and master’s race was surprisingly deep for a first event.  One could wish for as good a turnout up at the Cube in the coming years.  It looked like the organizers were as surprised as anyone else at the popularity, and things can only get better as far as support goes in the future. 

Tate leaving everyone in his dust

Team Kelson had a good showing with Tate taking the overall first-place honors.  He went home with a very nice set of tubular tires.  Tony took third in a talented master’s field.  Zach and I did our best to stay ahead of the guys on mountain bikes and finished somewhere near the top end – but still out of sight of Tate’s finish.  Weston and Tate's friend Dave (his first cx race on a borrowed bike) also represented well from Rexburg.  Brian also deserves a shout-out for coming down to coach and cheer us all on.  In many ways he responsible for making all of us that much faster.  (I told him afterwards my Kelson is faster than I am).

All in all a great day, worthy venue and respectable effort by the race organizers putting together a well attended event.  Building on the long tradition of the Victor Velo group and the resurrected Cube, the Blue Goose rounds out a trifecta of southeast Idaho cyclocross that we’ll all look forward to racing in the future.

Stella loves cyclocross