On Saturday night, you might recall that the city never did get those softball lights turned on. (There's some bureaucratic/technologic soap opera behind it, details of which I'm not even aware.) People were great sports about it, and it certainly was a fantastic evening of high spirits and fast racing, but it made scoring the races incredibly difficult. In the Masters, Fours, and Juniors classes, it was impossible to place racers with any degree of certainty beyond the top three places. The USAC official, the race director, and the ASP secretary have all agreed that the most equitable solution is to award 11 ASP points (what you normally get for 4th place) to all remaining racers in those classes. If you actually earned those 11 points, please accept our apologies.
No problem with the lights on Sunday, but we did see a lot of flats. It's tempting to say, "Well, that's just cross," but it bummed me out and surprised me, since we had similar conditions but nowhere near as many flats last year. My take is that (1) the overnight rainfall was truly exceptional and (2) greasy mud on top of sharp rock = high risk of flatting. As far as the merits of tubular vs tubeless vs tubes vs mud tread vs file tread vs low pressure vs high pressure blah blah blah, you can discuss amongst yourselves. Those of us who put on the race have agreed, we will reroute certain sections of the course if faced with similar conditions in the future.
After all that excitement and drama, the series takes a couple weekends off. The avid among you might be travelling to Tulsa, Memphis, or OKC during that time. But absolutely make sure to be at the double weekend of racing in Fayetteville, November 3 and 4, presented by De Pijp.
Results for the ASP Night Race are linkable to the right. Reservoir results and series points totals coming more toward the weekend.
Don't be too hard on yourselves about the flats. You put on an amazing race. I thought the weekend was a wonderful initiation to cyclocross for myself and all the other newbies!
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