eeeek...I love race season!!! Cycling races are so incredibly family friendly and oh-so fun for the Clayton Crew. The kids love playing around while we cheer our favorite cyclocross racer on! This past Saturday was Daniel's first race of the season. He is pretty excited now that we live in Austin because there are several races around this area that he can participate in unlike Lubbock where he would have had to make a weekend trip (that didn't happen often since he works on Sundays). The other exciting tid bit of news is that he has fellow Velocity (Lubbock bike shop) buddies that moved to San Marcos that he gets to race with!
Adam (far left) is actually a "pro" so he races a different category and Uncle Kent (right of Daniel) is also in a different category, but with races happening all day there is plenty of time to catch up...
and even warm up together on the course. Daniel's parents came to town for the weekend to help us kick off race season and joined us in the fun as well as meeting up with Aunt Debbie (Kent's wife)!
The kids had a blast playing around and goofing off with dad...
the weather was beautiful and the music was rockin' as we sat around under the trees cheering the guys on...
I always get a little geeked up to watch Daniel race...I'm definitely his number one fan :). Unfortunately with three kids and a busy life we don't always get the amount of time we both wish for, but we do try to carve out time for each other to get training in...
by helping out with the kids and sneaking in workouts later in the evening after the munchkins go down. With race season in full swing, I'm sure these workouts will kick up a notch and I'm already itching to be his personal cheerleader again! Since Daniel hasn't been able to race often in the past, he had to start in the lowest category which ended up being the largest race all day...
There were 100 men racing in his category and 800 racers combined (men and women) racing that day...how awesome is that?!? You maybe wondering just what cyclocross is and if it's like a normal mountain bike or road bike race. It's actually slightly different in that the race isn't centered on the number of miles to complete. It's on a trail type course like mountain, but the bike is similar to a road bike with skinnier mountain bike type tires.
Cyclocross races consist of many laps on a short course for a period of time...Daniel's was 30 minutes long. The winner is based on who makes the most laps. I liken it to a sprint race on the bike...where you go all out for 30 minutes.
I know, sounds exhausting, but oh so fun to watch! For me, the interesting thing about cyclocross is there are obstacles throughout the course that the racers encounter.
The obstacles require the rider to quickly dismount, carry the bike while navigating the obstruction and then remount.
I especially love watching the seasoned racers because they seem to fly through the air, hop on the bike, and clip in all in one motion. This particular course had the riders run through a volleyball court...
they had to carry their bikes and trudge through both sides of the volleyball court. I know Daniel probably didn't do as well as he would have liked, but this Clayton Crew sure is proud of him!
He got caught up in a tangle of riders at the beginning of the race and something happened where his chain popped off. This put him in dead last with a large gap between him and the other riders, but our favorite racer caught up and passed several on the course...eeek...that's my man! I ran around the course like a crazy woman cheering him on at various spots...at one point, I even had Max on one hip and Zoe on the other helping me cheer our favorite cyclocross racer on. I'm telling you friends, race season is a blast...the kids and I are already looking forward to our next cheerleading gig...bring it on cyclocross races, we are ready!
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