This year’s Jingle Cross Rock in Iowa City took on a Woodstock vibe with muddy conditions, blaring music and good times had by all. The music wasn’t live but the racing was. The three day event/Children’s hospital fundraiser ($25,000 raised – VeloNews) was an entertaining success.
As you may already know if you follow this blog, Dave entered Sunday’s Cat 4 race. I chose to spectate and cheer him on instead of racing this year. I kept going back and forth for the last few months on whether to race or not, and finally ended up wimping out since I hadn’t been practicing and wasn’t feeling fit enough to enjoy myself. Excuses, excuses, I know. There’s always next year.
The muddy conditions of this year’s races made for some entertaining spectating and a showing of grownups looking like children after an afternoon making mudpies turned mudfight. The best viewing area was at the bottom of Mount Krumpet looking up a steep, muddy hill where riders had to carefully descend down a rutted-out muddy track, then steer into a sharp, right turn at the bottom without wiping out or losing control.
People were sliding all over, falling down, having mechanical problems and getting mud stuck in places before unknown. The singlespeed race on Sunday had a team wearing bikinis and speedos who were gallivanting through the course including a couple riding a tandem bike. At one point, a few of the bikini girls hopped off their bikes for some fun in the mud and one yelled, “Pyramid!” They proceeded to make a muddy-people-pyramid and cheered on the other riders.
The elite races were a great showing of the skill and athleticism of the participating men and women. As they raced around the course at impressive speeds and navigated through slick areas and steep switchbacks with ease, it was quickly evident that these ARE the elite.
This year was my third Jingle Cross Rock. Every year has gotten bigger than the one before. Hopefully the fun-filled sport will continue to grow and hopefully I’ll get off my lazy butt and get training so I’ll have the guts to enter a race next year.
- MICHELLE
[...] Read my whole blog post here. Michelle also writes about how fun and successful JingleCross in her post. [...]
What a fantastic race!
I’m not too sure I would want to be beaten by a bloke in a bikini or someone riding a tandam though. That could be highly upsetting.