Missoula Montana hosted this year’s championships which were open to racers from the US, Canada, Central America, and South America. The northernly location meant that it was mostly US and Canadian riders in attendance, but there were strong fields to battle for the coveted PanAm jerseys that were on the line. I raced four times over the three days in attempt to gain as many rankings points as possible for my upcoming trip to US Cyclocross Nationals in December. The cyclocross races in California are not sanctioned by USA Cycling which means that without other races I would be lined up on the last row at Nationals….
Friday was the start of the festivities for me with a master’s 50-59 race and the open men’s race. The fields were fairly small and I took advantage of testing lots of different lines on the course, knowing that Saturday’s race would be more competitive and then the Pan Am championship would hopefully be my focus. In the master’s race I rode conservatively in a group of three and then attacked on the last lap to take the win. The open men’s race started just five minutes after I finished the masters, so I put down a couple of gels and hoped for the best. I had a good start but faded relatively quickly so I tried to just hold my position and ended up in 7th place.
By Saturday all the fast riders had arrived for the championship on Sunday and the master’s 50-59 race was quite large and included the current US national champion as well as other top riders. After the first lap I was in around 7th place and started to pick off riders. I kept the two leaders in sight and by the time we got to two laps to go I was in 4th spot. I guess I could have ridden conservatively to finish 4th, but my competitive instincts kicked in and I committed to getting across to the two leaders. I made the junction on the final lap and then passed both riders to take the lead with half a lap to go. I rode as fast as possible on the short straight sections and took the inside line on the corners to force my pursuer to take the long way around if he wanted to pass. He made a slight mistake clipping a post with three turns to go so I held on for the victory without having to sprint!
Sunday was the championship event and I had a slightly less competitive field since the age category was 55-59 so I did not have to go against the 50-54 crowd. But the man to beat was a Canadian who was last year’s champ and he had not raced on Saturday, or 4 times in 3 days 🙂 I stayed with him for the first couple of laps but he slowly pulled ahead of me as we worked our way through the traffic of other age categories that had started just in front of us. So it was 2nd place on the day and a well deserved rest!
I was also happy to support Justin Peck in his U23 Men’s races during this trip. He has had the opportunity this fall to race for the Bear National Team for their cyclocross program. So even though the team has a mechanic and other support at the races it was still great to watch him race and help him out. He finished 18th in Saturday’s elite race and then 10th in the U23 Pan Am Championship race on Sunday. But his Bear National program is just for cyclocross this fall so he will most likely be back in an LGBRC jersey next season for mountain bike.
