This year’s cross season went very well and I finished off the 2025 season with a high note on the podium, my first ever!
My 2025 season was only seven races. I had hoped to do a full season of 14 races, basically one race a weekend during the fall. But my bikepacking trip and sailing (Frigid Digit, Masters, Bahamas delivery, Women’s Nationals, World Masters) took out Ed Sander, TacoCX, Hyattsville, Crostoberfest, DCCX, Rockburn and Captial Cross. Even retired, there are just not enough weekends!!!
I decided to concentrate on racing the 60+ open field this year rather than the 40+ 3/4/5 which I have done in the past. I generally liked the 40+ 3/4/5 because the fields were bigger and while I was almost always the oldest guy in the race, I was always in the thick of the action midpack which made it actually feel like racing, rather than a dirt time trial. I think because the 60+ field was typically later in the day this year I decided to do that and got really used to the starts being after noon, so there were no early/cold mornings. And as it turns out, my points for all races this season were below 500, and in one case in the high 300s, another first for me, and a bit lower than history would have predicted in the 40+ 3/4/5.
In retrospect this makes sense because the “quality” of the 60+ races is better since they often have category 1/2 riders in them. A minor aside for those who don’t know how the cycling points work, it’s not unlike a weighted highpoint sailing scoring system like Cox-Sprague. Except in cycling the weighting is based the prior results of the top 5 (ie “quality”) rather than the size of the fleet as in the sailing highpoint systems.
2025 was a very dry year so no mudfests and since I was racing in the afternoons, most races were in a summer kit. It’s very unusual, but I’ll take it.
Fortunately, the way the weekends fell this year, there was not the usual conflict between the Frigid Digit and Charm City Cross in Durid Hill Park as that is one of my favorite races. It’s a UCI pro race so the production value is very high, it’s a great course and there are Saturday and Sunday races with the course reversed the second day. I rode pretty well both days and made some good choices on what to run and how to run it especially on the second day – a dirty side dismount to position myself well for a remount at the top of Manor hill – to make money on stronger riders with less technical skills.
Falkorburg was a fun course and I did reasonably well, but I crashed several times as my front wheel kept sliding out.
BikenetiCX was my best race because it was, let’s say gratuitously technical. There were a lot of off camber chicanes and such that I handled really well and passed a lot of people with my choices of when to ride or run things depending on when there was traffic. It was basically top third and my first ever time with points in the 300s!
Frosty Cross is always a fun race, but generally too much uphill for me and the lighter, better climbers get the best of me.
Tacchino was a first for me and I liked the course finishing essentially mid pack. I saw Dana Mellerio there, a former NASA colleague and ABRT teammate (now a Coppi member). I had been wondering if he was still at NASA but he punched out in the last year. It was fun to get caught up with him.
The last race for me this year was in Belair, always a fun one that I have done well at. Given it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the 60+ start was at 9am and really cold that morning, it was a smallish turnout with the 50+/60+/70+ fields in one start wave. Not sure why but I was not riding well. I didn’t feel strong uphill and was not handling the tight turns as well as I have been all year and made some stupid mistakes like doing an endo over the little concrete step near the end of the lap. Rick Paukstitus whom surprisingly I was able to beat ever other race this year went past me uphill like I was standing still and eventually broke me. I ended up the last guy on the lead lap and 7th out of 17 in the wave for USAC results reporting purposes. I didn’t realize they would break it into the 10 year age groups for podiums, so went to the car and changed because I was cold, but when I went back to the center of the action, I heard my name called for a podium, WTF? Turns out even a blind squirrel gets a nut once in a while, but what the hell, it was exciting and a great way to cap off the season.
It was a sad note that my fiend and colleague Dave Godbey who worked on my team for 20 years passed away this spring. He lived in Belair and after we retired, he used to come over to the race and we’d drink a few beers and get caught up. I had an appropriately named Carpe Diem IPA in his honor.
ABRT in general had a great year with many podiums by Cory Peterson and Chris Beck and a smattering of others!
Team Pline 