My 11 year old rugrat did his first cyclocross race, yesterday.  It was just 1 lap for the kids, but he did the entire thing and didn't fall even once (his mom, ahem, fell on her warm-up lap and at least 2 more times during the race...and has some significant marks to show for it, heh.  There was some scary, sandy, twisty single-track on this course...there were more crashes in this single race than there were at all of the Fall CX races combined...and with far fewer riders.  Next time I'm taking my mountain bike like the smart people did).  His bike weighs at least 20#s (probably closer to 25...I'm pretty sure it weighs more than my bike) and he doesn't even weigh 70#s.  We didn't think he'd even be ready for a race the night before...and then he convinced his dad that he wanted to take his bike on some single-track near our house.  After that we had no doubt that he was ready.  He was so excited that he was up early and twitching around the house.

Right before this photo was taken he dropped his chain.  I caught up to him on my 2nd lap just after the photo was taken.  He cheered me on and told me he was going to hop back on his bike and coast down the hill to the finish.  We're really freakin' proud of this kid!  At the rate he's going I predict he'll be demolishing me in a year or two. *sigh*

Awesome.  What a star!

Definitely proud...but, more importantly, HE's pretty proud of himself.  He got a big boost of confidence from this race.

I finally managed to get video a friend shot for us off my camera and online.  YouTube wouldn't play nice (and for some strange reason I can't upload directly to FB from iPhoto), but it worked when I used Smugmug...go figure.

Maybe by the end of the Fall CX series he'll feel ready to try a full C race, which is generally 3-5 laps, depending upon the course.  There are some really hardcore kids who have been riding for years who do the full C race.  A few of them are no older than Dane.