Come on out and see Central Texas Grassroots Cycling, who bring you the Dirt Derby, at the Bicycle Sport Shop Pace Bend Race & Festival this weekend! We’ll be doing some on-the-bike games and having some from 9am-7pm at the festival portion of the weekend on Saturday, April 16th.

The weekend will include some mountain biking clinics for various levels, Specialized bike demos, SRAM mini-clinics, the Bike Texas Kid’s Kup, free food and drinks and more at the festival on Saturday, and TMBRA MTB races on Sunday.

Thanks gang for an enjoyable party wrapping up the Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby out at Black Star Co-op.

Thanks also for those who donated money to help Michael McMurtray pay his medical bills. If you would like to donate and learn more, Help Michael Recover has some news up and features a link to a paypal account set up to help him out. Michael’s a great friend of ours who’s attended and helped out at the Dirt Derby for years, so we wish him the best in recovery and look forward to seeing him out on the trails again soon.

The Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby will be celebrating the end of the 2010 season in its traditional way: a party. This year’s version will be at Black Star Co-op on Tuesday, February 1st from 7-9pm. There will be some free beer, appetizers, LUNA product, and a host of enjoyable happenings going on and goings-on happening. Gold Sprints will be out with the roller races, we’ll raffle away goodies, have a track stand competition and slow races, and give out prizes to series category winners. Merchandise from Bicycle Sport Shop and f3 Designs, tune-ups from Bobby’s Bikes and more are all on our list of goodies to be gotten rid of. We were happy to see so many people in 2010 and we’ll hope to see a bunch of people at Black Star Co-op next Tuesday celebrating the end of the 2010 Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby season with us.

Ride a bike, bum a ride, be at Black Star Co-op next Tuesday the 1st from 7:00-9:00.

-Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby

The 2010 Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby has come to a close, and by all accounts it was our best series yet. We had 306 racers race 1412 times over the course of 12 weeks this fall, with $500 raised for Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance, two Ladies Nights, a couple cross clinics, some beer, some s’mores, and other things which I’m forgetting.

In addition to all those who came out to race, we’d like to thank our sponsors who helped make this year a success. Bicycle Sport Shop was our title sponsor for the year, and helped us out with mechanic support and brought a good number of fun BSS people out every week. Thanks to our other sponsors Bobby’s Bikes, Austin on Two Wheels, Athletic Volition, f3 Designs and Tom Mahnke Realty. Between them all, you’ll keep riding your bike, you’ll keep informed of all of Austin’s bike happenings, you’ll get trained to ride your bike better, you’ll look damned good while riding and you can buy a house to hold all your bikes. Check them out and support them to thank them for supporting us.

All that to say, that it was a great season and that results have been posted. We’re back in mid-January with a season wrap-up party, and we’ll be sure to keep ya’ll apprised of other Central Texas Grassroots Cycling events as they occur.

-Bicycle Sport Shop Dirt Derby

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.