Huge credit to the team down in Queenstown that made it happen. While cross has a rich heritage in europe it is essentially a newborn here in NZ so its a learning process for everyone. But QTMBC put together a great track, spectacular location, great crowd = the start of something big.
Perhaps my legacy on CX 2011 might be the Downhill bog.... A quick pre-event discussion with T-Man concluded a slippery slope was required. T-Man promptly grabbed a hose and began creating the soon to be centrepiece of the course.
Pretty spectacular location for a big race eh? Might look sunny, but the temp was struggling to crack zero. The lungs didn't lke it, but perfet for cross.
My race started well enough, then got a little over excited chasing Dan Warren and crashed rather spectacularly on an off camber rise early on losing contact. Whilst Dan heading off on a solo mission to dominate the day, I soon latched onto Alex Revell and proceeded to figure out strategy to get the better of him. Turns out the best strategy would have been to forget the strategy and just pedal. I had good legs for 50mins but unfortunately the race went 70. So despite feeling pretty confident all race, when it came down to it there wasn't anything left.
So congrats to Dan Warren and Alex Revell. I certainly learned plenty and think I may have developed a new addicition. There's an international CX scheduled for downtown Queenstown for Aug 20th. Airfares anyone...?
