to wear down to mud.
(Photos: M.Andersen/BikePortland)
One of the country’s biggest amateur bike races drew an estimated 1400 participants to the former dairyfields of Southwest Portland Sunday as the Cross Crusade season kicked open.
“If you ride ‘cross, the one you have to go to every year is Crusade,” said Dan Evan, 27, a process engineer from Southeast Portland leaning, shirtless, over the finish line at the Alpenrose Velodrome. “It’s like the big reunion. Every year, everybody comes to Alpenrose.”
Evan said he’d been inspired to start racing cyclocross in 2009 after seeing “some rad videos on the Internet” and competed in 12 or 13 events last year.

