December 11, 2006 - NY State Champs

Cory Burns won the NY State Cross Championships and sends a race report, while Josh Dillon writes in with some amuzing notes on his race experiences in Belgium. Attached is a photo of Dillon’s 50 lb bike!

Burns and Timmerman Go 1-2 at NY State Cyclocross Championships, November 19

It was a pretty wet and sloppy day with part of the course on a fitness trail that was covered from start to finish with wood chips. The chips were about 6 or so inches deep in the wet sections and the sections you had to run through were deeper than that. From the start it was Timmerman, Ted Kind (Priority Health) and Matt Dickinson (my one training partner in Watertown) leading. I was hanging out around 10th or so and pickin guys off in the wet boggy sections that we hit after the start.

I saw there was a group with Dan, Ted and Matt forming at the front of the race going into the first out of two hellish run-ups (one was about 75 meters and the first muddy one was around 50) per lap we had to do that day. I made my way through the traffic and got to those guys at the bottom of the run-up and from there...well...it was time to race. I am always one for a slower start and then ramp it up throughout the first lap.

I sprinted up the run-up as hard as I could and was in the lead from that point on with King in second for a lap while Dan seemed to be dealing with the bike ninjas that were trying to take him out. I had about ten seconds after the first run up and around thirty by the end of the first lap.

I ran certain sections in the back half of the course and the gap kept opening until the final lap when I ended up with about a minute and a half over Dan. It was a great day from start to finish and technically I felt great and mentally was back in the game.

Dillon’s European Vacation (GP Stad Hasselt Cyclocross, Belgium), November 18

It was pretty cool to race with the best in the world. Seriously, there were more rainbow jerseys than a gay pride parade in Provincetown. I thought they were handing them out at registration, so I went back to the official to get mine and he told me to go pound sand (so that's what I did after I tried to ride over that Unibet rider in the sand pit).

There were thousands of spectators at the race, and get this, they actually paid money to get into the race. Can you believe that? I got a sweet parking spot (the elite only lot) right next to Sven Nys's personal bus. The little rental car (yes Dan it was a diesel) looked pretty funny squeezed in between that and the Fidea team bus.

Some spectator guy asked me if I had any pictures to sign for him and I told him I was fresh out (Curt, when you get a chance please).

Oh yeah, about the race. I got a call up (3rd from last) from the race I did the weekend before (that is a whole other story). So I lined it up behind Sven and Vervecken on the left hand side...albeit 4 rows back. and man, everybody went really fast from the start. They were really racing.

But the goal was to not get lapped and I came really close (1 lap to go on a 10 lap race) so that was ok. The next day I saw Sven Nys in the airport so I went up to him to congratulate him on the win the day before at the Superprestige and ask him if he remembered me when he rode by. Surprisingly he didn't, but he was pretty nice about it and spoke English very well.

I also made some friends there, as there was this one corner on the course that yelled "allez joshua" every time I went by. So that was nice.