Jesse Rients: The Big Show

I guess I have time for a write up as Penelope and I are snowed/iced in at grandma and grandpas.

The elite races were held about a half mile down the road from the master's venue. It was the same course that I raced on at the Louisville USGP races earlier in the year. On Thursday while I was out riding on the road I was able to ride the start/finish area as they were finishing up setting the course. I stopped by the Trek area to check out their setup. Mark was busy setting up Katie's bikes and Matt O was working on Emily's bikes. By the time I was headed back to master's course, they had opened the elite course for training and I almost headed out on a lap but decided against it.

Riding the start/finish on Thursday

Mark dialing in 1 of Katie's 4 bikes

crowds were awesome

Friday morning it was decided that all of the events would be moved and scheduled for Saturday. The course was near the river and would most likely flood so they were building sand bag walls to keep water off the course. That would mean that Saturday would be an all out cyclocross bender, 4 races and lots of beer drinking.

I had general admission tickets but our hosts had a table in the VIP tent and were gracious enough to give me one of their extras. It was a large, heated tent with catered food and all the Sierra Nevada beer you could drink. I had a 1 liter stein that would help with that. The lines were long to get into the venue but the VIP tickets had us cutting the line. It was kind of a pain getting around the course with all of the people trying to get through the course crossings. I guess there were around 10,000 people at the races. We were there from 9 til 4 watching all of the races and drinking plenty of beer. Trek brought a charter bus of employees down for the weekend and they had huge CXC flags all over the course. I think most people were happy about all of the races being on the same day because I could not have done it all again on Sunday.

Katie headed up the stairs

Logan Owen before the steps

Saturday night we had our season ending Trek CXC party at the Maker's Mark lounge. We had a few drinks, I had Katie sign a cap for Penelope and then headed down to the FoamParty. There was a line down the block but I was able to get the Trek crew in with a text to Brandon G. It was packed and all of the World Champs from the day were there. We had our photo taken on the red carpet and called it a night. What a fantastic day of racing and celebrating the end of a long season.

Sunday we checked out a basketball game and also checked out the course to see that moving all event to Saturday were a good idea.