Race Report: Boss Cross #2

Big day of firsts for me down in Kansas City for the opening weekend of the Boss Cross series. First race without wearing gloves. First race using file treads. First race bailing while hopping the barriers. First race using white socks (tried to harness some euro pro Nys power). What else? Think that's enough changes for one race.

Anyway, we skipped out on Saturday's race to catch the Nebraska-Wisconsin game but was genuinely excited to race again at EH Young park. It'd been a couple years but the flat course has cool off-cambers, good sand sections and plenty of punchy corners. It's also awesome because the level of competition is high so you get maximum benefit pushing hard for an entire hour.

The race started well enough, slotted in third wheel behind Joe Schmalz and Brendon Jenks. I opted to take whatever line through the sand that they didn't and it worked beautifully. I blasted through on the left while Joe got stalled out and Brendon buzzed his tire. I cleaned the second sand section just as fast and got to the barriers first jumping them cleanly. By the end of lap one I had opened up a 7 second lead and was settling in to a good tempo.

All good after the start
Photo: Roger Harrison/Lanterne Rouge

Then this happened...

Inadvertently clipping out in between two barriers is never good. I did my best to try and jump over the bars and land on my feet, but... I got up only to find that I'd dropped my chain and then proceeded to make it worse by attempting to shift it back on. All this resulted in me having to run the bike to the pits. And it wasn't very close. One of the awesome promoters had my spare bike waiting for me and I was off.

Enter the file treads. I didn't have enough time to get my second second of Fangos glued up after my pinch flat in Wisco so I opted for file treads. I was met with a bike that was ripping fast on the hard dry course and cornered pretty well too. I thought about riding it out for the remainder of the race but decided to grab my bike with the Fangos after Rafal ran back to the pits and checked it out for me.

By this time I was back in 10th place or something and was in full chase mode. Joe was pretty far up the course with Jeff Winkler floating somewhere behind him. It took me a good lap to get my breath back under me after my long run and then I got on with the arduous task of hunting down the leaders. After another 3 or 4 laps I'd worked my way back into third but the chase had taken it's toll. I was loosing little bits of ground to Jeff and Joe until about 4 laps to go when I got a second wind. I started bringing both of them back but it was too little too late and I eventually sat up and cruised home on the last lap.

I'm bummed because I was really looking forward to racing head-to-head with Joe, but, maybe next week.

Cat 1/2/3 Podium
Andrew Coe, Jeff Winkler, Joe Schmalz, Moi, Casey Buta

The whole Nebraska road squad did awesome. Paul Webb and Kevin Wilkins went 6th and 7th in 25+ rider 1/2/3's field. Jordan Ross won the Cat 3 race and Rafal Doloto took 4th in the singlespeed after a miss-hap as well. Pretty solid day of racing.

Next up, Wednesday night racing in Lincoln at the Flatwater Twilight CX series follow by the Fontenelle GP here in Omaha.