Cross Season in full effect

With the arrival of the Dark Knight cross race at Canada Olympic park, COP, you know it's cross season.

Just as the sun was setting Saturday, the music started, the lights came on, and Csonka kids fired up the smoke machine. This is such a unique event it's hard not to love it and get caught up in the amusement park feel of the thing. I over heard Dave Larson say that Ed Garvin misspelled Race and held a Rave instead.

The course was similar to years past but the Downhill pump track section was gone replaced by more corners and said smoke tunnel. You couldn't see a thing in there and I held my breathe for fear of some obscure lung illness.

I positioned well but was stuck behind other riders while the lead group rode made time. I actually felt good for this race. It normally takes me the whole season to start to get the speed in the legs but I am more rested and could feel the legs had some snap.

Down the twisty back section to the "toilet bowl" that takes you in a decreasing radius turn only to spit you out on the long sewer pipe of an uphill. The sand was s....l......o...w.... It felt like I was in purgatory just waiting to get to the other side. Around the trees and you are in the spotlight. Everyone lines up along the slope to see how you do with the hardest corner of the course, the log barriers that Rob Leeds and Brian Bain change each lap. Those 2 are your worst enemies and your biggest fans.

But it's not over there. If you succeed in in not smashing your knee into your stem, falling over your bars, dismounting, crashing, or being pushed over by said log heathens, there's the 2 foot drop over a log to survive. Yep, DH comes to cross racing.

Great Racing and great event.