Providence Cyclocross Festival

Dear Readers,

My name is fatmarc vanderbacon. I am pretty stoked after a pretty amazing weekend. I also drank more beers last weekend than I have in the last month. My brother, skinny-craig vanderbacon believes that was his influence. That or the case of beer that Nick put in our cooler. These two factors probably align at some-point.

Really the weekend was amazing. Dinner Friday night with friends, and dinner Saturday night with some old friends from out of town.

The courses were amazing, and the fields huge and competitive. For me, for me watching Monkey get to race was by far the highlight of the weekend.

As regular readers of fatmarc.com know Monk has been battling a knee injury since early May. While she's not in any racing form and the knee is only maybe 75%, and she hasn't done an effort since May. She had an opportunity to do the Madison with Anne Rock and couldn't pass it up. She was amazing.

Check out this video from the weekend- Diane in green helmet, Craig and I make cameos too


In the course of her race, she was about to be lapped by the leaders. She heard Manny coming up on the left, and so into a wide corner she went right, to give him lots of space. Low and behold who should be on the right of Monkey, but Tim Johnson, as he was trying to squeak by on the right. So yeah, my wife took Tim Johnson to the tape. It was pretty awesome.

Craig and I, THOSE FABULOUS VANDERBACON BOYS,  had a pretty good day ourselves finishing 10th over all. We were all pretty stoked and that race was really fun.

Craig and I start together on Saturday... He'd drop me shortly...

Diane, feeling the high of friday's race toed the line Saturday because she didn't want to pass up the chance to line up with 130 women. She lined up near the back and fought a great race, having to help one of her rivals with a hand assist over the fly over...

Monk's hand assist photo by velocb..

I was pleased with my rides both days. The courses were super fun, super fast and flowy and technical... Really a good time....

we had a pretty packed and fun team spot

post race debrief- we're swapping recipes

Benny has no idea that Jimmy is behind him..

Now I will say, I left the venue very frustrated. Saturday we weren't told the juniors were being scored with us, then they were scored with us after the fact. Thank you dropping me back 5 spots. Lame, but not that big of a deal.  Sunday, well they decided to mix the juniors in with us, only they didn't use any rhyme or reason that I can tell of... All of the juniors were mixed in but seated together. In a field of 108... We were pushed back 4 rows from the previous day as all the juniors were seated before us. In the wet conditions, not only was this unfair, it was unsafe. I won't dwell on this too much, other than to say that it did but a damper on the weekend. I don't like having this juniors mixed into our field, but if they are going to do that at least stage us in some kind of fair fashion. Yeah, I'm a dicky masters rider, but I'm also a paying customer. I believe they'll get this worked out, and that they put on a great show. I'll also say that maybe I'm not the customer they want, I can understand that too...A good business model is always to keep your paying customers happy.  Don't worry Providence, I still love you...

Nick, Craig and I were totally stoked with change to the program Sunday.

I want to thank all of my great teammates and friends who came out and raced and hung out... really a fun time this weekend...

big time...

thanks for reading.

respect
vanderbacon