The Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby wraps up 2010 tomorrow with one last Tuesday night of racing. It means our second series is wrapping up and some of the competitions are pretty tight. See where you are in the overall series 2 standings under the results tab. Got some riders to fend off? Some guys or gals ahead of you to catch? Then it’s gotta be tomorrow. Give yourself an early Christmas present and get a strong finish in this years season.

-Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby

P.S. We’ll see ya’ll pretty early into 2011 with our season-ending party filled with fun times and prizes. Look forward to it.

We’ve got one week left of the Dirt Derby, and we’re sure we’ll see some exciting races as racers vie for series points and the individual races.

In the meantime though, we’ve got ALPHACross this Saturday, December 11th. It’s on a new course out at Lake Pflugerville and promises to be an exciting addition to the TXBRA cyclocross calendar. There will be a good-sized run-up, some open sections, some tight cornering, a run along the beach, and anything else we can think of to make it ‘as hard as hell.’

You can find links to the flyer and registration here.

The next day AT&T Brain and Spine is putting on the Cyclocross Scuffle, so you can get a weekend of racing in and then come back for our Dirt Derby season finale in flying form.

We’ve got two weeks left of the Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby, so let’s make the best of them. We’ll be out racing tonight under the lights and if you’re not out in Del Valle, your Tuesday won’t be as fun as it otherwise could be. Tonight we’ll be celebrating that the temperatures are above freezing by not shivering and wearing less than four layers of clothing. So wear just a couple layers of clothing and take advantage of the good racing while you still can.

I would be remiss to speak of good racing without speaking of AlphaCross this Saturday at Lake Pflugerville. It’s put on by us here at Central Texas Grassroots Cycling and our good friends at Pirate Race Productions. It’s a brand new cross course by the lake, with a good mix of some open areas, tight cornering, a stroll on the beach, a nice little run-up onto the dam, and other contrivances to make it as painful and fun as possible. Bring your cross bike, or an MTB with no bar-ends, and race AlphaCross this Saturday at Lake Pflugerville.

-Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby

Results have been posted from last night. It was as fun as it was cold, with delicious s’mores and beer to boot. We hope to see everyone out next week for another great week of racing.

Tomorrow’s Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby features: Fire!

This fire is perfect for:

• Keeping warm
• Warming up hotdogs
• Warming up marshmallows to craft s’mores
• Ghost stories

The fire should not be used for:

• Warming up beer from the keg; the plastic cups melt and it smells bad.

We’ll provide the hotdogs, the s’mores materials and the beer, you all just bring yourselves and the capacity to have a good time. And if you’ve got extra metal skewers for the hotdogs you can bring those too. It’ll be a chilly one, so bust out those armwarmers and legwarmers and come race with us,

-Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby

A Happy Thanksgiving to all our favorite people from us at the Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby. Results have been posted from Tuesday’s race and the rider who was taken away in an ambulance turned out alright and hopes to be back next week.

And what’s happening next week? Well, let me tell you…Bicycle Sport Shop is throwing a campfire, with hotdogs on sticks and s’mores and beer. Except keep the beer out of the fire. It just might be our most tasty night yet, and bring some of those metal things to stick hotdogs on if you’ve got them. It’ll be fun either way, so come burn off the turkey from Thursday, eat some s’mores  and hotdogs and drink some beer, and then come back the week after to burn off all of that.

S’mores hand-ups; I want s’mores handups.

With your help last week we were able to donate $500 to the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance. We appreciate everyone coming out to race and those who donated to TS Alliance. If you couldn’t donate that night but would like, or just want to learn more information, check out their website at tsalliance.org.

It’s another fun night of racing this week at the Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby, with a special trailer/Longbike/trail-a bike race. Haul a kid or at least an extra person behind you and race prior to the kids race. Sometimes racing is more fun with someone behind you yelling at you to go faster. Race starts at 6:10.

In other exciting news, the Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby is also one of the Hot Men Hot Spots in Austin. Such a group of pretty people has never raced so well.

We’ve got good-looking guys, we’ve got good-looking women and we’ve got one hell of a bike race. Come race with us,

-Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby

Last week was our largest week ever at the Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby, proving that we’re having more fun as the season goes on. Not only did the schedule change made the Intermediate races smoother, but we had another Ladies Night, with the Specialized Women’s Demo Truck showing off the goods, Bicycle Sport Shop offering wine and cheese in the Ladies Lounge, and women racing for free.

The theme of this week’s races shift gears as we enter into the season of giving. All of our proceeds from the November 16th race will go towards the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance, a non-profit which raises awareness, stimulates research, and provides support for individuals and families affected by Tuberous Sclerosis Complex. Tuberous Sclerosis Complex is a genetic disorder which causes tumors to form in many different organs. The disease affects some people severely, while others are so mildly affected that it often goes undiagnosed. Current estimates place tuberous sclerosis complex-affected births at one in 6,000. The TS Alliance’s mission is to improve the quality of life for those affected by TSC through the stimulation and sponsorship of research; the development of programs, support services and resource information; and the development and implementation of education programs designed to heighten awareness of TSC.

This is an important cause for us, as one of the board members of Central Texas Grassroots Cycling has a son with Tuberous Sclerosis Complex and at his request we’re donating our proceeds from this week race to the TS Alliance. We hope you’ll join with us in raising money for the TS Alliance and supporting them, as they in turn support one of us.

We’ll raise money, we’ll have a good time racing, and we hope to see you there,

-Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby

Ladies Night: it’s this Tuesday, which means ladies race for free. Not just that, but the Specialized Women’s Demo Truck will be at the races with a truckload of women’s-specific bikes on hand. There will be some free food, some free Luna Bar product and of course free racing for the women; we’ve never had so much free stuff in one night, so bring some friends and take advantage of our generosity.

Schedule Change: Our Intermediate Race has grown a bit bigger than we can handle; our scoring accuracy has suffered and the cyclocross race length was a bit tricky to handle. So we’re splitting up the Intermediate Cross and Intermediate MTB into two separate races. The new schedule will look like this:

Kids 6:15pm
Beginner mtn/cross 6:30
Intermediate MTB 7:00
Intermediate Cross 7:30
A MTB/Cross 8:05

The kids race was bumped up a bit and the warm-up lap for the Beginner race will start around 6:20 or so. We hope that this schedule will make things easier on our scorers, provide a more consistent race for the cyclocross racers, and do these without significantly altering the schedule. There have also been some remarks that the final lap bell is not as loud and pronounced as it could be, and so we’ll have a visual cue to augment the cowbell, which will hopefully be soul-shakingly loud as well. We hope these changes will make for a better race for all, and if you have any questions or concerns then please let us know; we always appreciate the input.

Finally, this next week will mark the beginning of our second series of the year, so come out and get it started off right. If you get it started off poorly and bonk into oblivion, Chris from our coaching sponsor Athletic Volition will be there, so you can discuss coaching and training plans with him.

Daylight Savings Time is ending so it’ll get dark sooner, but we’ll still be racing short-track and cyclocross under the lights, so come race your bike.

-Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby

Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby is on for tonight.

You can only watch election coverage for so long anyways, so come race your bike; it’s your civic duty.