Bio Wheels UCI CX Race
October 9, 2005
Harbin Park
Cincinnati, Ohio

by Jon Livengood

What do you do when the local cross series are starting in a week and you really don’t feel like training of the same old roads that you’ve trained on all year? Well you head up north and break in the new international license at the BioWheels UCI cross race, in Cincinnati, Ohio. The added bonus of this weekend was when I left Knoxville, TN at 8am, it was 65 degrees, when I arrived in Cincinnati at 12:30, it was 53 degrees, breezy and a slight mist of rain would show up time to time…perfect weather for ‘cross!
The course was super-fan-tas-tic. It had numerous off camber turns, one short run-up, two sand pits, one 30 sec hill that got bigger every lap and a fast singletrack section. If you could corner-you had an advantage, if you had good power on the flats-you had an advantage, if you could accelerate out of the corners fast-you had and advantage…. basically this course required you to be an all-around rider.

The race started out not so well for me…had a horrible start. I think at the first corner (200’ into the course), I was in 25th place or something embarrassing like that. Being near the back on the first lap was crazy, people were crashing everywhere and I had to be super aggressive and get around as many people as possible… I think I ran over a rider or two that crashed in front of me. Anyway, after the first lap, a group of 8 riders had a pretty good gap, most of them stayed away ‘til the finish. I on the other hand was picking off riders left and right, working my way up. I had one problem though; I had a rider that I couldn’t shake-looks like we had our own little race within the race. We battled back and forth with him getting a little gap then I’d close it, then I’d get a gap and he’d close it…basically with us attacking each other, we were indirectly riding ourselves back into the race. We attacked each other all the way to the finish with him beating me in the sprint for the line, he got 6th, and I got 7th. Not to bad for the first ‘cross race of the year.

Notable finishes were: Matt Kelly (former Junior World Champion) won the race, Jon Livengood (Bike Zoo/Sunspot) 7th, Tim Barrett (NARC/FreeFlite) 15th (after a crash on the first lap and a slipping seat post), Darly Sawyer(A.G. Edwards) 22nd, and in the Elite women NC riders Mandy Lozano and Cara McCauley (both of CCA/Kona) took 1st and 2nd and Kim Sawyer (Travelgirl Magazine) took third.