This post, brought to you at 4am by jetlag, is a continuation from “Cyclocross Races: Practice at the Mud Bath”. Above we have the very first rider of the first race to make it to where I was at the Mud Bath.

The first race actually was three separate races run in parallel: “Category 3” (men who had earned the right to advance from the anyone-can-enter Category 4), “Masters 2” (men 40 and over who have done well enough to progress from Masters 3 and Masters 4), and “U17”, children 17 and under who, presumably, are too old or too skilled for “U15”.

The boy above, presumably 16 or 17 years old, so totally dominated the course that the next finisher, from any of the three races, didn't come in until a minute and a half later. My friend Andy, who ran a strong race coming in 8th of 54 in Category 3, didn't finish until more than three minutes after the boy above.

The boy had won bronze in the Japanese National Road Race Championships last year, so I guess this short cyclocross race isn't such a challenge. 🙂

It's cute to see his twitter page, which has been inactive since 2012. The tweets then, presumably as a middle-school kid, include things like “School starts tomorrow! Winter break tooooooo short” and “Crepes were tasty today”, but also stuff like “Today's mountain-bike practice was tough, but I do it for myself”.

As I described in the initial post, the course progresses away from the Mud Bath, then does a 180 and returns back (along the line of cars seen in the background of the picture above), then another 180 away, and finally another 180 to return towards the area next to the Mud Bath. That's where the four riders are in the shot above.

As they pass beside the Mud Bath, they have to climb a somewhat-less-muddy, but decidedly-more-hilly section. I'll call it the “Mud Hill”.

The second race of the day involved two categories running in parallel, “C4” (Category 4, open to any man with the entry fee) and “CM3” (Masters 3, men 40 and above who earned promotion from “CM4”). German friend Christoph Millotat was racing in C4.

The guy's aggression did pay off, though; he came in 4th in his race.

Continued here...