Submitted by John Elgart on 11/30/09
It was a perfect day at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco -- 70 degrees, a huge turnout of racers, and a cheering crowd high on, um, well cyclocross I guess.
In my 55+ race, the dawn prelude to the day's racing, I got away with the juniors again. This time I got edged out by some kid from Santa Cruz -- sorry don't know his name -- who got in front of me over the last set of barriers. Actually I think that this is kind of great. The juniors should certainly be beating me.
About half a minute back was Frank Curesma, then Greg Sage, Brian Burch & Tom Fox. For GG Park we also had some names from the hoary past of cross like Otis Guy. And Gary Fisher was hanging out in his Tweed Ride kit -- very cool, too bad he didn't race in it.
In other races, Luna pro Katerina Nash showed up for the Women's A race. Karen Brems and Barb Howe stayed with Katerina for a lap or so before she put a safe distance between herself and the field. Barb took 2nd and Karen 3rd -- and Karen took back the leaders jersey. In the Men's A, Chris Jones was the class of the field without resorting to the ninja barrier hopping of Justin Robinson and others. He just rode away from all by riding much faster.
The crowd favorite of this year's GG Park race was the crash inducing downhill -- check out the photos for face plants and treed riders:
http://www.facebook.com
Also for some comparison, here's World Cup #4:
http://www.teambeer.info/movies/20091128_worldcup4_koksijde.mp4
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