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.
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...
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..
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