What an amazing race day today. The Chicago Cross Cup has seen just about everything a good Chicago fall has to offer and today we got the good stuff. There was just enough bite in the air to know it was cross season, but enough sun bursting through the clouds to warm the riders and keep a huge crowd out all day.
Enough about the weather already! – I know, but it’s hard to start a conversation without the weather right?
The best part about yesterday was the family atmosphere. There were more families racing together than our team has seen in a while.
We had the John the Destroyer lap the field in the kiddie race with some of the best dismounts I saw the whole day.
Sorry Mara – you shouldn’t bet against JtD.
We had the Paradis girls placing well and riding hard in the 15-18 juniors.
Our biggest BH family, The Heusers, had entries in the 5 year old kiddie (Jaimie), 8 year old kiddie (Mack), Junior 10-14 (Chris), Junior 14-18 (Andy), and even big daddy (Eric) enter his first race ever in 4b.
Grace Goudreau, with some awesome encouragement from Mara and Ashley did her first race and she loved it.
Ara’s mom came out to support the team
We even had the Slausons from our sister team in TX show up to support the race.
That was the recap of the blood families, but the most impressive family was the Bicycle Heaven Family. We really came together and put on the best race of the year. Thank you to everyone that came out to help with the setup and race day. There is so much to think about for an event like this and we made it look easy. Thanks to Rob for all his hard work making this event happen.
Blah Blah…Now for the actual race report. Today we saw a huge group of BH CX racers. Together we raced in 34 races and we were competitive in almost all of them. Results Here
Notable Results –
- John Craychee was on top of the podium and continues to dominate the 60+
- Ashley Korol hit the podium in 3rd after a hard ride fought race.
- Eric Christ took 5th in the 3s race.
- Andy Heuser was 6th in Junior 15-18. Keep moving up that list Andy.
- Matt Stewart is back and letting people know with a 6th in a solid 40+ field
- Mark Moeller – 17th in 30+ and 10th in 40+
- Shon Zeller raced his last 4’s race placing 17 in 4a and 9th in 4b.
On the fun side, this is the Halloween race so we saw some great costumes. The early race costumes were lame, but who can blame them when no one comes out to watch those races. The later races and particularly the Women and 4’s made up for it. Check out some of these great costumes.
Mara on the phone
My vote for best costume
Crash test dummy looking smooth
For more pictures take a look at this album with pictures from setup to the end of the 4b race.