New Belgium Cup           

I don’t want to sound like captain obvious here, but bikes and beer go together quite well for a lot of people.  Whether it’s that’s frosty cold one on the tailgate after an evening ride, a reward for racing hard on Sunday or the reason that you ride a bike Downtown Anywhere, USA, this fine partnership can’t be denied.  The founder of New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, Jeff Lebesch learned this on a bike tour of Europe in 1989.  He came home and immediately set about developing his own business crafting delicious Belgian style ales.  Not forgetting his roots, Jeff made bikes a central focus of his business and has built the brand around two wheels.  I learned all this from former Pro road and track cyclist Sarah Uhl on a tour of the Brewery Sunday evening after a weekend of racing in Fort Collins.  This third Round of the US Gran Prix of Cyclocross was surprisingly the first foray into supporting large-scale competitive cycling for New Belgium.  Normally the champions of bikes as a more basic transportation necessity and lifestyle choice, the NBB crew decided to bring the USGP to Fort Collins and with it a taste of upper echelon competition for local community.  Not surprisingly, it was a knock-out, kind of like Sunday Night…

This camera phone photo does no justice to the beauty that is the upper level of the New Belgium Brewhouse.  Go check it out sometime.  Maybe the VIP taps will be flowing...

Leading up to that closing party at the Brewery’s tasting room were two days of classic cyclocross racing.  An active weather week on the Front Range took the dry, dusty, hillside field venue and gave it a solid watering then snowed and froze to trap all that excitement into the ground for the weekend when just barely sunny enough skies pulled it to the surface and made things proper slick for us.  Thanks, weather. 

Alice Pennington got 6th on day one.  Dang.  Wonder what Luke is doing today?

I hired a local friend of a friend, Christian Hartwig, to help me out in the pits for the weekend and it was money swell spent.  Bikes got pretty hosed out there…  Day one’s race necessitated pitting every couple laps to keep your bike grass/mud/snow free and usable for, well, biking…  Whenever it’s nasty I get all excited and think I’m a super duper good bike handler who rides amazingly clever lines and can win races on the twisty descents, of which there were plenty on this track.  My front row callup and actual decent start put me in position to do just that for the first couple laps but my less fit than the other guys legs didn’t hold up their half of the bargain, and by that I mean ¾, as that’s how much of each lap was spent climbing up muddy grass or traversing lumpy bogs.  Oh well, I settled into 6^th position and then got done late in the race by a hard charging (by shredding clever lines) Zach MacDonald and Jeremy Powers, who’d stopped crashing as the course dried out to finish 8^th.  Geoff Kabush had good enough legs to take one for the mountain bikers.  Nice. 

Kind of struggling up hills on Saturday...

Sunday dawned, if you can call it dawn, with a fresh dusting of snow and a thick freezing fog.  Fortunately, the City of Fort Collins loves it’s bicycles enough to plow the bike paths before the roads so my morning spin was unimpeded.  Impressive.  It must have been this extra effort that gave me better legs on a drier, but still slick, track for Day #2.  I again started well and again trailed off the group a touch on the climbs but was within striking distance when my front tire began to have a little bit TOO much traction and promptly went flat.  I was just riding along…  On a pinner ‘cross tubular with 25PSI slamming trough ruts from a weekend of racing in between hopping up a railroad tie pile obstructed climb and over 18” high barriers.  I can’t imagine what could have gone wrong…  Riding the flat took me out of the lead group and I would never regain it.  Better legs and a bit of attrition (see www.cyclingdirt.org for Todd Wells going OTB) found me chasing Jamie Driscoll for fourth place on the last lap as the sun set over the Front Range.  I tried talking smack “I’m coming for you, Jamie” but to no avail.  He hung on for fourth and I had a solid fifth.  Sunday racing is way better than Saturday racing… 

Having a way better time going down on Sunday...

Christian doesn't seem impressed with my recovery drink...

I suppose this brings us back to square one, riding a borrowed cruiser from Schwalbe Tires’ Henry Horrocks’ Old Town Bungalow to The Brewery for a tour and a few pints of delicious Belgian ales while race principle Jason Trujillo told the story of the event and thanked everyone involved tied the weekend together quite nicely.  I’m not sure where the dive bar and jello shots fit in, but it made having a townie with a flat tire less annoying on the wintry ride home…  Thanks for reading, see y’all in Portland on Dec 4 for the continuation of the USGP, I’m gonna work on my ability to pedal between now and then…

The brewery tour finishes with a flourish...  We could've used the sliding practice Saturday morning...

If you want to learn more about how rad my cross bikes are this fall, check out this cyclingnews spot that James Huang put together this weekend.  The Di2 is extra special in the mud/grass/snow/frost...

http://www.cyclingnews.com/features/pro-bike-adam-craigs-rabobank-giant-tcx-advanced-sl