Successful weekend....

Well, the whirlwind weekend is over. It started off with the storm of storms, 7 to 8 inches of rain dumped in our area and it was just finishing up on Friday as we were starting to set up our course. The setup was for the inaugural Town Hall Cross. On a 8 mile drive Friday AM I had to turn around 3 times and re-route due to closed / flooded roads. Luckily our course was on a hillside and we were hoping to still be able to hold the race. The rain event was fitting for my luck. This was my second stint as a race director, last year directing the Superbowl 10K which sold out at 500 entrants and we endured a 16" snow storm the day before and now my first stint as a bicycle race director after a deluge of 7-8 inches of rain!


I must say for a crew of newbie course designers and builders, we kicked some butt. Our Lamprey Systems crew had the course up, lunch gobbled down and riding the course within 5 hours! Thats a nearly 1.5 mile course, barriers, haybales, banners, starting grid, etc all set up and ready to go. Luckily, the sun started to come out at about 4pm and a wind started to kick up. We knew we'd be able to get a day of racing in, but how much turf damage would we do in our first time using Town Hall Park as our venue? We had 126 preregistrants and some incredible weather predicted for Saturday.


Here are some shots of the course....

The dreaded "St. Lukes Staircase"..feared by many, conquered by few....

I rushed out of there and headed home for Autumn's birthday party. It was of course her birthday and she was super excited! We had a great time with family and she got a sweet present...

Race day turned out to be a beautiful day. Started out a little chilly in the 40's, but we started a little fire and had the smell of burning wood to wake us up. The sun was brilliant as it burned the dew off the grass before the first race at 9am. Our crew knew exactly what to do and made my morning much easier. Everyone was very complimentary and loved the course and the venue. Kids were playing and people were just enjoying hanging out. There were a few mud

spots, but hey...it's cross!

I was supposed to race at 10am, but the day caught up to me and I realized that I hadn't eaten anything or even ridden my bike to warm up so I decided to try and jump into the elite masters race at 11am. I started on the back row of a field of about 40 riders and decided I was just going to "have fun". Ended up working my way up to 6th and missing a money spot by 1 place!

Up the painful finishing stretch..

Over the barriers...

And the kids had fun in our equipment...

All total we ended up with 152 registrants which is great for a first time event which was competing with some other local events. Next year will be bigger and better as the word spreads. We even got some TV time on the local news! We also raised at least $750 for local charities which is pretty big for a small town bike race.

The course broke down well, not a lot of damage and it should "heal" itself up very well. The Township seems very happy and I've gotten a ton of great emails from racers.

I then packed up and headed out to Hershey to meet Lauren, her sister and the kids. They ran the Inaugural Hershey Half Marathon. It was Lauren's sister's first half and Lauren paced her to a sub 1:48 finish which was just awesome! It was a great first time race. Afterward we took the kids to Chocolate World to get them sugared up for the ride home.

All in all it was an incredible weekend!