It's been a while since I have posted, but a lot has gone on with cyclocross. The season went pretty well considering my dismal failure last year, so I can't really complain. I still need to figure out how to bridge the gap from being mid-pack to somewhere closer to the front, so there is still work to do.
After Gateway Cross Cup I stuck to local races and looked forward to the state championship race in Topeka. Sadly the week before I got sick and was pretty much worthless, so I had no choice but to skip it. This was disappointing since it was an event I had been looking forward to all year. I guess I already know what I'll be targeting next season! The season finished with the normal holiday season races in the KC area: Boxing Day Cross, Grot Prijs Shawnee, and Cross Off the Old Year. These were all fun races that were well organized. Since I recently sold my geared cross bike to make room for something new, I did the SS races in all of these events. It was fun battling with Joe Fox and Britton Kusiak, and I even managed to pick up a couple wins. I considered doing the open races on my SS, but my fitness just didn't feel right after being sick earlier in the month.
This year will be full of lots of riding and racing again, and hopefully riding more in the early months will help since last year I focused more on running for the first 1/3 of the year. I'm going to pick up a SS mountain bike, and my intention is to work in as many SS races as I can. I'll also be doing as many gravel races as I can on my SS cross bike. This will include the Dirty Kanza 200, which should be a brutal yet fun ride, and I'll have no choice but to try to defend my SS gravel world championship in August. Both of the SS bikes will be new additions to my stable, so I'll likely post on that sometime in the relatively near future. Both are geared bikes, so my plan is to convert both to SS by using the Beer Components EBB30 eccentric bottom bracket. I've heard great things about this item, so I am fully confident that my SS conversion problems from 2011 will not repeat!
