Bike Hugger 

Previewing the course

Naoko Forderer previews the MFG Cyclocross Woodland Park course earlier this week – she’s looking for any edge on the biggest race of the year here. Woodlawn is the season finale for MFG and a Seattle-area, sentimental favorite. As Zac Daab tells it, tearing up a bit

As we descend into Woodland Park Weekend, I want to personally thank all of you for coming out to our races. In 1999, I began practicing at Woodland Park on my Pinarello cross bike with my friend John Gallagher, and ever since that fall, I was convinced that we could hold a race at Woodland Park, and bring cyclocross to the urban Seattle core.

Not sure yet if I’ll kit up and race there or not, but we’ll have our cameras taking photos of the Suffer Faces and scene. Last year, the awesome was a women that put huge gaps into the men’s field on a mountain bike, in jeans, and Keds.

Huge gap at the finish!

White tape stays white

Funny how someone close to you can say something so poignant, it interrupts your ride with a pause. @mzsitka rides next me last night and says, “how do you keep your bar tape so white?”

Well, cause I’m injured and NOT RACING IN THE MUD! Also, Motorex cleaner.

Mud melting Motorex

It melts the mud and grime off the D-Plus

When Halloween is near, Cyclocross is raced in costume. At Sprinker Rec Center, SCX 4 this weekend, Sandpit Frau and Honey Stinger were popular. So were Marvin the Martian, White Trash, and the Centurion seen on G+ and Flickr.

Honey Stinger

Sand Pit Frau

Replacement Ref

Cowbell fashion was also seen. When hip-hop artists start wearing ‘em, know that the cowbell bling started here first.

Bluejeans and Brass Cowbells, like the cover of a country LP

That cowbell feels like a midget is hanging from my necklace

Curtis White, Logan Owen, Cody Kaiser, and Yannick Eckmann training in Tabor, Czech

When we last posted on Logan, he won Starcrossed, one of the biggest races of Cross Season in the Pacific Northwest. He’s in Europe now on the World Cup schedule and placed 5th at Tabor last weekend. That result puts him the front row in the next World Cup this Sunday in Plzen. Joe Holmes asked Logan, “how was that?!” and he said

We woke up to a foggy morning here in Tabor. After breakfast, we rode down to the course, pre-rode it and began to make decisions on tires and pressure. I changed my mind about running the Challenge Griffos as the course became much slicker than yesterday when we pre rode the course. I ended up switching to the Challenge Limus tire. Then I did my warm up and headed over to the start/finish stretch to do the usual ride up and down the straight and run a little. I was 4th call up and my teammate, Curtis White, was 5th call up. We started the race and I was 4th into the first turn and Curtis was 2nd. A third of the way through the first lap the reigning Junior World Champion, Mathieu Van Der Poel, attacked and put a gap on everyone else. I immediately tried to get around the 2 guys in front of me and tried to bridge the gap. By the time we got to the top of the course, 3/4 of the lap, I closed the gap back down to 3 seconds with 10 riders in tow. When we hit the start/ finish stretch he had opened it back up to 13 seconds on Quinten Hermans of Belgium and I. So I swung off to let him pull. He ended up riding me off his wheel at the end of the 2nd lap as I couldn’t recover from chasing Van Der Poel. Less then 1/4 of a lap later a group of 4 passed me and I ended up yo- yoing off the back of that group the rest of the race. I finally recovered enough to make contact again with that group with 400 meters left and was able to out sprint a Belgian and a Swiss kid for 5th place, only a bike length from getting on the podium. Curtis ended up finishing 29th after some bad luck. I was sort of happy with this result but realized that I am going to have to work even harder if I want to win Worlds in February. I would like to thank Tete de la Course Cycling, Redline Bicycles, Geoff Proctor, Michel and everyone at USA Cycling for making my road to Kentucky 2013 possible. – via Tete de la Course cycling.

Logan is working now for Kentucky and we’re planning on being there too. He’s on a 13 Redline Conquest. Mark V profiled the 2012 version last year.

I was all like, “yeah back to racing” and my ankle was all like, “uhm no.” So sorry to disappoint with another week of no awesome race report, but here are some photos of those that did race on a fast, flowing course at Magnuson Park.

Ankle injury flares up on warmup lap, no racing

I don’t see any officials here, do you? No one but us and your mom needs to know you got a little help on this section

Red Coats ride into the Crack. It was trench warfare out there

Reddit in effect

Craig Etheridge was saying hello, really

See more photos from Magnuson on G+ and Flickr.