Cross My Heart And Hope To Die Willoughby Cyclocross Spectacular - A Quick Wrap Up (WITH PICTURES!)

So, you know how I fared at the race, but today I want to talk a minute about the awesome course that Greg and the rest of the crew at Spin set up. Here's Greg with a little pre-race check of the course.

The course seemed to be much more technically thought out over last year. I'm sure everyone was thrilled out of their minds to see that the hill that I've dubbed "The Hill O' Pain" played a huge part again this year. There was a barrier at the bottom of the hill like last year,and the hill proved to be a royal pain for the class A guys (B&C only went to the half way point). The previous picture of the hill was at lap two... (Click a picture to pop it out bigger)

As far as additions, there was and addition that proved to be chaos.They added a set of switchbacks that were just nuts. You climbed a hill on a forty-five degree angle (off-camber climbs?) with two very quick switches. You started by climbing up at the forty-five degree angle.After that you did a 180º switch back down, and then another 180º switch back up.

There was a second hill that was added (I didn't get a good shot of it, but Ray had a sweet shot of it). The thing looked like you were about to ride into a wall! The A Class blew up it, a good portion of the rest of the group didn't know what the hell to think. People were test riding it all morning just to make their minds up, as to how they would handle it. Yet another addition was the mud pit.Ahhhh, the mud pit. All I can say is, boys love mud. It was the only puddle, let alone mud pit on the whole field... and it became a part of the race. The thing was pretty torn up, too, by the start of Class A. But it was a ton of fun.

Finally there was also an abundance of grass, some sand (ball field sand), random dirt, ruts, roots, the infamous fallen tree across the trail (which, for the second year I didn't think to shoot a picture of), and your fair share of racing on pavement, which made for some decent attacks.The pavement did, however seem to be kept at a minimum this year, as the upper lot they used got "repaved" with loose stone, er, old pavement that was ground from a nearby road resurfacing project.

Well, that about sums up the race this year. OH! and my buddy John did manage to pull out one decent action shot of me!
I was coming out of the woods where the mud pit ran along the river. Well, hope you enjoyed, I'll likely post results Thursday if they are available. Also, I'm going to be getting the pictures up on my Flickr, so be sure to check that out. I've got some up now, and will be adding more as I go through them.