CX Hangover: A Grass Crit With A Gravel Bit at Nittany Lion CX
Nittany Lion Cyclocross. The Lion of Breinigsville.
With cross season now in full-swing, we turn our attention to Nittany Lion CX. I came to the race with no expectations other than to try and have fun. This was going to be my first cyclocross race and my second race, period. Fortunately, I had Clay and Cullen around me to help guide me through everything from the pre-ride to the aprés grilling.
The term, “grass crit” seems to get thrown around a lot in cross. Usually, it's when people have a course like Nittany in mind–– a grassy, mostly-flat loop where the most “technical” section is a down-and-up that comes about halfway through the lap. Mercifully, someone had made the call to remove the “sewage treatment plant” section this year. The laps would end up being fast, some time in the 7-minute area and sub-7 in the elite fields. For more on the actual specs of the course, check out the race preview here.
The weather was an absolute belter: 70s and sunny with no rain, though some dew for the earlier races (more on that later.) Perfect for racing, perfect for grilling. The laps were fast and the heckles were good. Let’s dive in.
I started in the third row despite this being my first ever cross race. I choose to believe that this is because the organizers sensed my potential and not because crossresults.com had confused me with a random Ben Brown from Australia who races in the Adelaide.
I got off to a decent start and managed to hit the first feature, a sharp rise, in about 15th place. From there, I made it my mission to start picking riders off wherever I could. A selection of five or six riders quickly formed at the front of the race, but not before I went through a couple of corners and realized I had made a catastrophic tyre selection. My overfilled WTB gravel tires, which would have been fine on dry grass, were incredibly slippy on the dew. This, paired with my complete lack of cross skills, were going to make for a long day out.
The face you pull when you do your first CX race.
I’ll say I survived the first two laps, although I fell several times during both. At one point, I was so relieved to see a gravel section that I accelerated into it and immediately lost my front wheel (followed by some skin.) The nice thing about the Nittany course is that it’s not too technical so you can bounce right back up from any fall and make up ground on the straightaways.
After that, I managed to string together a couple of quicker laps and even found myself in fourth at one point. Then I promptly went down again and dropped some more places.
Coming into the final lap it was clear that I was not going to catch the front group. Still, I was in eighth and gaining on seventh. Then, at a crucial point in the race, I dropped my chain. As I fumbled to re engage it, Clay emerged from the woods wearing a large, straw beach hat and offered me calming words, which was nice. I got the chain back on and hauled ass. Unfortunately, I came down one last time right before the finish and dropped two more places. I gave it my all in the finale and was good for 10th in the end, a result I’ll take in my first CX race. I was bloody and bruised but Nittany was a good time and a great first cross experience.
