Dam Cross Race #1 - LA, CA

Flying to Hollywood........for a race???? Yes, really. The race was held at Griffith Park near the Griffith Observatory in the hills of West Hollywood only blocks from the famous Hollywood Blvd.

And here is the famous "Hollywood" sign that I got a glimpse of on my Friday training ride. I have never seen it before in my life so that was pretty cool. I guess I need to get out more hugh......or not!!!



Here is bit of the park on Friday before the course was set up. Everything pretty much took place within the boundaries of where I am standing to take the pic to the far side of the pic. Let's just say there were A LOT of turns when the course was finally up and running.


Still standing in the same spot taking the picture there were a few coves that the course went up into and then u-turned back down.

Given the awesome location and the ease of getting there, this was a great race! Dorothy Wong, whom I have raced mtb with for years did a stand out job getting this together and getting the west coast another big UCI race. Thanks Dorothy for making it happen!

And speaking of finally making it happen, I did what I set out to do. My teammate Sue was there and once the gun went off there was no mercy. We were socking it to each other, driving each other into the ground. It was awesome. Neither one of us were coming away with anything given to us.

We got off the front fairly quickly and established a good gap from the rest of the field and that is when the fire works started with me taking the lead, then Sue and back and forth. It was quite fun actually!

The only not so fun part was me hitting a big plastic garbage can with my arm while flying down a paved straight. Luckily I took the garbage can out instead of visa versa. That could have been real bad. All it did was leave a good mark and a nice hema tomato as well. It didn't affect me too much the rest of the race other than being aware of "the garbage" can each time I road by it.

After it was all said and done, Sue took the big win with me right behind her in second. What a fun day!