Sunday, October 10, 2010

Hyattsville CX - 10/10/10

Well I'm off to a great start – never blogged about last weekend's races, and they were two that I had never been to before! I need to remember that if I want to make this blog successful I need to make the time to write, instead of putting it off every day and ending up never getting to it at all. I still may end up writing about last weekend, especially Winchester, because that Belgian Wall? Was completely epic.

Today was the Hyattsville race, which I love if for no other reason than that it's one of only two races that are less than half an hour from my house. But there's much more than that to this race. The city really gets behind it which is always awesome, the mayor of Hyattsville even made a little speech! But my favorite element is that the proceeds go to the Special Olympics, and that they have Special Olympics athletes on hand to share in the experience. A lot of people pay lip service to “giving back,” but it's impressive to actually see it in action. Kudos to Arrow/Route One Velo!

Another distinguishing feature about today's race was that it was HOT. After the painfully scorching summer we suffered through, we've been blessed with a very pleasant and temperate cx season so far. And although today was only in the low 80s, the sun was merciless, and ended up sending me to less than ideal vantage points in search of shade. Most of my quality watching time was spent near the volleyball sand pit, which is pretty exciting since it can be a bit of a bottleneck when bigs groups come through at once, but by the third race of the day the sand was well packed enough that everyone was riding straight through with little difficulty.

I then watched some of the later races from the beer garden area, which is ideally located next to the barriers, plus with purchase of pint glass, free beer! I can't remember exactly what I drank, and while it was a little bitter for me, it was still pretty tasty. CX races definitely help me expand my beer horizons!

Really this weekend just served to whet my appetite for Granogue though. I'd be hard pressed to rank the exact order of my top five favorite races, but it's definitely up there, and probably even the top one or two. Looking forward to a fun road trip, good friends, and a great race!

No comments:

Post a Comment