Photos From Bandit Cross

As you can plainly see from the title of this post, this is where I usually post a whole bunch of rad photos from the past weekend's race.  The only problem is that I didn't take many, just what you see below. I was busy riding.

I will say though that it was a glorious day to be out on your bike, around 40 people showed up and rode the Low Road Sibley Route, Matt Allen (Little Guy) won, and it was a fine day all around.

Since the photos are slim, I'd like to share a realization I had recently.

While by and large Bandit Cross is winning folks over, there remains a certain amount of knee jerk reaction from the cyclocross establishment that we will "ruin cyclocross in Minnesota."  Now as you know, I share those concerns and empathize with them, as I'd certainly never wish to damage the legit race community.  It's all about more people on bikes, bringing cross to the masses, etc etc....

One of the racers this Sunday had participated earlier in the day in a cyclocross event put on as a training exercise by an established member of the race set.  Now people don't bitch on Facebook about them wrecking or ruining anything.  These things happen on a regular basis in the Twin Cities and everyone holds them up as a universal good.

Which got me thinking about semantics, functionally,my Bandit Cross series and this "Cyclocross Practice" are exactly the same thing, a free to all unsanctioned cross happening of people riding their bikes on public land.

The only difference that I can see is the fact that I'm an outsider and dare to call it a "race," which in my opinion are pretty ridiculous things to let hang you up.

I don't ever expect the critics to totally go away as we live in a society of haters, but to anyone who may be skeptical, I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to come down and see what it's all about.  I think you'll be surprised both by the level of competition, and the level of quality humanity that you'll find.