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.