"I Must Be In the Front Row!"

Like in the old Miller Lite commercial with Bob Uecker, "I must be in the front row!" was the storyline of the weekend for me... The Gran Prix of Gloucester is my favorite event of the year. It's at an incredible venue at Stage Fort Park, right on the ocean, and it's run by Essex County Velo. My team. I went down on Friday and helped with the setup in the wind and rain. I left in the dark and it was still raining. I figured Saturday would be a mess but it was amazing how quickly everything drained and dried up. The Gran Prix of Gloucester, aka The New England Nationals, is the biggest cyclocross event in New England. Practically every field has 100 or more riders in it from all over North America, and there are often international champions in the elite races. It is a massive weekend of cyclocross.

Day 1 Course at Stage Fort Park.. Photo by James Scott

Three of my first 4 races this year have been decent but I've just been kind of missing that top end that the strongest guys seem to have. I haven't been able to sprint as fast at the start and I haven't been able to attack later in the races when I need to. Seems like it's been more of a matter of survival. Part of it is that I'm faster now than I was last year, so where last year I would be able to pick people off at the end of races, this year I'm further up in the field and the guys are faster and that much harder to stay with at the end, never mind pass. In 3 of my first 4 races I have had far better results than I had in the same races last season. In the other race I had 3 crashes, a dropped chain, a rear wheel skewer came undone, and I had to take a bike change. That result was my worst by far, but on the bright side I got a whole lot of bad luck and bad riding out of the way in that one. 

I spent the week leading up to Gloucester determined to absolutely crush the start and prove to myself that I could hang with the fast guys right from the gun. I actually resorted to daily affirmations like Stuart Smalley, except without the mirror and the sweater. Several times a day I would tell myself I could sprint like a champ at the start of a cx race. (I read in CX Magazine that this works and they couldn't write it if it weren't true). It had to happen for me this week at Gloucester. And better yet, because I'm with ECV, host of the GP of Gloucester, I got a preferential front row callup. This was huge, especially on day 1 with a downhill start into an off-camber right hander that was bottlenecking all the earlier fields of the day and giving plenty of whiners plenty to whine about. 

So we stage and I am in the front row. Roger Aspholm on my left. Jonny Bold on my right. A couple other national champions on the other side of Roger and then a couple of the other fastest guys in the country like Perham and Hult that could challenge Jonny for the stars and stripes on any given day.. And me... My daily affirmations of "you're a good sprinter, you can do this" turn to "don't fuck this up".. I can't begin to tell you how nervous I was. 

If only I could channel some of the blood running through my arms into my legs I may be able to start earning this starting position.. Photo by James Scott

The whistle blows and I had a great start! I went into the off-camber right on Jonny's wheel, came out of the first few turns in the front group and subsequently started going backwards.. This was expected to some extent, I mean I didn't belong in the front of a field this strong to begin with, I certainly wasn't going to stay there for long. But at the same time, I held onto a group of riders that are always much stronger than I am in these races. Guys like Mike Rowell and Jon Bernard were there. They're always way ahead of me. I stayed with these guys into the second of 5 laps and then I just couldn't hold the pace anymore. I started blowing up badly and found myself gapped and in no-man's land. Unable to catch the group that just shelled me and looking over my shoulder at a group that was coming up behind me.. At some point Matt Myette went by me and I had enough in the tank to grab his wheel and follow him around a bit. The course was super technical and Matt is incredibly smooth through the technical sections where he would gap me easily, forcing me to burn another match to catch back on every time the course straightened out. This went on for laps 3 and 4 until somebody came around me and got between me and Matt and immediately slowed down through a technical section where I couldn't pass him. I watched as Matt pulled away, finally getting around the guy who held me up. I put everything I had into a chase but I was on fumes and couldn't bridge back. Back in no-man's land, trailing Myette by about 15 seconds, I can see guys like Whitney and Hornberger coming on strong. For some reason, when I'm completely spent it feels like I'm crawling and everybody else is flying. A voice inside my head was telling me I was going to get caught. I would have hyperventilated except with my heart rate at 97% max I don't think my ventilating could have gotten any more hyper. Dan Larino caught and passed me and it was everything I had left to stay with him. We ended up staying together the rest of the lap and were never caught by the group coming up behind. Larino took me by a second in the sprint. 29th on the day, 3:25 off Jonny Bold's winning time. My best result ever in a race of this size with a field this strong. Last year in Gloucester I was 63rd and 42nd for the weekend so 29th was a huge improvement for me. It hurt so much and sucked so bad that I couldn't wait to do it all over again on Sunday.

Day 2 had a long uphill start so the front row callup wasn't going to be quite as important as it was on Saturday, but it was still pretty big just the same. Start position is always huge.. On my way to the race I think I was more nervous than I was the day before. I was force feeding myself a bagel 3 hours before the race and I thought I would puke. I don't really understand why I was more nervous, maybe the bar was raised with my result from the day before so I was putting more pressure on myself.. This time when I staged, I went to the other side from Jonny and Roger (assuming this would put less pressure on me) and got in next to Rob Hult who is having a monster year.. Then Mark McCormack comes over and slides in on the other side of me. Great, no pressure there! To make matters worse, Derek Griggs comes up to me, knowing the only reason I'm up there is because of my ECV callup, shakes my hand and says "Don't fuck this up.". Too funny. Actually we had a laugh about it and McCormack advised me to stay within myself and try not to blow up chasing the guys at the front. Specifically, he told me I don't want to give 20% too much effort to stay with the fast guys because I will have 20% less later in the race. Solid advice, no? The whistle blew and I had another really good start stayed with the front of the group for the whole sprint, probably top 20. Of course I went about 20% too hard and by the time we got to the top of the hill my eyes were rolling back in my head and my heart and lungs were trying to escape out of my mouth. Somehow I stayed with these guys through the first technical section and into the nasty runup. 

The classic Gloucester runup. More fun when it's in ankle deep mud like in 2009. Photo by Eric Goodson

Similar to Saturday I was in with a group of guys like Pete Smith and Mike Rowell for a bit until I just couldn't handle their pace anymore. Once I fell off the pace of that in about the 3rd lap I found myself actually leading a group that had Aaron Millett, Myette, Hornberger, Snoop and another Embrocation Cycling guy.. My first thought was, "so that's what those guys look like from the front.". Second thought was I would have been much better off not leading this group as I destroyed myself trying to maintain a pace that I couldn't handle and I definitely could use the 20% of extra power that McCormack told me I would need right about now. Eventually it caught up to me and I started going backwards, briefly getting dropped. I was able to bridge back up and essentially hang with this group for the rest of the race. It got blurry somewhere around here. I was dying. At some point in the final laps I was able to get by Myette and Hornberger and put a bit of a gap into them that I was able to hold to the finish. Not sure where or how it happened, I just know that it happened because that's what the results say. I feel I had a stronger race on day 2, finishing only 3:01 off the winner (McCormack), but I placed at 36th.. It is shocking to me how frigging strong these guys are that I'm racing against, from top to bottom of the field. There are no slow guys and every position is fiercely contested. It is equally as shocking how at the end of every race it's almost as though I had forgotten how much it hurts.  

Race over, dry clothes, recovery drinks and food ingested, I settled in and watched the pros go at it with Tim Johnson and Jeremy Powers in an absolute throwdown! What a race, what a crowd, what an incredible event! 

An astute interviewer from cyclingdirt.org took this great video of me starting the tear down of the course following the elite men's race. I had thought the black hoodie and jeans would keep me incognito but the cx paparazzi are very clever. I enter at about :30 seconds. Unfortunately my video was hijacked by these 3 cyclocrossworld.com racers that swept the podium on Sunday.

Visit cyclingdirt.org for more Videos