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..