Stories from Northbrook

The results are posted here (riders sorted by their overall standings, not by their results at Northbrook).

Joe Kallo (M-4, UCVC)

I was also hurting a whole lot, and not paying attention to my hup hup. In the last two laps, I kept shifting the wrong direction because of the way the SRAM shifters work (well that, and my dumbass decision not to dress properly), so I gave up shifting.

Beverly Bike-Vee Pak

After ascending the stairs you had the pleasure of riding the most challenging section we have ridden all year, three off-camber muddy, greasy turns where if you had too much speed, or hesitated just a bit you found yourself upside down. And believe me, more than a few people were trying to ride that section who had no business doing so, and some were making it look easy.

KillJoy

I was almost successfully making the turn when I decided to go against everything I have learned in mountain biking and grabbed my brakes mid turn. This obviously caused my wheels to lock up and there was CRASH #1! I was able to get back on my bike quick even though it literally knocked the snot out of me (hopefully there isn't a pic of that).

Jeff Holland (M-3, XXX)

Great technical course, true cross weather, too bad I didn't bring my A-game. I had a good start, until someone plowed into the back of me about 200m into the race, which sent me right into Jacques. He managed to stay up, but it caused me to have to stop and remount. After that, I kept sliding back from the leaders. Add a crash where I wrapped my seatpost in some marker tape and went down, and a crash on the last lap down the hill trying to avoid another crashed rider, and I rolled in for 22nd place.

Pony Shop Cyclocross

On to the race...Thank you to the Garner Northbrook Bike Club and Flatlandia Cycling Team for setting up a fantastic course, which had two rarities, no man made barriers, and 2 stair run ups per lap. I never really thought about the lack of barriers, didn't miss them at all, the course had a really good flow to it, with lots of turns, but more importantly off camber turns, very tricky. The weather helped add to the technical challenge of the course and made it really feel like the Motherland.

Tamara Fraser (W-4, XXX)

As I came through the start/finish, steeling myself for another lap or two, the officials were standing in front of the lap counter. "How many more?" I asked, they called back, "You're done!" Woooo!

Jim Brody (Pony Shop)

On the 3rd lap I started getting passed in the technical stuff, first Mike and Randy from xXx, then a DICE rider, then James from Turin. I tried to stay with each one, but then I'd have to slow down in a corner. Just too tentative in the corners, wasting massive amounts of energy braking and then having to re-accelerate.