Urban Assault Racing

So... I have been doing a lot of "serious" racing this year. Its been a lot of fun, but was kind of getting ready for something different. My head has already left the road racing scene. I really still want to race my mountain bike, but my heart has really already left for cyclocross season.

In the meantime, I found myself entered in an "Urban Assault Ride". Its a team event sponsored by New Belgium beer. Basically you bike around the city and complete absurd obstacles at various checkpoints. My sister and I entered the very competitive coed division as team "Golden Star Fireballs" We put on our racing kit and got down to business:



We started off to the mystery checkpoint first... The clue was emailed out a few days earlier and was an color coded anagram. We sorted the two words "botanical" and "gardens" but couldn't get the first word... luckily there were enough people to follow that we found the "climatron".

The second checkpoint we hit was "Bike Works" where Leah and I had to navigate a twisting course on modified big-wheels. I think we rocked it. From there we headed over to Tower Grove park and did some kind of three legged tennis ball balancing on a frisbee challenge. We didn't lose any balls and took off for the city museum.

As we arrived we saw some people we knew informing us it was "a long way"... not knowing what that meant I went up to the checkpoint to find out that we had to run up 15 flights of stairs then negotiate our way up an incline to a large slide. This was made less fun by the fact that someone had puked in the stairwell.

A long ride down delmar to Big Shark had us on a plunger powered longboard collecting different colored cans. Due to our team work and Leah's longboarding experience we zipped right through while others were struggling. Down delmar to big bend and on to Mesa where I had to catch Leah thrown sponges in a basket on my head... it took us 4 chances to get the required 3- not our best preformance, but still not bad. From there it was on to the final mystery point.

Leah knew where it was, but I will choose not to embarrass her and keep quiet about the reasons why.

At the end of the day we were told we placed 3rd... I was excited. It was the first "podium" I had gotten all year. Well, we were actually 4th. I have been 1 place off the podium quite a bit this year- even in Urban Assault Racing.

Luckily, I was able to redeem myself by dancing on stage for a Rudy Project helmet:



Good times.

Another relaxing weekend of mt bike demoing and bike riding before I have to worry about racing again. August it working out pretty well.