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.