The Ice Weasels and I

Wasn't sure what to expect. The super intense Verge series was over last weekend, lots of guys were out in Oregon racing at natz. It was 30 degrees, windchill in the 20's, 2 inches of crusty snow and ice to race on, costumes, singlespeeds, mountain bikes, kegs of beer and "HUP"cakes. The Ice Weasels Cometh was the last race on the calendar for me and it was one of the most fun events of the year with a super party atmosphere. Nationals had nothing on the Ice Weasels. They grouped our elite master's group with the elite "open" group which meant two things, I had to race for 60 minutes instead of 45 and I was in with the only group that is faster than the group I've been racing in all season. There was an option to race in the Cat3 field, but I wouldn't have been happy with it knowing that I could have raced in the tougher of the two. I guess I could have done both races :) Maybe next year....

Considering how badly I sucked in the mud this year, this did not bode well for me..

Being a smaller race it lacked a lot of the big firepower that you would see at a Verge race, but there were still some super strong guys there. For elite masters there were Kurt Perham, Mike Rowell (who won the singlespeed race earlier in the day), Ryan Larocque, Brant Hornberger among the group. There was Al Donahue, Colin Reuter (race promoter and brain behind crossresults.com), David Wilcox, guys who place top 10 or 20 at Verge races in the pro fields. To be honest, my goal was to last as long as possible today without getting lapped. A 60 minute race with sub 5 minute laps meant I had to finish 60 minutes of racing without giving up more than 5 minutes to Al Donahue (Al was definitely the favorite to win) in order to not be lapped. But then again, with the party-like, laid back atmosphere of the day, who knew what it was going to be like. Would they take the racing serious or would they approach it with the intensely burning apathy that my pre-teen daughter seems to approach everything with these days? I don't know about anybody else, but I know for me that once the whistle blows I go as hard as possible. I'm pretty sure everybody else in the field is the same way. If that's not how you are then you don't race cyclocross. You join a bowling league or something. 

Mike Rowell over the barriers with a look of terror as Cathy screams at him "Don't bother coming home if you don't get top 3!". Mike went on to get 3rd and was allowed in the house later that evening.

Taking a pre-ride on the course before my race I was bottoming out on the rims everywhere. My tire pressure, which seemed OK earlier, must have dropped about 10psi once the tires hit the snow. They had to be running about 20psi at this point and I was thinking that I'd flat if I went 60 minutes on them, especially with the amount of times I was bottoming out every lap. I had a set of wheels in the pit with about 30psi in them and decided to do a last minute change before staging. I figured I had plenty of time, there was a bunch of us just standing around the pit area waiting to be called to stage. I started taking my wheels off and Michele comes over and says "What are you doing?". I looked around and everybody was gone, lined up at staging waiting for the whistle. Are you kidding me? So I finished up my wheel change and got over to staging with about a minute to spare. But now I was way back, (there were maybe 35 starters) and it was a short, super narrow course with very few power sections or passing sections. Not promising for my hopes of a lead-lap finish.

Colin trying to make sure the race finishes in the black by picking off $$ on the barriers.

The whistle blew and we were off. I was able to catch an inside track around the first corner and punched it getting by a bunch of guys and settling in somewhere mid pack. There were tons of tight turns on the course, mostly single track in the snow with no room to pass. This was going to be a race that definitely benefited guys who were good bike handlers on sketchy terrain, which unfortunately for me, I am not. But on the bright side, once you got in front of somebody it was going to be a bitch for them to pass you. First couple laps I was struggling with my handling. After passing a bunch of guys in the first lap I botched a couple turns in the snow getting bogged down outside of the packed track while riders went by me and then I laid it down coming around an icy 90 on a gravel road where I came down hard on my elbow and got passed by a couple more. Once I gained my composure and started handling the bike better through the turns I started gaining some ground back. Every time I would hit the power section I would give it everything I had and get by anybody within striking distance. By the 6th or 7th lap I had gotten by some guys that I've never been ahead of all year, guys like Larocque and Hornberger and some guy in a Zappa-esque moustache who I've never seen before but chased me for the last 7 laps of the race. After what seemed like about 8 laps I came around the finish line and looked at the lap card to see what we had left. We had to be close to done at this point.. 6 to go. Holy shit. Funny how long a 60 minute race feels after racing 45's all year. I was pretty much by myself at this point, I had about 20 seconds on Zappa and the guys in front of me had about 30 seconds on me. Over the last 6 laps I essentially time-trialed it. I sprinted out of every corner and crushed it on the long straightaway every lap. I was able to hold the gap on the flying stache but I was only able to close the gap on the guys in front of me to about 7 seconds. I finished 11th overall and 4th for the elite masters. Great finish to a great season.

Unaltered photographic evidence of me in front of my buddy Ryan (two bikes back) for the first time this season. He was experiencing great love for his Tufo Flexus in these conditions...

This was the type of event that makes cyclocross so cool. It was just a huge party with a bike race running through it. Every time through the barriers there were people holding out beers or HUPcakes (cupcakes made by the HUP team) for racers to grab on their way through if they chose to. And if they did, it was always to a round of huge cheers. One time through I grabbed a cupcake (in my drinking days I would have had a beer per lap). Seemed like a good idea at the time and the kids that were holding them out got so excited if one of the racers grabbed one. So I grabbed it on my way by and jammed it into my face getting at least half of it in my mouth as I took off around the corner. I wasn't thinking how difficult it might be to eat a cupcake with my HR at 175bpm, cottonmouth, and no water to wash it down with. As I started to choke on my mouthful of chocolatey goodness I blew out as much air as possible expelling most of the blockage. My mouth was so dry that a lot of the cupcake stuck to the insides of my mouth making it even more difficult to breathe for at least a half lap until I was able to clear the rest of the "cupcake of death" from my piehole. Needless to say, I didn't take any more handups from these little bastards who were obviously sent from an opposing team to try to kill me.

Accepting the HUPcake of death

I also had an amazing amount of support today from the ECV and Seaside cycle guys who were setup at the barriers and Brett, Lynn, their kids and Michele and Roni over by the runup. Tons of people that weren't mistaking me for either Aaron or Jack today. It was pretty cool. And it was also pretty surprising considering the ECV and Seaside guys at the tent were putting away about a 30 pack per field :) Just kidding, I think it was only a 30 every other field. Good times!

One of my best supporters of the day. Thanks, Brady!

Time to ski! 

NBX Day 2: Finally!

NBX Day 2 marked the end of the super competitive Verge New England Championship Cyclocross Series. 14 days of races around New England of which I was able to compete (I use the term loosely) in 12 of them. This was my first full season with the elite masters and I had my ass handed to me on a weekly basis. As the season progressed and I gained more experience, strength, and fitness, the people handing my ass to me changed as I kind of moved my way up in the field. By the end of the season I would be in a position to finish in the top half of the field at the Verge races if I was "on". Of course, it seemed like Day 1 I was always "off" and then would do much better on Day 2. Day 2 at NBX was my last chance of the year to break into the elusive top 25 and get some Verge points. I did manage to get 3 points with a 23rd place finish on Day 2 in Maine but I'm not going to count that one for two reasons. First, I didn't get credit for it since my number was obscured with mud and my points ended up going to Matt Theodore's number. Funny thing is Matt didn't even show for the race that day. I split before the results were posted because I was a muddy mess, 2 hours from home and had a 3pm meeting I needed to get to with a bunch of baseball players that I was trying to get to train at my gym. So I missed the protest period. Oh well. If Matt had actually been there he probably would have done much better than 23rd so it was no real bonus for him either.. Secondly, it was the weakest Verge field of all 14 races with only 39 racers finishing the race. Hell, I got lapped by the #1 and #2 that day and still ended up in the points.. Anyway, it didn't mean as much as it would to get points in a strong field when everybody showed up, like this weekend in Warwick. So let's get to it......


Every weekend I raced twice this season I was much better on the second day. Especially my lungs. So with this being the last chance of the season to earn some points I was hoping for another solid Day 2 showing. I had a great start and hit the beach in the middle of the pack. My least favorite part of Saturday's race was the long beach run so I was really psyched about the addition of a second long beach run for Sunday. Whatever healing my shoulder separation was able to manage in the past week since crashing into a tree was completely undone by two days of running across the beach with a bike bouncing on it. That's OK though, I have plenty of time to heal up after this coming weekend.

A second beach run in a single race is never necessary, in my opinion. Photo by Banach

For the first couple laps I was feeling great and I was holding my position in the middle of the field, passing a rider here and there, until I got caught behind one of the Horst guys. Not sure if it was Aspnes or Summers, but since I don't know how to pronounce Aspnes, I'm going to say it was Summers. It definitely wasn't Domnarski because he was well ahead of us at this point. Plus, Matt is about twice as tall as me and this guy definitely was not. I was having a hell of a time getting by Summers, made worse by the fact that he appeared to be struggling as I could see the gap increasing in front of him by the second. We finally came to a clear power section that was about 50 yards long and 20 feet wide leading into a 180 that fed into another twisty section with no chance to pass. So I punched it to get around him on the outside and he throws an unexpected elbow at me. Unexpected because it's the second lap of the race, we're in the middle of a 20 foot wide power section, and I have another 20 yards before we hit the corner. I know I have a lot to learn about cross, but was this really a time when I should have expected an elbow to come at me?

Matt Domnarski leading Kruger up from the beach. Kruger is another one I received some unexpected elbows from earlier this season at NoHo.. I have so much to learn, like to expect elbows from people protecting their position even if  they're about 40 places back. Photo by Banach.

Anyway, I got by him but it knocked me off course and I came way too wide into the 180 and ended up having to cut a bunch of speed which allowed him to pass me on the inside. Shit! Now I'm behind him through another 30 seconds of twisty twistiness before the path opens up again. This time I put it in Super-Hi-Octane-Rocket (SHOR) mode and came around him with a wide enough berth that he wouldn't have been able to elbow me with Gewilli's long-ass arms. That was the last I saw of Wade and now I had some catching up to do. The next few laps are kind of a blur so let me just summarize with a sentence full of overused cyclocross cliches. I turned myself inside out, burned lots of matches, drilled it several times, and put myself in an 'epic' amount of pain. Alas, I found myself about to bridge to a group that had Matt Theodore, Dan Coady, and Mike Magur in it. Maybe another 20-30 seconds to a group with Myette and Hornberger. There was also a Corner Cycle guy that obviously wasn't named BOLD or Hines, but the fact that he was allowed to wear the same kit he had to be really good. Holy shit, I was up with some strong dudes! It took me another 1/4 lap to make contact with the group and get a slight break in their draft. We had about a lap and a half to go and there was absolutely no way I was losing contact with these guys today. By the time we came around for the bell I had passed a few guys and worked my way up to 3rd position in the group. Coady had been pulling for a while and when we came around for the bell he sat up to let somebody else pull through. The guy in second position wanted nothing to do with it so I pulled through and led the group down through the paved section around the 180s and I thought I was leading into the beach, but the Corner Cycle guy, Gray Aldridge, had different ideas (is Gray really a name or just a colorless way of saying Gary? Hmmm....). Gray came around the inside of me just before we took the corner into the beach and led our group into the sand. Since he came around me at the last possible second before hitting the corner I ended up real tight on his wheel as we hit the beach. To make matters worse he ended up kind of stopping short on his dismount. I was able to avoid running into him, just barely. Coady, on the other hand, rode his bike right into me knocking my bike out of my hands and flying off his own bike. Our bikes ended up in a tangled heap in the sand. As the other 4 ran off across the beach, Dan and I got untangled and chased. Dan said to me "I thought you guys were going to go a little further before getting off" to which I could only reply "me too".. So Gray and the other 3 opened up a good 10 second gap on us with less than a lap to go. Dan and I came off the beach and remounted. My drive train was pretty full of sand since my bike ended up on the bottom in the crash and it took a little bit before it cleared. I was crushed. I busted my ass to catch these guys and now 4 of them were gone and Coady was opening up a sizable gap too. I started to worry that I'd be stuck in no-man's land getting chased down by a group behind me. I buried myself to try to catch back on with Coady. He was up about 5 seconds and I noticed that Matt Theodore was just ahead of him. Matt must have been suffering pretty bad if he wasn't able to stay on with the other 3 as they got away from us after the crash on the beach. I managed to pull myself back up to Dan and Matt and it looked like the three of us would be coming into the line together. We hit the last few turns with Coady in front, Matt behind him and me third. On the last turn Dan went wide and seemed to situp. Was he not going to sprint for the finish? I didn't care and I wasn't going to wait to find out. Matt came around the inside of Dan with me right on his wheel. As soon as we hit the pavement I came around the inside of Matt and sprinted with everything I had left to take 25th on the day. Just ahead of Matt and Dan. Just enough to get my first Verge point in a strong field which had been a goal of mine for weeks. Finally! Too late to get me any callups since it was the last Verge race of the season, but I'll take it :)

G-Ride and GeWilli seen outside the gazebo after a couple beers to watch the pros. "C'mon Adam! You have to fucking win it!!!"

It was a great ending to a great season for me. Actually, I shouldn't say it's over yet since I have the Ice Weasels race this weekend, but that will definitely be a low key event compared to the Verge finals in Warwick this past weekend. A great event put on at a great venue. It was a party like atmosphere with everybody hanging out after the race drinking beer and eating burgers. This is another thing that makes cyclocross so much better than any other form of bike racing, the people and the atmosphere. Hell, it's what makes it better than any other sport I've ever been involved in. 

NBX Day 1: Fool in the Rain

Definitely my toughest race of the season, mostly because of my own inexperience and stupidity. I thought I was prepared for the conditions, but I wasn't. 40 degrees and raining. Throw in a self-generated sub-freezing windchill factor from riding your bike around at 15-20mph, soaked to the bone wearing spandex and it's just a matter of time before you go hypothermic. I can't think of conditions that would have sucked more. Any colder and it would have been ice or snow and that doesn't soak you. I would have welcomed 26 degrees and snowing. 

During the warmups I was pretty much bundled up and waterproof. Much smarter than I was earlier in the season with the pouring rain at Gloucester. But Gloucester was about 60 degrees. This was more like Day 1 in Maine (from what I hear), where lots of the racers went hypothermic. After warmups I was wondering if I should wear my heavier base layer, should I wear my neoprene gloves, should I wear my knee warmers or leg warmers.. Carl Ring was warming up near where I was parked and I asked him if he was going to wear the knee warmers he was warming up in. His response "No, I don't like wearing anything on my legs that is going to get wet and cold.". 

Here's a picture of Carl Ring "not" wearing his knee warmers after telling me that wet cold stuff on knees are bad. Clearly he lied to me hoping my legs would freeze and seize up. Geoff Williams close behind hoping we both seize up.

Sounded logical to me. Plus, I'm a tough mofo and it's cyclocross for god's sake! Suck it up and get to work, son! So I went with my light base layer, no knee or leg warmers, and my regular gloves... I was wrong on all three counts. The magnitude of stupidity only to be upstaged by my most boneheaded decision of the day which came in lap 2 of the race (wait for it...).

freezing...

Stripped of the comfort of my cozy jacket, raincoat, and knee warmers, I stood exposed in staging and started to go numb. It was bizarre. Everything seemed to slow down. People were saying "you'll warmup once we get going, hahaha".. I figured we would too. How can you not? You're working so frigging hard that your heart is ready to explode. How can you not be warm? Sub-freezing windchill, soaked, and too stupid to know how to dress for it. That's how. The whistle blew and I clipped in like I was in slow motion. The blood started to flow and I picked up the pace and stayed in my position in the pack. It was a fast start on pavement with a couple wide sweeping 180's into a bottleneck of a dirt uphill. It was completely rideable but with 60 guys trying to squeeze into it at the same time there were probably about 10 that got through clean and then all momentum came pretty much to a halt and the rest of us ended up having to run it. I started snapping out of my daze and punched it. I started passing riders and by the time we got to the barriers for the first time I was right behind Matt Domnarski. This was good. Matt's a good mark for me since he's definitely a strong guy who can finish top half when he's having a good day. We had about 55 in our group today and a top half finish would have me close to the points. We cleared the barriers and went into a couple short quick turns, one of which turned slightly uphill with a big pothole in the middle of it. Matt seemed to go right into the hole, jacknifed his bars and went down with me right on his wheel. I couldn't avoid crashing into him and our bikes got all tangled up with each other's pedals and spokes getting all caught up. We lost about 15-20 seconds getting unconnected. Being the first lap the group wasn't too strung out yet so we ended up getting passed by a lot of riders. At least 15. Back on our bikes we gunned it and tried making up time. Coming back around the paved section by the starting area I looked down and saw my front skewer had come almost completely undone, must have happened in the crash. The skewer was just tight enough to hold the wheel in but was probably one or two bumpy sections from coming out completely. I leaned over the bars and latched it back down doing about 20mph on the pavement. That was dumb (and scary), but I didn't want to stop and lose more time at this point. 

While I forgot to wear the right warm stuff today, I did at least remember my "Cloak of Invisibility" that I got on the HSN channel for $19.95. Michele got this picture of me seconds after I put it on during the 2nd lap. For a cloak, it provided very little warmth.

It was at some point in the second lap that I realized I was working as hard as I possibly could and I was getting colder. It started with my feet and hands. My core temp was staying good, but that was it. My body decided it was going to sacrifice the extremities (which by lap 4 included my head) in order to keep the core warm. Here's where I made a really regrettable decision. My gloves were soaked and my fingers were starting to lose all feeling from frostbite. It may sound counter-intuitive to remove the gloves in order to get my hands warmer but they were soaked and cold. I guess my thinking was off in blaming the gloves rather than the rain and 40 degree temps. The gloves were actually providing some protection from the elements, at least the wind if not the rain. As I was coming through a grassy section of the course near where I was parked I sat up, pulled the gloves off, and chucked them over towards my truck. This turned out to be a profoundly retarded move that I regretted almost immediately as the wind made my hands instantly colder. I lost complete feeling in them about 30 seconds later.

If you want this bike you'll have to pry it out of my cold, dead hands!

I spent the last 3 laps with what seemed like frozen breakfast sausages hanging off my hands. It was comical trying to shift as I basically just slapped at the shifters. With the SRAM double tap shifters I was shifting into harder gears more often than not as I was trying to downshift. Like many of my races this year I spend the middle laps fighting it out with Carl Ring and today was no exception. After the crash, Carl got by me along with lots of others, Geoff Williams, Jerry Chabot, Dan Coady. Domnarski was up ahead as well. I got by probably 10 guys in the next 2 or 3 minutes and then it was me and Carl with Domnarski up ahead of us by about 5-10 seconds. We battled it out for a lap or two, I'd get ahead of Carl and then he'd pass me on the beach run, or another section where I suck the most, like the barriers for example. Anyway, it was about the 4th lap and I decided to go. We hit a long, dirt power section where I pegged it, blew past Carl and bridged up to Matt. I eased up for about a second and decided to keep going so I went by Matt with enough to put a slight gap into him. I came around a couple corners and saw that I had put maybe 5-10 seconds into the two of them. At that point it was TT mode as there really wasn't anybody close enough for me to bridge to at that point. I could see a group with the Bikereg boys, Rosczko and Hornberger but they had 30-40 seconds on me. Not sure if I could close that today. I was in a world of hurt, the cold was killing me. My hands were long gone, my feet were frozen solid, and I couldn't focus. By the time I came around for the bell with 1 to go my vision had deteriorated to the point that it was like the outer layer of my eyeball shattered and I was looking through the wreckage. I was out in no-man's land with about 30 seconds to the closest group ahead of me and what seemed like an ever shrinking gap to the group behind me. 

In no-man's land, I decided to take my bike for a walk on the beach where we could spend some quality time alone...

I could see that Matt had dropped Carl and had caught on with another rider that were maybe 15-20 seconds behind me. I was determined to hold my spot. Every corner I would come out of I would stand up and sprint for 3 or 4 turns on the pedals. The last run across the beach was agony. Actually, every run across the beach was agony with the bike shouldered on the same shoulder that got rocked by the tree the week before in Sterling.. I managed to finish the lap holding the gap I had on Domnarski and Ralf Warmuth. 

My late attack on Domnarski that somehow I would go on to hold despite my body going into hypothermic shutdown.

I immediately got off the bike and started looking for Michele who had my jacket. My hands were beyond fucked. I found Michele and Margot who had also come along on this fine day to take some pictures and we headed inside. You know how when you get frostbite and it burns and hurts like hell while you thaw? It took about 30 minutes to even get to that point. Prior to that it felt like my fingers were put in a vice and slowly squeezed lifeless. And then after 20 minutes of that they started to burn. John Adamik, who's always good for a laugh, came over to me and said "Awwww, are your wittle fingers hurt?".. Haha, good one. All I could muster was a friendly "fuck off, John".. I got back to the truck, changed into dry clothes, blasted the heat, and it was still 45 minutes before I stopped shaking. All because of not dressing right for the conditions, oh yeah, and spending 30 minutes with my hands exposed to subfreezing wind chill in the rain. (I can see Gewilli shaking his head calling me a pussy right now, but damn if that wasn't the worst frostbite i've ever had)... 

Yeah, it sucked that bad...

Anyway, lesson learned.. Next time - warmer base layer, better gloves (that will stay on my hands), leg warmers. I ended up 30th for the day, ahead of most of the guys I've been coming in ahead of and behind pretty much the same ones I've been coming in behind. Except for Carl Wittig, he killed it today and took 23rd or 24th. Great race for him. Considering the conditions I'll take it, and to be honest, the way most of my Day 1 races have been going this season this was actually pretty good.

Baystate Cross Day 2 Brought to You By the Letter "I": Ice and Ibuprofen

7 hours of icing and ibuprofen, followed by 8 hours of thrashing as I unsuccessfully attempted to sleep on a freshly damaged shoulder brought me to 6am Sunday morning. I got up and grabbed a cup of coffee, winced as I couldn't raise it to my mouth with my right hand and decided that I would learn to drink left handed. Something that I must have had practice with in my double-fisted 20's since it wasn't that difficult to re-learn, not nearly as difficult as trying to brush my teeth left handed which resulted in me brushing my teeth in addition to my cheek and nose. My range of motion sucked and it was a real struggle to get my arm over shoulder height. I guessed that my handlebars could be held in a tolerable position but that the jarring of a race would suck. I also guessed that as long as I didn't crash on the shoulder I probably wouldn't make it any worse. This really didn't give me much comfort considering that it's harder for me to think of a race in which I haven't crashed than one in which I did. I took a 10 second lap around the house and confirmed my suspicions. Sitting on a bike was fine, riding a bike hurt, but only a crash on the shoulder would make it worse and I knew that once the adrenaline of a race kicked in the pain would be gone and I'd feel nothing but my heart crashing against my rib cage and my eyes popping out of their sockets like in any race. More ice, more ibuprofen, more coffee. I managed to get my bike on the roof rack and it was off to Sterling. Shifting hurt, I should have taken Michele's automatic. Am I doing the right thing or is this stupid? I was second guessing myself the whole way to Sterling. This is a hobby, right? I do this for fun. It's not like I'm getting paid. Is it really worth it? Then I remembered the $15 check I won for 5th place at Plymouth and it all made sense. This isn't just for fun, it's a career dammit! In all honesty, the reason I did it is because I could have sat at home in pain wondering how I would have done, or I could have raced my bike in pain and found out exactly how I would have done. All season I've been having a much better day on the second day of the Verge weekends and I would have been miserable for days with the Saturday race lingering in my head. I needed to flush it.

Tom Stevens designed the courses for the Sterling weekend. Guy is an artist! 

photo byBanach

I start my warmup lap and the course was way more technical than Saturday's course. Way more twisty with a nasty steep off-camber descent into a 90 degree right hand turn that would dump me right on my bum shoulder if I dumped it. As usual, my Tufos were sliding in places that I really needed them to hold and this was not even at race pace. Crashes were a given. Honestly, these tires suck ass. What a waste of money on a tire that is only good in perfectly dry hard pack conditions, which translates to maybe one or two races in New England. Maybe the new Flexus is better with the added side knobbies. I'll never find out as I probably will never buy a set. Every turn I came into it was in the back of my mind that I was going to go down and finish off my already dodgy shoulder. Luckily, I brought along a set of new wheels that I just bought off Adam Myerson that had a hardly used set of Grifos on them. I threw them on the bike and took two more warmup laps and what a difference! All of a sudden I was able to go from cautious to aggressive. Much, much better handling. My legs felt strong, my lungs felt great like they normally do on day 2. It was going to be a good day. Finished my warmup on the trainer and headed off to staging.

I was really hoping I wouldn't win today because it would have hurt like

a son of a bitch to get my right arm over my head like Jonny BOLD here.

photo byBanach

Another 5th row start right behind the callups and I tucked myself in behind Matt Theodore. Matt's been beating me all year by as much as a minute or so, but I was right on his wheel at Plymouth a couple weeks ago and I was thinking if I could hang with him today I may be close to the points. The whistle blew and we're off. Clipped in clean and had a good start. Really nowhere to move from where I was in the middle of the pack but I didn't lose any places either so I came into the first 180 somewhere in the 40's. The group immediately strung out coming out of the 180 and I burned my first match of the day in a full balls out sprint that got me by at least 10 guys coming into the barriers. What was even better was that I recovered really quickly. The same effort on Saturday put me in the red for what seemed like forever. 

I might have Myerson's wheels, but still lack in the icy coolness department...

photo byBanach

Into the 2nd lap I was still at the tail end of a group that had guys like Rowell, Larocque, Theodore, Meerse, Rosczko, Hornberger in it. There was probably 20 of us within 15 seconds of each other. As the laps went on the group was getting smaller and smaller as the really fast guys got off the front. By the time things settled out in the 3rd or 4th lap I found myself desperately trying to hang on with a group of Domnarski, Summers, Hornberger, Magur, Biederman and Gary David. My usual weaknesses were hurting me again today. My remounts were brutal. Even my dismounts were crap. How can you fuck up getting off your bike? At one point coming into the runup I came around the corner, jumped off the bike and fell over right into a thornbush with thorns the size of sabertooth tiger teeth (assuming sabertooth tiger teeth are massive flesh eating thornlike things). While I was clawing my way out of the bush, two riders ran past me and a bunch of spectators laughed and heckled me. I don't blame them, it had to have been pretty funny to watch. 

Proof of the vicious tiger attack

At some point we were coming by a group of spectators that yelled to one of the guys in our group that he needed to move up 5 spots to get in the points. Holy shit, I'm sitting about 30th with 3 to go and I'm feeling strong! Nice! Getting down to 2 to go, we dropped Biederman and then Domnarski flatted. Then we dropped David. There were 4 of us with Hornberger and Wade Summers keeping a very slight gap on me and Mike Magur. David was chasing like hell but we had about 10 seconds on him. I was dying trying to stay on Magur's wheel. 

It's kind of  funny when grown men throw on these clown suits, but  when they start doing it to their kids it's just wrong. I mean this kid's gotta get a date for the junior prom for Christ's sake! photo byBanach

We got the bell for last lap and I threw up a flare. I sprinted onto Magur's wheel and got by him coming into the 180. I drilled it coming into the stretch back towards the barriers but he was right on me. I came over the barriers like a jackass to his thoroughbred and he got a gap on me on the remount. Nothing but experience is going to make me better at that. I figure to be able to do my dismounts and remounts cleanly like that in another 3-5 years. I can practice them as much as I want in my backyard or in some field but unless you're doing it at race pace with your heart in your throat and somebody right on your wheel then it is not going to help. Well, it doesn't seem to be helping me anyways. I closed the gap back on Magur just in time for the runup and another remount, which he gapped me again on. Then I chased him into the woods, out by the horse jump through some more chicanes and caught him somewhere around where we hit the pavement. There were a bunch of sketchy turns on gravel and dirt in and around some fences and small hemlock-type shrubs that we were snaking our way through. Coming into one of the corners we both came in too fast and were wide of the line we needed to be on. Mike jammed his brakes to avoid hitting a hemlock head-on which got me overlapped on the outside of his rear wheel so I had nowhere to go but into the hemlock. A much cushier tree to hit than the one that smucked me the day before. I pulled myself out of the hemlock and resumed the chase. But he was too fast and smooth through the last few technical sections and I couldn't close the gap to anything better than 2 or 3 seconds. I ended up 28th on the day out of a strong Verge field of 60. It was my first Verge race ever where I finished in the top 50% and I was only 10 seconds out of the points. 

Thanks for the wheels, Adam! How much for another 30W on my FTP?

And I was second guessing myself on whether or not I should even be there. Actually, this could just as easily ended up with me crashing on my shoulder and getting that admonishing shake of the head coupled with "You're a dumbass!", from people that just don't understand. But then again they've never gotten that $15 check for 5th place at Plymouth, how could they understand? Hahaha... 

So PRO!

Race over, adrenaline gone, the pain seeped back into my body like the embrocation afterburn that you get when you put your pants back on after changing out of your kit. I drove pretty much the entire way home in 4th because it hurt to shift. I reached to punch the CD out of the radio but it hurt to reach so I just kept AC/DC Black Ice cranking, which at this point was on it's 5th run-through since the day before. The need to change it having yet to outweigh the pain required in making it happen.. Back home. More ice, more ibuprofen, and while we're on the letter "i" I had myself a big-ass bowl of ice cream. 

Baystate Cyclocross Day 1: Instant Karma's Gonna Get Ya

Tough week. Most of my training in the rain, head not into it, ass dragging. Felt like a serious CNS burnout and I was starting to worry about a major crash and burn for the last few weeks of the cross season. A lot of this was brought upon myself with the stupid rant I let loose on the internet last weekend. Monday morning reminded me of when I used to drink and would wake up after an especially hard night of drinking.. The kind where you slowly open one eye, try to figure out which room you're in (or house for that matter), check under the covers for clothes, and then try to assess the damage you might have caused. Man, was that a stupid rant to write. I agonized over it for 3 days, kicking myself repeatedly. But hey, I made a mistake, I apologized, and I moved on. But it definitely had a negative effect on my workouts this week, and coupled with the rain I was not enjoying the bike at all.. But Thanksgiving morning everything changed. I was out for a ride, the sun was threatening to come out, the fog in my head lifted, and I enjoyed the hell out of my training ride that morning. Did my "openers" in the rain on Friday, legs felt good, lungs not so much. Maybe just the weather? On to Sterling......

First Verge races in a few weeks. Overcast, windy like the loudmouth blowhard in the Mexican restaurant the other night, windchills in the upper 30's. I sheepishly went into registration to get my number, half expecting "Wanted" posters with my picture on it, hoping they'd have Jack's picture on them instead. Jack Hayden and I get mistaken for each other all the time and I was thinking this would be the perfect time for me to benefit from a little mistaken identity. Got a quick warmup lap in, surprisingly, the course was dry. I switched the "Muds" off the bike and put the Tufos back on. Warming up on the trainer before the race I was feeling gassed with any hard effort. Not good. Legs were good, lungs were not. Like I said, tough week. Put on my new kevlar, bulletproof team jacket and a Jack Hayden mask and headed over to staging...

As a matter of fact I did feel as bad as I looked...

I was smart enough to register early so I got a good number. I was in the 5th row right behind all the callups, not a bad starting position. The whistle sounded and we were off. I clipped in cleanly and got a solid start and stuck in the middle of the pack with probably 30 guys ahead of me. We quickly got to the runup and I was already hurting. Shit, this was going to be brutal. Came down the hill on the other side of the runup, over the horse jump and through some chicanes. I was getting passed and I had no answer. The first two laps I got killed. I was panic breathing. My legs are spinning the pedals, raring to go, screaming at me "Pedal harder you friggin wuss!", but my heart rate was through the roof and my lungs couldn't support the effort. 

Random woman looking like she smelled something bad just happens to be standing

downwind from where I'm having a really sucky day. Coincidence? Umm, probably not.

This is what wanting to crawl under a rock and die looks like

I watched as a group with Matt Domnarski, Kyle Wolfe and another Horst guy pulled away. These are guys I've been able to beat this season, wtf! Then I settled in with the Carls.. Carl Ring and Carl Wittig. There was one or two others in with us too I think. At one point on the third lap I got passed by a guy in Team Fuji gear. I was astonished that I was on the third lap and I am just now getting passed by former pro Frankie McCormack. Holy shit, he must be having an absolutely miserable day. I got by Frank again shortly after that and never saw him again. Only explanation for this would be he had swine flu or was drunk, or both. 

Unaltered photographic evidence of me in front of a Cat1 strong dude who was 

apparently having a much worse day than I.

Speaking of being ahead of really strong guys having a bad day really late in the race, I also got passed by Steve Rosczko coming into the start of lap 4, but held onto his wheel as he went by. Coming into the runup I got back in front of Steve, but Carl Ring got by me. I hate getting passed on runups by guys with shorter legs than me, but apparently he had bigger lungs today.. So here we are on lap 5 and it's back to me and the two Carls. I got in front of the two of them and put the hammer down. Witting stayed on, Ring dropped. By the time we came back around to get the bell for the final lap, Wittig and I had a good 20 seconds on the closest chaser. 

Out of matches.. Hey Carl, got a light?

We could see the group with Aspnes and Wolfe about 20 seconds ahead of us. At this point I had been pulling at the front for 3/4 of a lap and was straight into the wind as we came around the cinder track. I was on fumes. Carl comes out from behind me and says "let's go catch them". I looked over at him and spluttered "unh, oog, oof, hmmmngrrr". He must have understood because he got in front and I latched onto his wheel for a much needed draft. At this point I looked over my shoulder and I see my buddy Ryan Larocque. Ryan's one of the strongest guys in our field, one year removed from racing with the Pros, and typically finishing top 10-15 in the elite masters at the Verge races. My first thought was that he was in the lead and I was about to get lapped, but that idea was quickly dismissed because as strong as he is, he's still not going to be that far in front of Jonny BOLD (a name that must always be in CAPS), and the cyborg Aspholm. So Ryan must have come out of the pits after a flat or something and he was just coming back in. This is where the wheels came off for me and the bad karma I accumulated earlier in the week was going to kick me square in the balls. We hit the runup and instead of jumping off my bike, I just kind of poured myself off of it and fell over in the mud. I got up and stumbled up to the top hill. Remounted, but there was so much muck and grass in my pedals at this point that I couldn't get clipped in. I came bouncing down the hill with my feet bouncing all over the pedals, around the corner, back off the bike and over the horse jump. Finally got clipped back in. At this point Wittig opened up about a 10 second gap on me and I chased with everything I had, which at this point was about enough to beat my 10 year old in a 20 meter foot race. Still had enough of a gap on Ring that he wasn't going to catch me unless I did something stupid. Made my way around the pavement, over the barriers, very sloppily, and around the ballfield. At this point I had about 1/4 of a lap to go, if that. I could have just continued at my pace, rode the sketchy dirt/gravel 90's conservatively and finished in the position I was in, but I had actually closed to about 5 seconds of Wittig at this point so I stayed aggressive. I came into the first 90 on the gravel at about 15mph, barely braking. I leaned into the turn and my wheels went straight out from under me. No warning. No sliding. Right out. To make matters worse, an official disguised as a small tree was right on that corner and stepped into my path to make me pay for my unfair comments last week. I slid into the tree at full speed, missing my head by a matter of inches. I know how close it was to my head only because my shoulder took the full blow, which last time I checked, was right next to my head. The impact brought me to an immediate stop. I was stunned and I was in a shitload of pain. I heard a couple people asking if I was alright and I heard somebody take my bike away. Then I heard a couple riders go past. Then another one, maybe two or three. I had no idea what was going on really, I was completely dazed. I got to my feet and staggered to the guy holding my bike (as it turns out the people who helped me were my friends Mark Suprenant and fellow ECV'er Gary Passler who were camped out on the corner). As I grabbed my bike to take off I heard a voice say "You're going to finish?!?", to which I replied "Unhh". I looked behind me and there was a group coming up but I probably had 20 seconds on them. All I had to do was ride without incident as fast as I could and I would hold whatever position I was in. They were gaining on me but I was keeping a good enough gap. I had a piercing pain running through my shoulder but it was only about another minute to the line. As I came into the finishing straight I looked back and knew I had held my position. I came across with my arm in my lap as Richard Fries announced over the PA that "an ECV rider just came across the line who either ate too much gravy on Thursday and is holding his stomach or he has a shoulder injury". I ended up 39th on the day but only lost 3 spots in the crash. 

Ryan in front, Aaron waiting to make his move from the back

Carl Ring came up to me after the race and said "Sorry to have to beat you that way, Kevin.".. And my immediate thought was "oh, you mean getting ridden off my wheel on the last lap and then coming from 20 seconds down and passing me after I slide head first into a tree, probably snickering as I writhe around on the ground in agony? you mean you're sorry for beating me like that? gee thanks, Carl".. Instead I just looked at him and said, "Uhh, I hit a tree.". To Carl's credit, he had a really good result on the day. Him and I regularly finish within a few spots of each other and have become something of each other's nemeses (especially according to crossresults.com). The medics hunted me down after the race having seen me cross the line with my shoulder hanging somewhere down by my knees, checked me out, gave me the OK with no major damage (no dislocation, no broken collar bone), told me to go get x-rays. No lollipop, but then again I didn't ask....

Shedd Park

Another gorgeous, non-November'ish day.. So far this year it's been either really nasty, or really nice, no in-between. Today the race was in Lowell at Shedd Park with optimal conditions. It was dry, it was warm, and it was going to be fast. On the local CX circuit, this is one of the more popular races up there with Sucker Brook and Canton. The master's 35+ field today was a really strong field with about 40 in it. The course had a really awful run-up in it, that would have been rideable if not for the set of barriers at the bottom which forced the run-up (bastards), and then there was this really strange, totally unnecessary, spiral built into it which, if nothing else, gave everybody a chance to catch their breath since it slowed you to about 2mph as you crawled your way around it. Pretty typical course otherwise.. Some fast sections through woods and over fields, a long fast cinder track, a steep hill that pretty much everybody was able to ride... Overall, a fun challenging course.

I got to the staging area a little late but they were staging about 50 people across so I was still able to work my way into the front. Right next to Rob Hult and Ryan Larocque, both of them I knew were going to be in the thick of it for the top 5 spots at the end. 1:00 to start. . . . :30 to start. . . I love/hate the countdown. It's incredibly tense. It gets so quiet you could hear a mouse fart. "15 seconds!". . . I started shaking. Usually I don't shake unless it's freezing but it was at least 55deg out.. I started worrying that I would badly botch my start due to the nerves.. No whistle today, instead the official just yelled "Go!".. I absolutely drilled the start.

At the start with my buddy Ryan over my left shoulder. Kramer in front to the right.

Not the quickest on my clip in, but it was clean. I then pounded my way into the front of the pack, we rounded back on the start area and by the time we hit the first 180 I was in 3rd position! This was amazing, I am never that close to the front in a strong field like this. OK, so if the race ended now I would have done really, really good, but it was only 2:00 in. In bike racing, the racers "burn matches" for every really intense effort over the course of a race. The more matches you have, the better your chance is of matching accelerations when you have to, attacking when you have to, and bridging gaps when you have to. If you can continue to put these efforts in for the course of an entire race then your chance of placing well is high. I don't know how many matches I brought to the race today, but I definitely burned the equivalent of a 1/4 stick of dynamite trying to get myself in front at the start. I had only Kurt Perham and Rob Hult in front of me, two of the top ranked guys in cyclocross, period.. I did not belong with Kurt and Rob, and as it turned out it really wasn't going to be an issue for much longer. As the first lap continued I got passed in short order by Larocque, Shattuck, and Smith.. Then Mosher, and maybe a couple more. As I was coming into the final quarter of the first lap I came into a fast corner around a tree onto some gravel covered with leaves and I crashed hard on my elbow.. Mike Rowell came from behind and passed me.. My first thought, "Cool, i was still ahead of Rowell this far into the race!". I'm not kidding, this was uncharted territory for me. I quickly got back up on my bike and started pedaling away but my drive train was full of leaves. My chain was skipping all over the place and I couldn't move nearly as fast as I needed to.. "Fuck! my fucking gears, what the fuck, blah, blah fkn blah!", spontaneously spewed forth in a stream of unfltered, uncensored, awfulness. I need to find more adjectives, but the "f" word is just so versatile.  More on my flash temper later.... I got passed by a couple more. It took about a full minute before all the shit worked it's way out of my drive train and the bike started working right again. Could have been worse. I was still in the top 10-15 and I had caught on with a group of really strong riders that I was going to do my best to hang with the rest of the day...

The group that would keep me at my limit all day

Our group stayed together for the next several laps. In many places they would gap me and I would pull out my matchbook and fire up another one to catch back on.. The long run up was crucifying me as the laps went on. My chest was exploding and my legs were disintegrating as I would come over the top, remount and try to maintain connection with the group I was with. Every time the group would get a small gap on me I would make it up in the technical sections. My technical skills are getting better every week to the point that I am now able to really make up ground on people through some tricky sections. The tradeoff for attacking the technical sections hard is that I crash more than I'd like, but that's how I'm going to get better. It's working because I rode the technical sections hard today and only crashed that once in the first lap.

I wasn't familiar with any of the racers I was currently in the group with, I just know they had me right at my limit trying to hang on.. Now we're 4 or 5 laps in and we come around the finish line and the lap card shows "1".. Really? Seemed premature. Why wasn't anybody ringing the bell? Weird. So the attacks begin. Three go off the front. I'm at the back of the group of 6 and the split occurs right in the middle. I reach in my pocket for a another match to try to get around the couple in front of me who couldn't match the acceleration of the front 3 but my book was empty.. All I could do was try to stay with the guys in front of me which, to be honest, was damn near killing me. At this point we're lapping a lot of riders, mostly 45's that started a couple minutes after us. The three of us stay together through the first 3/4 of what we thought was the final lap and we enter the woods.. I know it's coming to a sprint finish between me and these two guys and I figured to have a shot at something very close to 10th. So I made the worst possible decision in this case. Instead of staying 3rd wheel, I attacked from the back, going way into the red in the process when I already knew I burned every match available to me for the day.. I passed them both but didn't have enough to gap them by anything significant which essentially did nothing more than give them a lead out for the final sprint, ensuring that I would finish behind them. As they came out of my draft to pass me at the line they didn't even thank me for my idiotic tactical error. One of them might have blown me a kiss as he went by, not sure. I was too busy wondering where my next breath was going to come from as it felt like I had gone into full cardiac arrest from the effort.

Skin peeling off my face. This is what I would look like if I was

a character in a Tim Burton movie...

So we get through the line but it didn't seem right.. The lap card still had a "1" on it, there were no officials within sight and the announcer guy on the PA wasn't saying anything, or at least anything that could be heard at the finish line. Some guys were still riding, some were pulling off, some were looking around like they just lost their kid in the mall. We all sat up at this point and then some guy watching from his bike says "Hey, you guys have another lap to go". So I look around and decide to go. But at this point I just sprinted my ass off in what I thought was the final lap and really had no desire or energy to do one more.. At the same time, I looked around to see who was with me to see if there were any guys from my field. It seemed like mostly lapped riders were left finishing up so I put in a 80% effort to get around the course making sure not to get passed by anybody and try to figure out if anybody ahead of me was in my field. There was really no way to tell what the hell was going on. I had no idea if I should still be racing or if my sprint was actually the end of my race. When I came back into the section of the course that passes near the finish area I saw a lot of guys from my field standing around talking, done racing. So I figured I just did 75% of an extra lap for nothing. I was also worried that if I came through the finish line again I would be mistaken for a lapped rider and lose about 30 positions in the final results. So I ducked under the tape and got off the course, just in time to see Kurt, Bill Shattuck, and Pete Smith sprinting for the finish and I realized "holy crap, it's not over!".. I ducked back under the tape and bolted away trying to figure out if anybody else passed me while I was off course. I came across the line fuming. I get my best start of the year, I have a chance to be very close to top 10 in a big, strong field, and the lack of organization at the finish line turn it into a complete cluster fuck with nobody knowing where they ended up or even if they finished the right amount of laps.

I ride over to where Michele and a whole bunch of friends from the gym were, hop off my bike, and begin straight into a stream of R-rated consciousness. Let me explain... I'm an intense but generally laid back person similar to how the Grateful Dead would have been had they spent more time drinking espresso rather than dropping mescaline. When I blow up, it comes fast and furious like the earth shattering thunderbolt that shakes your house in the middle of the night and scares the bejesus out of you. I typically explode in a flurry of f-bombs because I've found it to be the most effective way to release the build up of pressure inside. My flash temper strikes quickly and then dissipates about as fast as a 4am boner does after you've gotten up to take a leak (any guy over the age of about 35 will understand exactly what I'm talking about here, for further explanation, ask one)... My tantrum was targeted particularly at the person (or lack thereof) whose job it is to flip lap cards and ring a fucking bell when there's one lap left. Even when the race is thrown into complete dissarray by a 2 minute staggered start which has riders getting lapped about half way through a race it should be easy enough to figure out what lap the fast guys are on. They're easy to pick out because they're the real fast ones. Duh! To be honest, I need to work on getting the flash temper under better control, it may be an extreme reaction at times, but I am a passionate guy and I do tend to go to extremes in almost everything l do, including when I get pissed off. Sorry if I offended anyone. Unless I've offended you and you also pay money to watch mob movies with Deniro or Pesce in them. In that case it would be hypocritical for you to be offended by my language.

I would like to thank all the people from the gym that came out to watch the race and provide support. Danielle and Alison with the cowbell, Sandy and Vince, Margot, who took some incredible pictures, Sharon, Sarah, and Roni. You have no idea how much it helps me to dig that much deeper when I come by people screaming for me. And a special congratulations to Roni who completed her first CX race ever and became instantly hooked on the most beautiful sport there is..