"Underground" Cyclo Cross

Me and Mitch made it out to the Semi unofficial but at the same time very official cx race last Wednesday. These race series are hosted by Trek Victoria and even though they are pretty casually organized, you are required to have a racing licence or pay for a licence and club fee to enter. This time the race was held in the proximity of The Commonwealth centre. Close to 50 people showed up and then made their way down to the course which had been put up behind a school nearby. Then everybody rode a practice lap and then got ready for the start. Well, everybody except for me. I had done some minor changes to my bike before the race and one of these was to go to a smaller cog in the back for a slightly heavier ratio than the one I use on the mountain. I did not shorten the chain, thinking the chain tensioner would handle the extra chain slack. As I found out, this was not the case. And so I resorted to shifting the tensioner from pulling down to pulling up. The chain was so long that this only made things worse, so half the way through my first lap (other racer's 2nd lap) I switched it back again. Surprisingly it seemed fine after that. Mitch did better than I did and he finished somewhere in the upper region of the group. The racecourse was not overly technical, but it was long and hard. So even though I raced one lap fewer than everybody else I got a good workout out of it and had a blast. We'll be sure to turn out for the rest of the races in the next few weeks. Again CX has proven itself to be an excellent form of racing even if slightly excruciating!
See pictures at Jamies Flickr account