Jingle Cross Day 1

Brian and myself made the drive down to Iowa early this morning after crashing at Elicia's house in Madison. We stopped after an hour or so for a little local cuisine at Marilyn's Cafe. The sign looked OK but the food was awesome, especially the pecan pie.

Shortly after hitting the road we noticed a bunch of birds in the field next to us. It looked like turkey vultures at first until we noticed they all had white heads and tails. The farmer must have put a carcase in the field because there were upwards of 50 bald eagles. I know it's hard to believe so I put up a picture to back it up. Check out the tree with them all sitting in it!

We rolled into the race 2 hours early to scope it out and get a decent warm up in. The start was a little sketch with the normal countdown going from 1 minute to start to go 10 seconds later. This caught a lot of people off guard including myself. I got things rolling and was able to work into a decent position by the first barrier. Things got pretty hairy right after that up the first climb. The rider in 2nd place crashed in the off camber mud and caused a huge pile up and left the two Wells brothers to roll away from everyone else for the 1-2 finish. I wish I could say my race went as well as Todd and Troy but that's just not the case. The run up was called Mount Krumpet and it felt like a mountain each and every time up it. Between the actual sloppy run and the additional vertical riding after it proved to take its toll in the form of lost time and energy. My lack of running and the Wells brother's gap from the early pile up caused my race to end a little sooner than I had hoped. Hopefully tomorrow is a little better which is hard to say with a forecast of 20 something and snow. Could be another Jersey?