CX Worlds: The Finals

Woke up nervous but confident. Had breakfast, packed up and headed to the course for the 9a pre-ride. It was 20 deg and the course was frozen solid. The ruts were vicious. I had never experienced anything like this before. If a rut caught your tire you were completely at the mercy of the rut. After a couple laps I found that you really needed to float the front wheel and do your best to go diagonally across the ruts. After 4 laps I was feeling pretty good about my chances of minimizing my mistakes but knew that under race conditions it was not going to be a matter of "if" I would hit the deck, but "how many times". This, of course, was assuming conditions wouldn't change over the next 4 hours. As the day went on the temps climbed into the high 20's and by 11:00 the sun was out and it was in the low 30's. The ruts stayed frozen solid but now there was a shimmering layer of grease on the surface. I watched the start of the 50+ race and there were 4 or 5 crashes affecting at least 20 racers in the first section of ruts when they came off the pavement. It was carnage. This was bad. At noon they opened the course for inspection and I took a lap before my race. With the slight layer of grease on top of the ruts the course was much more difficult for me than it was in the morning. Mentally I was staying confident and was ready to bury myself for the next 45 minutes.  We staged and a couple guys missed their callup which allowed me to grab a 3rd row spot. They called "30 seconds" and my mind was calm. I had laser focus. Whistle blew and I nailed it, but nothing really opened up and I hit the turf mid-pack. The first section of ruts was a mess and bikes were getting tossed all over the place as we fought for a clean line. You were very much at the mercy of the rider in front of you, hoping he wouldn't go down or hook a stake since most of the rideable lines were right at the tape. I got through the first tough section on two wheels but was stuck behind a couple guys that were really struggling with the terrain and I lost a lot of time because passing lanes were few. I eventually got by and started to chase the group ahead of me. We hit a section with a single rideable line and I got held up again. The guy directly in front of me t-boned a stake and I barely got around him without going down. The next guy caught a rut that sent him through the tape and I managed to get around him without going down. Then I was alone and drilling it trying to continue to move up. I came around a corner, caught a rut, and went down hard. Got up and kept chasing. The top guys were gone and I was going to be fighting to get top 25. The course was nasty and it was definitely the most technical conditions I've ever faced. There was a flyover that shot you down a ramp straight into a hard right-hander that was completely rutted out. I rode the corner clean earlier in the morning every time, but now with the added slickness I couldn't figure it out for the life of me. In the 3rd lap I rode right into the fence and took what seemed like forever getting myself and the bike untangled from the fence and stake that I wrapped the bars around. By the time I was at 2 to go there was so much shit in my drivetrain and pedals that I was carrying a good 15 lbs of extra weight and it was becoming almost impossible to get clipped in following dismounts. Next time by the pits I grabbed my pit bike and it felt like a rocket. There were a couple guys with me prior to the pit stop but I was able to ride away from them with a clean bike. But it was too late for me to pull anybody else back in. I came across the line 23rd. My buddy Geoff had a phenomenal start and held on for 18th. New England represented well with Alec Petro getting 11th and Mark Gunsalus in 15th. I was hoping for a top 20, but my goal coming in was a top 25. I was ranked 28th in a very strong field with many of the top cx racers in the country so I am psyched that I came in ahead of my ranking. They called it "worlds" but  it was mostly Americans. We had the Belgian champ, a racer from Canada and one from UK, but the rest were Americans. Regardless, I'm 23rd in the World! Haha. It's been a long season. The experience of racing and trying to stay sharp into January was something I am glad I did, but am in no hurry to do again. I came a long way this year and it was, by far, my most successful season ever. I have room to improve and I will sit down with my coach and come up with a plan for next year. But for now I will rest, eat burritos and ice cream for a week, and probably won't even shave my legs. Actually, after listening to Geoff's music for 4 days I think I may have stopped growing hair on my legs anyways.

CX Worlds: The Day Before...

Temps continued to plummet after our race on Wednesday and by the time we left the course everything was starting to solidify. This morning I was in the parking lot with my power washer getting what was left of the mud and turf off the bikes in the 5deg windchills. Nasty weather for racing and I was glad I didn't have to go again today. Geoff and I got our pre-race "openers" in this morning at the hotel on the trainers along with Troy Tucker, Tennessee National Champion. Geoff put on his "music", I think it was "Teen Dance Party VII" or some shit like that. By the time we got off the trainers an hour later my estrogen levels were 2x what they were when we started, I had begun lactating, and I craved a Caesar Salad (no croutons, dressing on the side). 

We headed over to the course to catch the Men's 30-34 Finals. It was bitter cold, and the course was just as we expected. A frozen maze of treacherous ruts where there was trenches of 3-4 inch deep mud just the day before. Guys were coming into a patch of ruts at high speed, would catch a rut and get flung every which way, if they were lucky enough to stay up. Others went down hard or got flung into stakes or fencing. After the race, the grounds crew was trying to break up some of the rutted sections with a tractor. With the temps staying below freezing between now and when our race starts tomorrow the course will be frozen and fast. I picked up my number and will start in the 4th row tomorrow.

We went out to dinner with some former national and world champions, in the hopes that I will get better by osmosis. I'm really looking forward to the race tomorrow because it will require a lot more "racing" and won't be determined so much on physics (i.e. how many watts you can output) like the bog trot was the other day. I am nervous but confident and I know with 100% confidence that I will leave it all at Eva Bandman Park tomorrow.

CX Worlds Update, Part II: The Seeding Heats

Last night we went out in search for a pre-race meal. Steak and vegetables work best for me. Looking at all the steak restaurants around Louisville it was difficult to find a steak for less than $40. Somehow Louisville has yet to realize that it's not New York City. Seriously underpopulated with douche bags and less likely to come across a rat than you are a raccoon or possum in the city streets (both of which we did), this is no New York City. It should seem you'd be able to find a steak joint where you can get a decent ribeye for $20. We finally found a place that had a $20 steak dinner. It was awesome, problem solved.

Rained hard last night and showered into the morning.. It was pretty much pissing throughout the morning heats as we watched the top 40's and 50's in the country slog through the mud clocking 12 minute laps for just over 3 miles. It was raw and cold and I was as nervous as I've been for a race. Not wanting to warmup in the rain I moved my trainer into a big tent with a heater.. Between the hours of 11:30 and 1:00 the temp dropped a good 10 degrees, it started snowing, and the wind was howling. My move into the tent for warmups was brilliant! I got on the trainer at about noon, the same time that one of the site crews came in for their lunch break. They went over to the heater, sat down, and started smoking butts. I'm doing pre-race intervals sucking in second-hand smoke and getting really pissed off about it. I got off the trainer, walked over to the group, suplexed one of them into the turf, grabbed the cigarette from another one and snuffed it out in the middle of his forehead. The other 3 scurried off with their tails between their legs, dropping their chili dogs and mountain dews on the soggy turf...... As I came out of my daydream, i was finishing up my last pre-race interval as the crew walked past me on their way back to do something useful, I'm sure.

The wind was howling as we staged and the snow was coming hard. It was unreal. The whistle blew and I got my best start in months, blowing through 3 guys in front of me and hitting the turf about 6 or 7 wheels back. But it was short lived. The course is pretty wide open for a loooong time and it was honestly just a miserable fucking slogfest through deep mud and turf. The only technical parts of the course were unrideable and we spent a considerable amount of time running. I lost my right hand to the wet/cold about halfway through the first lap and spent the rest of the race slapping at the shifter sometimes successfully, others not so much. At least a dozen times I shifted into a harder gear when I was looking for an easier one. This was a massive effort where the most watts wins. Not the best situation for me, but I was hoping to be able to manage a 3rd row seeding for finals. This would require I get 12th.. I managed to work my way into 12th place and I knew I could hold off the guys I had just passed, but as we passed the pits with about 1/3 of a lap to go somebody came out of the pits following a bike change and the clean bike had him flying.. I had contemplated taking a clean bike, but I had just passed a couple guys to get myself into 12th and I didn't want to have to chase back on with less than a third of a lap to go, clean bike or not. The guy coming out of the pit rode away and I came in at 13th.. I'll have a 4th row start for finals. A little dissapointing, but with a good start and a clean race I think a top 20 can happen. I'd be real happy with that.

I spent a good hour shaking, the first 20 of it getting my right hand unfrozen which brought excruciating pain, bringing back memories of going hypothermic in Warwick a couple years ago. It is now well below freezing and is supposed to stay there for the next 36 hours. The course will most likely go from a slogfest, to a treacherous maze of icy ruts.. I'll take that over the bog we raced in today. Time to rest up and get ready for the Finals. I'm pretty determined to crush it on Saturday...

CX Worlds Update, Travel and Pre-Ride

Day 1:

Packed up and headed out with my buddy Geoff McIntosh by 9:30a from NH. Drove all day, stopping in CT for lunch and Akron, OH for dinner.. If you're ever in Akron, definitely go to Luigi's Italian for dinner. They had an incredible selection of things to eat, like pizza and spaghetti. You could even get your spaghetti with meatballs or sausage. It wasn't quite as good as a can of Spaghettio's, but what is?

On the way out we listened to an audio book about a poor Londoner who made good despite the vendetta of an evil old hag who tried to destroy his life. It was read by some English guy, possibly Winston Churchill (or maybe he was just a character). The audio book actually helped the time pass and it temporarily stopped my ears from bleeding, which was a result of listening to some of the crap music Geoff likes.. Holy shit!

We made it to Louisville at 1:39am, unpacked bikes, bags, and belongings and crashed hard until 9:00a the next day...

Day 2: 

Pissing rain. With over an inch of rain in the time that we had been sleeping, we knew the course was going to be a disaster.. We had some breakfast, spun on the trainers in the morning to spin out the long drive of the day before, tuned the bikes up and packed up to head over for registration and pre-ride. 

First order of business was to register and see where I would draw for the seeding heats. I reached into the bag to draw a number, grabbed one and hesitated. It felt like a high number, and I contemplated grabbing another one.. I pulled 224, the last possible number to make the 3rd row, which is better than it could have been but I was really hoping for better. After pre-riding the course, I'm not sure it's going to matter though to be honest.

Coming off the pavement at the start, we turn into a section of the course that is pretty much underwater and get covered in mud almost immediately. It's an absolute slog and there are some sections of up and down 180's with off-cambers that would make for a fantastic course under better conditions. But in this case the entire section is unrideable and we're hoofing it. After two laps of destroying my drivetrain and pushing out about 2x the watts I was hoping to expend I called it quits and head to the bikewash. Everybody is in line with their bikes covered with 3x the bike's weight in mud and turf, looking at each other with awesome WTF looks on their faces.

Everybody I talked to says "well it's not really my kind of course" and I figure that's because we've become accustomed to actually riding our bikes in races and not carrying them for longer than the time it takes to hop the barriers or make it up the odd run-up. I'm OK with it though. It's January, it's Kentucky, I kind of expected tough conditions, just not quite this bad. With more showers and some snow, I expect the course will be worse come race time on Thursday.. Then the cold moves in and it will be below freezing until race time on Saturday. So it will be a completely different set of conditions on Saturday for the Finals.

But everybody rides the same course. I came 1000 miles for this and I'm going to give it hell....

It's Not New Year's Yet...

I don't celebrate traditional New Year, I celebrate Cyclocross New Year. This lies somewhere between Thanksgiving and the Chinese New Year and the specific date it falls on depends largely on how well one is doing in their CX races. There's a few primary differences with the 3 New Year Celebrations. With traditional New Year, people get hammered and then at midnight they kiss each other and each other's husbands/wives/significant others and spend the next couple days hungover trying to make up for the stupid shit they did on New Year's Eve. Though I've never celebrated Chinese New Year, it seems similar to traditional New Year with the exception that dragons are involved and the children receive little red envelopes with money. For CX New Year, we race our final race of the season, receive an envelope with money if we do really well, and then celebrate "Fat Week", which is about 7-10 days in a competition with other cx racers to see who can gain the most weight.

Markedly different than the envelopes containing cash at the end of CX races, these envelopes make millions of Chinese children happy during Chinese New Year.

This year, my CX New Year falls on January 14. This is when I'll be racing in the Masters World CX Championships in Louisville, KY. This was not in my goals for the year because, to be honest, at the beginning of the year I didn't think I had any place in the World Championships. My goal for the year was to be a top 10 racer in the Verge New England Championship CX series, which is a level I have never achieved. I figured I'd try to focus on achieving that first and then I could think about Worlds. 

So here's a quick recap of the year that has led me to being on the doorstep of my first ever world championship event. My CX2010 came to a merciful end in December following a downward spiral of subpar results in my last handful of races. Mentally and physically I was fried. To make matters worse, I started CX2011 only able to gain 5 pounds during Fat Week, which was far below what some of the more elite CX'ers were able to produce. For example, I believe my coach, Kurt Perham, was able to put on 12 or 13 pounds. To be fair, he typically races at about 20 pounds over his birth weight so he could gain 5 pounds just walking by his refrigerator at the end of the race season. After fat week I pretty much stayed off the bike for a month except for a few mtb rides on the snowmobile trails. I focused more on nordic skiing and strength training, getting my deadlift up to 275 lbs. When I did get on the bike, my peak power was higher than ever, which I attribute to the deadlifts and possibly a poorly calibrated power meter. Working with Kurt for the second year now, he got me dialed in quickly and I progressed rapidly. My threshold power increased by about 7% within the first few months and I was riding stronger than ever by late Spring.. This is when Worlds started banging around in the back of my head, but I didn't want to lose sight of the fact that my best Verge finish ever was 23rd and I had a lot of work to do to get into the top 10 first. I spent the Spring and Summer months racing MTB and road races here and there. I had a great result in the Blue Hills Classic with a top 10 finish (best I had ever done there previously was 25th), but I wasn't as concerned about the results as much as I was with getting good, hard training efforts for the CX season.

I had two setbacks leading into the CX season. The first was taking part in the Tough Mudder, which froze me so badly that it rocked my system to the point that I wasn't the same on the bike for a good 3 weeks following the TM. This was my own fault. My training load at that time of the year keeps me right on the edge of being able to make performance gains without going into "overtraining". There is over-reaching, but it's controlled. The TM put me over the edge. 

What was I thinking?

The second was in early August, training a football team in the weight room at 6:30am I had to demonstrate power cleans about 40 times to help the kids with their form. I wasn't warmed up and I was just grabbing whatever the kids had on the bar at the time. By the time I left, my lower back was feeling it, but I didn't think it would be too bad. Later that morning my training ride had two long, hard threshold intervals, that I actually crushed. It seems the combination of the power cleans and the hard ride, plus a hot bath that I took later that night was enough to really screw my back up and I was hobbled for the next two weeks. Off the bike for, I think, 8 days. And this was one month before the start of CX. Bad timing.

First race of the CX season was Quad Cross and I got 5th. A smaller race, but a good start to the season nonetheless. The first Verge weekend in VT I got 13th and 14th. Our field was very strong and deep and I knew that I had a lot to improve on to get into the top 10. The next week was another smaller event at Sucker Brook and I actually led the race for a couple laps, but couldn't maintain my top end and faded. I finished 4th and was bummed to not get on the podium. Gloucester is my favorite Verge weekend and the fields were packed at 90 racers both days. I got 14th both days and was only about 20 seconds out of the top 10. Getting closer. Then on Friday of that week during my training ride a car pulled headfirst out of it's driveway and I t-boned it at 20mph, launching myself and my bike over the hood, imploding the windshield, coming to rest on the dashboard. Being Adamantium-enhanced, I walked away in better shape than the car and my bike, but my leg was banged up, especially my knee. I remember coming to my senses, rolling off the hood, and walking around wondering if I'd still be able to get top 25 in the race the next day so I could get more Verge points. It could be argued that it was a poor decision, but I did race that weekend, finishing 21st on Saturday (worst race of the season for me), and managed 15th on Sunday driven largely on the anger and disappointment of my result on Saturday. 

At the current prescription prices, I couldn't afford the maximum Adamantium dose that Wolverine was able to take, but I was able to get a large enough dose that I survived getting hit by a car with minimal damage.

It took a few weeks to shake the effects of the accident completely and I got 11th at Northampton in my strongest race of the season. Then at Sterling on Thanksgiving weekend I finally cracked the top 10. I had a great start, had great legs, and raced the smartest race I've ever raced, finishing 7th and following that up with 11th the next day. Last Verge weekend of the year was Dec 3/4 in Warwick, RI and I was probably less than 50/50 on whether or not I would go to Worlds. I don't want to be that guy that goes just because it would be cool to race Worlds. If I go I want to be competitive with a legitimate shot at a top 20. Day 1 of Warwick I had an awful start and ended up 30 back coming out of the first set of turns following the starting sprint. But I was riding strong and seemed to be able to hold my top end longer than ever before. To put it in Viagra terms, I could go harder, longer. I picked my way through the field bridging from group to group and finished with my second top 10 of the season. Considering the terrible start I had this was an awesome result. I was racing stronger than ever before and was really just coming into peak form. The "worlds" thoughts were strong now and I was wondering if I might take a shot at it. I went back to the hotel room in Warwick, took an ice bath, and laid down on the couch to do absolutely NOTHING for the rest of the day in preparation for the race on Sunday. I was watching a movie on TV, "Angels and Demons", with Tom Hanks as the Harvard Professor who is a symbologist with the worst haircut in the history of movies. He is called on to go to the Vatican and save the Catholic Church from bad guys. The detective from the Vatican pulls Hanks out of the pool at Harvard and explains what's going on with the Illuminati (the bad guys).. Lots of ancient religious symbology involved and Hanks is playing hard to get. The detective says to him, "You've spent 10 years of your academic life searching for the very symbol you now hold in your hand... How much longer must we pretend you haven't already decided to come.".. It occurred to me at that moment that despite trying to convince myself I was maybe 50/50 on going, I pretty much already decided I was going to Worlds. 

Thanks to Professor Langdon for helping me decide to chase a dream and compete at Worlds. But, honestly, what's with the hair??

So there I was on December 31st at 8:00am, 33deg, raining and sleeting, slipping on the black ice of the driveway, strapping my cx bike to the roof racks of the truck to head down to Wareham, MA to do a practice race put on by the odds-on favorite to win the Worlds in the 50-54 group, Kevin Hines. There were over 30 of us out there at Jellystone Park in Wareham yesterday. Jungle cross, through the woods, over the sandy beaches, past the cranberry bogs. There were 5 former national and world champions, elite racers, the top masters in New England, all trying to stay sharp for just a couple more weeks. It was one of the best races of the year. We all sat in the barn after the race, banquet style, eating sandwiches and talking about our plans for Natz or Worlds. It was awesome! I contrast that to 20 years ago when I was one of the people who celebrated traditional New Year's, partying, drinking too much, not giving a shit that, not only did I not achieve my goals the previous year, but I probably didn't even have any. Speaking grandly about all I would accomplish in the coming year and forgetting about all of it once the alcohol-induced fog lifted the next day. Now it's different. Each year I get better and stronger in every way. Physically, mentally, and emotionally. I have goals every year and I work my ass off towards achieving them. This year I have unfinished business and I am completely stoked that my CX New Year is falling in January instead of December. 20 years ago if I was going to Kentucky it would have been to tour the bourbon distilleries. Now it's to race for a World Championship....