Going to CXtremes

CX Worlds: The Finals

2012-01-14T16:58:00.001-08:00

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...

2012-01-13T17:54:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-12T17:26:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-11T15:34:00.000-08:00

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...

2012-01-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

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....

Weeping Willow MTB Race

2011-05-22T14:52:00.000-07:00

The Weeping Willow MTB race is one of my favorite races. It's on some of the sweetest single track around in the Willowdale State Forest in Ipswich, MA and it's run by my good friend Aaron Millet and his crew which is a bunch of great guys. With a week's worth of rain leading up to the race the course was in surprisingly good shape. Mostly dry and fast, but with a lot of wet roots that were like ice.

This was my first mtb race of the year and I had all the normal pre-race jitters wailing away on my insides. I went down with my buddy Ron Steers and he commented on how he wished he could just show up and start racing and not have to spend an hour getting ready, warming up, checking everybody else out on their $5k full suspension full carbon rigs looking all pro and intimidating. I know exactly how he feels. This is my second year of racing mountain bikes and I'm racing in with the expert field with guys who have been doing this forever. I have a long way to go to match most of these guys on any kind of technical single track.. But that's OK, what I lack in technical ability I more than make up for with a blatant disregard for my own physical well being. This was on full display today with a couple highlight reel crashes that even I was surprised I walked away from.

The staging area was a mass of humanity. Being close to Boston, and central to New England in general, the Weeping Willow draws what has to be the largest crowd of the season. In the Expert men 40-49 field alone we had close to 40 riders, most races that I've been to are lucky to draw half that. There had to be 700 racers there overall. So they're calling up each group and by the time my field gets to the line I find myself at the very back of the pack. With 40 guys in the field, this was bad. There was about a half mile of double track to start the race, and I put in a massive effort to make up space but was still only able to work my way up to the middle of the field by the time we hit the single track. Heart rate is through the roof and I haven't completely worked out the jitters yet and I make two ridiculous technical errors in the span of about 2:00 which caused me to lose back about 10 spots. So I'm pretty much in the back of the pack again and the day is going to be spent killing myself to work myself back up to the top 10 if I'm lucky... Once the best guys get away in the front of a field this large it's pretty unlikely you're going to be able to pull them back in from where I am, especially once you factor in lapped traffic and slower riders from fields that got to start in front of you that you will inevitably have to try to get by on singletrack sections. Whatever, if I can get to top 10 I'd be pretty happy in this field for sure. I settled in and started finding a rhythm. The rooty sections were killing me though, they were like ice and they were kicking me all over the place. Every time we hit double track I pegged it and passed a lot of guys. At this point I'm passing guys from my field as well as other fields so there's really no telling how far up in my own field I'm getting. I just know that I'm passing lots of people and nobody is passing me. That's good, right? Then somebody comes up behind me, yelling "race leader", which I guess means I need to move out of his way, which I did. It was Paul Curley. Once he got by me, I latched onto his wheel and followed his lines. Man, can that guy ride. Following somebody who knows what he's doing is amazing. But then he made the most brilliant pass on 5 guys in a section of the course and he was gone, I couldn't follow it. So we get to the end of lap 1, about 50 minutes in.. This is where I left a second water bottle in case I went through the first one that I carried with me during the first lap. It was at this point I was able to finally take my first drink from the bottle I had with me, looks like a 2nd bottle was not going to be required today.. This is also where I became a train wreck. First thing that happened was I hit a section of roots that kicked my bike sideways, knocked me out of the pedals so my feet are swinging out the sides of the bike and my ass is bouncing up and down on the saddle. On the last bounce, I came down right on the nose of the saddle and bent it down at about a 30 degree tilt. Now I had the luxury of not being able to sit for the last 90% of the last lap without feeling like I'm being thrown over the handlebars. This took it's toll on my quads and back as the lap wore on. Still I was making up ground on people on some single track sections and especially when we would hit the double track. I eventually caught up to a couple guys that I hadn't seen since the very beginning of the race and I knew I had to be close to the top 10 because these guys were strong racers, you can just tell when you get in behind some of these guys and follow their lines that they know what they're doing. One of them was Richard Brown, I don't know who the other was. So I hung on to these two for a while waiting for the next double track section because I knew I'd be able to get by them at that point. All I had to do was not screw up. Then we came up on a tandem mtb. I'm sure there's a reason why a tandem category is necessary in a mtb race. No, really... Anybody? Anybody?........ So Richard starts yelling to them that we're coming up and he wants to pass on the right. They oblige, kind of, just as we're coming into a tree that we need to get over. The tree is notched out in the middle to make it more passable by mountain bikes. Richard and the other guy get around the tandem just as they get to the tree, but I don't make it around in time and the tandem doesn't feel like letting me by before they attempt to get over the tree. Not that they have to, but come on, they know I'm in an actual race against other racers. By virtue of being the only tandem there today, they already won, they could have let me by. So the tandem has to stop to get over the tree, with me behind them. I don't have the patience to watch Richard and the other guy ride away from me while I wait for this boat to cross the tree so I try to jump the tree to the right of the notch where it's maybe 20" high. Normally I'd be fine with this, but I'm at race pace and I'm in the second lap, and let's not forget my lack of technical ability at race pace in the second lap. This is where my disregard for my physical well-being takes over. I launch myself over the tree into a spectacular endo right in front of the tandem, coming down really hard on my head with my bike right behind me. Their mouths said "Nice try! Are you all right?", but their looks said "What an idiot, why didn't you just wait 10 seconds to let us get out of your way?".. Having matured like a fine wine over the past couple years I sped away without dropping so much as an accusing glance on the mountain biking lovebirds as I was determined to make up, what had now become, a ton of lost time. I hit the last extended section of double track and I knew there was a big climb coming. I murdered myself to catch back on to the guys that I had just lost. Finally, I saw them up the trail and just continued to dig in. I caught them on the climb, passed them, and put about 5 seconds into them right before we got to the last section of single track. Perfect! All I had to do was stay in front of them on the single track and I knew there was no way either of them were getting around me on the last stretch of double into the finish. I caught up to a couple racers from another field and this slowed me down enough that the other two were right on my wheel. Still a good position for me as long as I stayed on two wheels till we get off the single track. Then we hit this little rock wall at high speed, with me a little too close to the guy in front of me. I don't really know what happened. All of a sudden I didn't have my bike with me and I was sailing through the air. I landed very much like an airplane that forgot to put its landing gear down, face first. Someone behind me crashed to avoid me, another one yelled "Whoa!", and somebody else asked are you OK at least 3x before I responded with "I don't know". I had a mouthful of leaves and dirt, my bike was in a heap, my helmet and glasses were on the side of my face. I lost a good 30 seconds collecting myself, I got back on and started chasing again, amazed that I was riding my bike at all. There was only about 5 minutes left in the race at this point so there was no way I was catching back on to Richard and the other guy, but I was happy enough to not get passed by anybody else. I finished 12th.

On the way to the race, Ronnie and I were talking about "fun". It occurred to me the other day when I was watching the Bruins game that I used to have "fun" playing hockey. Fun in the true sense of the word. We started talking about cyclocross and how it doesn't really fit the definition of fun. It's way too painful to be fun. Mountain biking is fun. Mountain bike racing? Not as much. Cyclocross and mountain bike racing are approximately 50 heartbeats per minute beyond the "fun" threshold. I don't do it because it's fun. For fun I like to collect Elvis stamps and save endangered salamanders. I do it to compete. I do it to beat people at it. Simple as that. It's the competitiveness of it. I got home and limped over to Michele. There wasn't a part of my body that wasn't beat up and hurting, including my face. She asked me if I had fun. "No. But I don't do it to have fun.". I went inside, filled the tub with cold water, threw 20 pounds of ice in and jumped in for 15 minutes. Listening to "Blood on the Tracks" on the iPod, soaking in freezing water, I decided I needed to call my insurance agent on Monday and get an insurance policy. You know, because I'm out having too much fun on the weekends.

Is my face hurting you as much as it's hurting me?

Dear Cyclocross...

2010-12-05T16:15:00.000-08:00

Dear Cyclocross,

I love you.. But this is starting to have all the signs of an abusive relationship and I think I might have to break this off. I'm sorry, this is not what I wanted. Maybe it's just me, I don't know. Maybe some time apart will help. Please don't be mad. Look, the signs are there, and at some point I have to stop ignoring them.

1. Your partner tries to control you by being very bossy or demanding

From August through the middle of December you have multiple events every weekend that you make me feel obligated to attend. You make me drive hundreds of miles and spend hundreds of dollars just to see you. When I get there you treat me like shit, making me suffer like a dog and you show no mercy. The more I hurt, it seems, the more pleasure you take from it.

esmithproductions

2. Is violent and / or loses his or her temper quickly

How many times have I been having a good day, and then in a jealous rage you strike me down? At Sterling last year, that stupid tree on the loose corner that separated my shoulder. At Northampton this year, running me into the tape after a solid start, crashing me out and having half the field run over me and my bike. For what?

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3. Has a history of bad relationships

Have you even seen the shit that people write about you on Twitter on Saturday and Sunday afternoons?

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4. Discourages your relationships with friends and family

If I take any time off from training for you or coming to see you on weekends I am punished with loss of fitness and skills which inevitably results in even worse treatment from you. You leave me no time for anybody else in my life.

5. Controls all finances

It's pretty safe to say that without you in my life I would be living large, probably with vacation homes on the east and west coasts and in the mountains. You take and you take and you take. And if you think giving back means that $15 check I won for 4th place at Plymouth last year meant anything to me you're fucking wrong.

6. Humiliates you in front of others

Constantly! Hell just two weeks ago at Putney you tripped me up over the barriers on a warmup run and caused me great embarrasment.

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7. Destroys or takes your personal property or sentimental items

Let's see... Just this year alone you destroyed my brand new Chili Con Crosso frame, a SRAM Force shifter, a HED Bastogne wheel, and a couple Grifos..

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8. Forces you to have sex against your will, or demands sexual acts you are uncomfortable with

I wish!

It's not like we haven't tried counseling. Our counselor, Kurt Perham, has put in a huge amount of effort trying to get us to get along better, and it's definitely helped.. But then you go and throw Goddard Park at me. It was like NASCAR (without rebel flags and Kid Rock). Biggest engine wins! That's not cyclocross. A 1/4 mile pavement sprint? A 50yd beach run? Not one part of the course that can't be pedaled? Man, was that demoralizing not being able to hold wheels of guys that I've been beating all year. It was my worst finish of the year, (without a mechanical or crash). So bad that I was through with you. And this time I meant it. But then I started making excuses for you as always. It's not you, it's me. I was flat. I just didn't have it. A bad day. I deserved it. Tomorrow will be better. And honestly, I thought it would be. There was a promise that the course wouldn't be such a drag race today. There'd be more turns. It would be more technical. Well it wasn't.. You added a second beach run and left the rest of the course largely unchanged. Really? Running on the beach more is the equivalent of "more technical"? Do you have no creativity? Maybe I need to introduce you to Tom Stevens. Regardless, I was determined to get a better start and have a much better day. So I get a decent start considering I was staged in the 3rd row, and what do you do? You can't be happy for me, you ungrateful bastard. You throw two racers to the ground right in front of me, almost crashing me out, and allowing what's left of the field to pass me. I worked my ass off and passed as many guys as I could. I raced like it would be my last race, and honestly, I was thinking it probably was for this year. Not easy bridging to and passing racers on a wide open, non-technical course, but I did my best and finished 28th on the day. I felt strong throughout and I was happy with the effort. Happy enough that I'm willing to give you another chance next week at the Ice Weasels Cometh... I really want this relationship to work. Work with me? Please?

Love,

Kevin

Getting Schooled at Putney...

2010-11-14T14:35:00.000-08:00

West Hill Bike Shop CX in Putney is known as old school cyclocross.. Guys who've been racing cross for 25 years like Matt Domnarski know what "old school" is so when he says it's old school, then you know it's old school. Whatever the hell that means.. If it means long, nasty-steep run-ups, greasy corn fields, unnecessary extra set of barriers in the middle of a cornfield (UESOBITMOAC), sketchy downhills, and sub 6:00 minute laps, then OK, this was old school. Oh, and before I forget, if you're a 20-something Cat 3 hipster who is like 3 years out of high school, you have not earned the right to call anything old school. So comments like "Rad, dude! this is soooo old school" sound really dumb coming from you. Stop doing that.

I actually like courses like this because they are hard for me, technically, and I need work on that. Last time I raced here in 2007 I had a fantastic endo on the sketchy downhill when I ended up in a bad line. I followed that up with a crash into the steps when I came around the corner a little hot and didn't get clipped out in time. The day ended in a DNF for me. This was a day after winning the Vt Psycho Cross race. Talk about highs and lows. Today started ominously. I pulled into the parking lot with plenty of time to get in a couple quick laps before the 9am race started. I jumped out of the truck, got ready to ride in about 5 minutes, hopped over the tape with my bike and headed out on the course. I was parked 20 feet from the set of barriers, so I started riding, immediately had to unclip to hop the barriers, fumbled over the first one and kicked the second one which sent me and my bike flying. This was exactly 5 seconds into my first warmup lap. Garabed was parked right there and saw the whole thing. He yells, "Kevy! What was that?" Garabed calls me Kevy because he's old enough to be my father and is quite senile. But he's also an expert bike builder and mechanic and runs a great bike shop in downtown Nashua that everybody local should go to. I made a mental note that I'm really short and need to step higher over the barriers for the rest of the day to avoid the embarrassment of tripping over barriers and being called nicknames that I haven't been called since I was 5.

Prior to the start of the race I got to see the single most PRO thing I've ever seen at a cross race. I thought I was PRO with my pit bike, canopy, trainer for warmups, portable pressure washer, pre-race warmup kit and special (legal) exhilarating pre-race drinks and gels. But Dave Foley trumped everything I have ever seen when I walked past and he was sprawled out in a comfy lawn chair while somebody, who I can only assume was a specially trained cx optometrist, was leaning over Dave carefully installing Dave's contact lenses. Go ahead, let me see anybody beat that.

Quickly, a rundown of my less than stellar day. I had a decent start and ended up with the first selection of 9 or 10 guys that stayed together for the first 2 or 3 laps. The 3rd time through the runup my engine room yelled "Captain, she's gonna fucking blow!" and as I got clipped in at the top of the runup, with my engine room crew running for cover rather than throwing more coal on the fire, 9 guys started pedaling away from me as if they had absolutely no concern over how this would make me feel. For the record, it made me sad. I was happy that one guy wearing horizontal stripes stayed with me, but not so happy that he just sucked my wheel for a while as I bridged up to Steve Rosczko. Once I caught Steve (who I think Garabed calls, Stevie) we dropped the Dr. Seuss character and put about 10-15 seconds into him. I got in front of Steve and pulled for a lap. Once we got to the top of the runup I had absolutely nothing left and Steve went by me as we got the bell for last lap and approached the barriers. He went over clean and I decided to re-enact my warmup for the spectators, clipping the second barrier and going flying.. I quickly composed myself and got going again but this allowed the Lorax to catch me and Steve to open up a 10 second gap. We had a lot of lapped 55+ traffic to deal with on the last lap and I was going balls out trying to get back up to Steve. As we got to the sketchy downhill, there were a couple 55+ guys in front of me, one went outside the other went inside. I immediately pulled my cell phone out of my skinsuit and called my bookie to put $1000 on the guy who took the inside to endo spectacularly because it was a ridiculously bad line and nobody could come out of it on two wheels. But before I could get the bet in, the guy endo'd spectacularly. My first thought was that I hope I can handle a crash like that when I'm over 55. My grandkids will think that's so rad! Second thought was how much I appreciated him sacrificing himself to get out of my way in a bad line so I could try to catch Steve. But Steve was drilling it big time and there was no pulling him in. I was cooked and I couldn't shake the Cat in the Hat for the life of me, probably because he was on one of these and it was super smooth through the barriers and up the runup.

We came into the UESOBITMOAC, and having already surpassed my quota for successful remounts I bollixed the remount so badly that it took me about 5 seconds to get clipped back in which allowed the Mayor of Whoville to come by me while I spastically thrashed at my fucking pedals. One more time up the runup and the race came to a merciful end. I ended up 11th on the day.. If I was like most cyclists on a bad day (or even a decent day for most), I would have had a barrage of excuses when my coach called me and asked me what happened. But instead, and maybe I'm just not creative enough to come up with any really good excuses, my response was "I don't know, I was fucking slow."

Don't go yet, there was a very exciting discovery today. When I was in the West Hill Bike Shop after the race looking to buy things because shopping always makes me feel better, I came upon an awesome sticker. Apparently, the androgynous, footless, handless adult found in countless signs across the country helping children across crosswalks has taken to more intense exercise. Specifically, cyclocross. Unfortunately, nobody has trained the genderless cx neophyte in the finer points of the sport as it shoulders the bike on the drive side (major faux pas), but honestly this is minor compared to the fact that the androgyne uses a bike without drive train, which I guess makes some sense, since while running the bike around the course on its footless legs it would make sense that the bike should be as light as possible. Regardless, I bet it could have hopped the barriers better than me today.....

"I Must Be In the Front Row!"

2010-10-05T15:31:00.000-07:00

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

2010 CX is Officially On!

2010-09-13T11:22:00.000-07:00

The official start to cyclocross season today in Bedford at the Quad Cross race. Pulling into the parking lot at Middlesex Community College I parked next to GeWilli who gave me an arms raised greeting of "BUCK!!!!" at the top of his lungs.. Honestly, nobody is more excited for the start of cross season or is more fun to be around at these events than Geoff. The greeting also helped to take away some of my pre-race jitters. This was going to be a really intense race for the first of the season. Being the weekend after Labor Day (most people refuse to race cx before September), and the weekend before the start of the Verge series, EVERYBODY was here hoping to get any kinks and bad luck out of the way before it really starts to count next weekend. The field was stacked, Aspholm and Hines were missing but pretty much all the other top guys from around New England were there. My goal coming into the race was to have a good start (check), stay on two wheels as much as possible (check), and finish a little closer to the people who were regularly kicking my ass last year (half-check)...

Got a decent couple laps in on the course after the B-men's race and then finished my warmup on the trainer.. Ryan Larocque rides by all bloodied up, skinsuit torn, loaded with road rash. "WTF happened to you?".. Apparently Ryan was experimenting with the somewhat controversial "hit a speedbump while not paying attention and crash hard on the pavement" warmup technique. I think it's designed to get your adrenaline up to higher levels before the race starts. Must have worked because he got cleaned up, straightened his handlebars out, and went on to take 7th in our race. Unbelievable! Might have to try that warmup routine next weekend in Vermont, but I'll have to clear it with coach first. I'm sure he'll be OK with it.

Here's Ryan, fully recovered from his pre-race warmup "routine" chasing down Bill Shattuck for a top 10 position.

Race was supposed to start at noon, so everybody completed their warmups and headed over to the staging area about 15 minutes ahead of time to get good position on the line. Actually, not everybody. Dave Foley nonchalantly strolled over to where Geoff and I were finishing our warmup about 25 minutes before the start of the race in street clothes asking where registration was so he could get his number. Dave doesn't know why us cx fanatics take riding their bikes around playgrounds so seriously (he has a point). I would be out of my mind if I showed up 25 minutes before a race.. I ended up second row in staging, not bad. And then the waiting began, for what, I don't think anybody knows. But we sat there for at least 25-30 minutes. This sucks for a number of reasons (unless you're Foley and you literally just showed up and could use a few extra minutes to get ready). First, you're already tense at the start of a race and you really want to just get going. Prolonging the time in the staging area is brutal. Second, by the time we actually started, the warmup we did was no longer a warmup. It might as well have been the openers workout from the day before. Third, and this is the worst, all of us who race find a place to piss exactly 10 seconds prior to entering the staging area. Pre-race stress has a way of running liquid through your system like other diuretics could only dream about. So 25 minutes later I had to piss again really bad. Luckily there was no sign of the official coming to start our race yet and we were right next to the school so I was able to dash in last second and take care of business...

Finally we get the whistle. I clipped in clean and had a half decent start. Would have been better but I got squeezed on both sides and kind of got pinned. I hit the dirt with more than half the field in front of me.

McCormack leading the charge into turn 1 off the sprint. But really, I put this picture up to see if you could find my ass in it, like a "Where's Waldo" thing... (photo by Andy Huff)

The pace was pretty furious and I had trouble hanging on. I was immediately reminded how quickly a cross race puts you right at your limit. There were a couple good power sections where I was able to make up some spots early and by the time things settled out after a couple laps I was riding in a group with Mosher, Chris White, and a couple other guys. Rumsey, Starrett, and Millet were no more than 20 seconds ahead of me for the 3rd and 4th laps but I was unable to close the gap. Having them in my sights was kind of a big deal for me though as all three of them were crushing me by a couple minutes last year.. In the 5th lap, I had a slight bobble coming out of the barriers into the small uphill s-turn, getting caught up in a hole which forced me to dismount and run the rest of the incline. I had been riding it clean all day up until then, and honestly had no other reason to be upset about my race, so it was at this point where I let a couple of my trademark mid-race f-bombs go. The gaffe allowed White to open a substantial gap on me and it also allowed Burbidge to close a gap on me from behind. He sucked my wheel through the power sections as I tried to close the gap on Whitey and then went on to pass me and open up a slight gap through the last technical section of the course that I was unable to close. I was gassed at this point but finished with a strong sprint against lapped riders for no other reason except that it always feels good to pass people like they're standing still..

Pete Smith, Mad Alchemy Embrocation founder, apparently used an embro that was a little too hot for the 60deg temps... (photo by Todd Prekaski)

Not sure how many started the race, had to be close to 50.. 42 finished, I ended up 19th. Definitely room for improvement, but I finished ahead of the people I hoped to finish ahead of for the most part, and came closer to some of the guys that I've been chasing for quite a while. It was a solid effort, and I think if I can get a little more output out of the legs and lungs in the first 5 minutes of the race I will move up a lot in the pecking order... Easier said than done :)

As I rode around the course after, cooling down, watching my buddy Ron Steers tear up the Cat 3 race, I came to the section of the course with the narrow off-camber turn prior to the stretch into the finish line. GeWilli is right on the corner in his big orange jumpsuit, leaning over the tape, blowing a vuvuzela at 2010 World Cup levels right in the faces of the racers as they went past. HONNNNNNKKK!!! HONNNNNKKKK! It was f'kin awesome and it is something you will only see at a cross race (or a soccer match in South Africa). It was so good to be back.

Next up. Verge Series #1 and #2 in Williston, VT!

Deerfield Dirt Road Randonee Report

2010-08-22T06:23:00.000-07:00

At 5am at the Red Roof in S. Deerfield the alarm clock starts blaring, "I'm a loser babayyyyyy, so why don't you kill meeeeeeeee!", by Beck.. I was staying with Doug Jansen and we both just started laughing. We were out to ride the Deerfield Dirt Road Randonee, one of the most difficult rides imaginable with 112 miles on mostly dirt roads with over 14000 ft of elevation gain (as reported from my GPS download after the ride). The "Loser" chorus would ring back over and over again in our heads the rest of the day as we punished ourselves on climb after climb with double digit gradients. We gulped down 2 cups of coffee-flavored water and headed to the event. Breakfast of hard boiled eggs, bagels and peanut butter, and some really strong coffee took the chill off (a little). It was 50 degrees and after 2 months of training in 90 degree with max humidity there was about 650 cyclists with single digit bodyfat standing around shaking.

A fairly elite group of cyclists formed with Jonny Bold, Kevin Hines (both in their 2010 CX National Champion kits), Doug Jansen one of the top hillclimbers around, Jay Gump, John Funk, and a bunch of other guys who could pretty much ride the legs off me. We all went off at 630. With the windchill now thrown into the mix we were pretty much begging for the first climb to hit so we could warmup with the effort. It didn't take long as we hit a couple quick 7% climbs just a couple miles into the ride. The pace we were keeping seemed fairly casual, but the veterans who had done the ride before were warning us that it was a real long day and you'd pay badly if you went out too hard too early. Looking at my power meter jumping into the mid 300's for minutes at a time I was thinking that they were probably on to something.

With the hot, dry summer we've had the dirt roads were super loose. Lots of loose gravel and washboard to deal with. On the climbs, especially the steep ones, it meant you couldn't stand up since your rear wheel would just spin on the gravel. The descents were white-knuckle, hair standing on the back of your neck kind of downhills as you'd approach speeds of up to 40mph while trying to dodge holes, rocks, and avoid the washboard that would send your bike out of control. Like most people in the ride, I was on my cyclocross bike with wide cx tires and cantilever brakes. If I was on skinny road tires I would have been flatting constantly so the cross tires were a great decision. The canti brakes, on the other hand, are pretty good for slowing down, not real good for stopping. Coming hot into some intersections straight out of a steep downhill proved a little more than the brakes could handle at times, but luckily, we were so far out in the wilderness of western MA and southern VT that we would spend an hour or more at times without seeing any cars.

With the legs softened up by over 6000 feet of climbing in the first 45 miles the real climbing begins with Archambo Road. A quarter mile wall that hits 28% grade on what can best be described as a bony, rutted out jeep path. Our group of about 20 riders came around a corner and there was an acceleration to hit the climb. I thought it was kind of dumb to sprint to the climb so I just kind of stayed at the back of the group, finding out immediately that I was the dumb one as rider after rider that failed to clean the climb came off their bikes and started walking up. Because the path was so narrow, there wasn't much room to ride around dismounted riders. I had the 2 cyclists directly in front of me both come off their bikes simultaneously about 50 feet into the climb. I tried to get around them but my only line was off the side of the path into some loose rocks and there was no way I was getting out of it on two wheels. Because of the steep pitch, there was no way to remount so it was hike-a-bike to a point about 3/4 of the way up where there was a driveway that you could get back on your bike. By the time I got back on the bike, much of my group was re-formed and gone over the top, and of course, drilling it. After Archambo Rd there is a short descent and then there's a monster climb up Hillman Rd which some people insist is the hardest climb of the ride, although I think Patten Hill at mile 98 is way harder, if only because you've already climbed over 10000 ft and you're 100 miles into a ride and you are absolutely smoked. Hillman is about 12% avg grade for the first mile, levels out briefly, then continues to climb for a total of 2.5 miles. I climbed my ass off to catch back on to the group, I could see them about 300 yds in front of me and they weren't getting any closer so I knew they were putting in a serious effort themselves. The last thing I wanted was to be riding the last 60 miles of this ride solo, but I also knew if I went too far into the red right now I'd really be in trouble later in the ride so I kept my effort right at threshold, heart rate at 93% max. Once I crested the hill there was a lot of twisty downhill and I couldn't see the group for long stretches of time. It's fairly demoralizing when you can't see the people you're chasing since you start to think that you'll never see them again. After a couple miles I caught a glimpse of them and then started reeling them back in, finally catching them after another mile or so of chasing. Doug saw me back in the group and was a bit surprised that I caught back on saying "thought we might have seen the last of you back there".

Shortly after, at about mile 64 we hit the lunch stop. More fig newtons, some salty stuff and a sandwich and we're off again.. Before leaving I had to use the outhouse. I'm next in line and Doug rides by with Dave Penney and says we're going to head off, we'll soft pedal, you can catch us. I'm thinking, "i'm 45 seconds away from being ready, you're going to make me chase you? Thanks (dick!)". The lunch stop is placed down by a river and a covered bridge in the middle of nowhere. Really incredible spot. They give you all kinds of sandwiches and snacks and then you hit the road and you immediately hit another relentless dirt climb, this one is 1 mile at over 8%, followed by a quick downhill right into a 2 mile climb at 5%.. I caught Doug and Dave soft pedaling at the start of this second climb, wishing that I had the luxury of soft pedaling up the post lunch climbs instead of working to catch back up to them.

About 70 miles in everything hurts. There's been 9000 feet of climbing, my quads are burning, feeling like cramping is imminent, my ass hurts from sitting on my CX bike which in the past I've only used for races that last 45 minutes where you're not even in the saddle for most of that time. My triceps were actually feeling like they may start cramping from all the pulling on the bars during the climbs, my shoulders and neck ached from the white knuckle, bone rattling dirt descents, my lower back was knotted up from the repeated efforts. I find myself counting off the miles which makes it go even slower. Every corner you come around has another climb. Every climb comes with another dire warning from Doug "you think that's bad, wait till you see Nelson Rd".. "you ain't seen nothing yet, wait till Patten Hill!". I set my bike up with a 34x28 as its easiest gear for this ride. On the first couple double digit grades of the day when I was fresh I found myself reaching for a gear that wasn't there. Now, 6hrs into the ride faced with the worst climb of the day at 98 miles I'm wondering if I might have to walk it. I'm looking at my GPS, and I see the words "Patten Hill Rd" ominously approaching. Patten Hill starts out with an 18% wall that gradually levels out to 12% and then finishes at something in the single digits. It's steep, loose, bony, and seems to go on forever. We come around a corner and see the wall. Doug has nicknamed Dave Penney, "Pain Cave Dave", and for good reason. He goes at such a wicked, relentless pace up these climbs that it just leaves you shaking your head. Dave hit the wall first and I just put my head down and followed. I hit my threshold power level and just stuck it there for the next 16 minutes, which was sheer agony this far into the day. I passed a couple riders walking their bikes, and I was only going marginally faster than they were on the steep, loose gravel.. At the top of the climb we hit the last rest stop of the day, refilled water bottles, ate another handful of fig newtons and got ready to finish the day. I asked the woman at the rest stop, actually it was more that I begged her "the rest of the ride is downhill or flat, right?".. She says "it's just 13 more miles and there's one little bump you have to go over".... She was such a liar. There were 4 climbs anywhere from 0.5 to 1 mile long, anywhere from 5% to 10% grades. The punishment just never seemed to stop. On the final climb of the day, a nasty 8% mile stretch, Doug and I are side by side and he starts belting out "I'm a loser babayyyyyyy. So why don't you kill meeeeeeeee!". We came into the finish area 9 hours after we started with a ride time of 7:59. 112 miles, over 14000 feet of climbing, 9 fig newtons, 4 energy gels, a mozzerella/basil/tomato baguette, 4 hard boiled eggs, a bagel with peanut butter, a banana, some jerky, 7 bottles of water, 4 pieces of watermelon, a black raspberry ice cream cone, all of which covered maybe half the 5000 calories expended during the day. There's a river running next to the base area which we jumped in to clean up. You know the feeling you get when it's 95 degrees out, max humidity, and you walk into an air conditioned room? This was 1000x better than that.

The D2R2 was one of those challenges that's been on my list for a long time. The stunning beauty of the route is in sharp contrast to the brutal nature of the ride. It is the most difficult ride I've ever done, and one that I will most certainly do over and over again in the future (as soon as I'm able to forget how much it hurt).

Sweet Racing Bike For Sale.....

2010-06-21T09:25:00.000-07:00

.....was one of the first thoughts that went through my mind after getting popped on the KOM climb at the Housatonic Hills Road Race.. Actually, it wasn't one of my first thoughts. Part of getting popped means your heart is now beating at approximately 105% of it's maximum and there is an elephant standing on your chest, carrying its entire elephant family, making it feel as though you can't get air into your lungs.. In fact, the problem isn't that you can't get air, it's just that you've driven your body to the point that there just isn't enough air in the world to continue the effort. It's excruciating. Easily the most painful thing I've ever willingly put my body through. So my first thoughts weren't about how much I could get for my bike. I don't actually remember what my first thoughts were, other than how much it sucked to watch about 30 riders ride away from me. On the bright side, this meant there were still about 20 behind me since the field was close to 50 for the day.

Housatonic Hills Road Race is a 52 mile race with 5200 ft of elevation gain. It's the hardest road race I've ever done, with vicious sustained climbs that last miles and climb hundreds of feet at a time.

My goal, as usual in a long hilly road race with the 35+ masters, is to stay with the main field. Last time I raced Housatonic was a nightmare so I was hoping to improve on that showing. To be honest, I felt early on that I was going to be able to do it this time around. I had really good legs, was conserving energy wherever I could and I was hanging in through the first major climbs without going into the red. And then we hit the nastiest climb of the day which is a 4 tiered climb that lasts about 4 miles and climbs a total of about 700 feet, the last piece of it is a mile long at an avg grade of about 7 or 8%.. And I was right there until the last bit, way into the red, dangling by a thread on the back of the field. The field was way stretched out at this point and I barely lost contact. I was thinking it was over for me at this point but a few guys came up from behind and we got into a really good rotation and put in a huge effort to chase down the main field. After about 2 miles of mad downhill chasing we finally made contact. The elation of catching back on was quickly snuffed when I realized we had caught back on just as the KOM climb was beginning. A 1km climb that gains 200ft in elevation. Needless to say, while 4 of us were chasing our asses off at our limits, the main field was enjoying the downhill leading into the KOM climb where the strongest would fight it out for the polka-dot jersey. I was with the field for about the first 500m of the climb before I completely exploded. It was all I could do to recover, turning the pedals so slowly I almost tipped over. I spent the better part of the rest of the race working with 4 other racers, catching other masters guys that got flung out the back of the field on the last lap.. I finished the day 25th. Not where I wanted to be, but I'll take it.

From Sterling to Sweden...

2010-05-10T11:04:00.000-07:00

The Sterling Road Race was one that I had been looking forward to for weeks. A short steep climb, followed by a big ring grind, followed by about 4 miles of narrow twisty, turny descending, with a couple more miles on wide open 2 lane highway. 6 laps, 48 miles. I was confident going into this one. Not that I would win it, but that I would be competitive with the group and finish strong without getting shelled off the back... Forecast called for thunderstorms with temps in the 40's at race time. This was a problem. I still have trouble preparing for this. In cyclocross you just stand at the line wearing next to nothing, freezing your ass off knowing that regardless of the weather you're about to crush yourself for 45 minutes and the heat generated by the effort should be enough to protect you from going hypothermic, except for your extremities which are pretty much fk'd if it's cold and wet. But in a road race, it's different. You're out for 2+ hours and the efforts are sporadic depending on terrain. There is absolutely no way to stay warm on a 40+ mph descent, and if you're wet.... well, you just better hope you get to the bottom of the hill fast and start working hard again in a hurry to warm up. In retrospect, I should have worn a rain jacket.. But I didn't, and I paid for it.

77 lined up at the start. It was mild showers at the time and it was cold. We started out neutral for about 3 miles and it was cold, but it was going to be manageable. I wore a cycling cap under my helmet this time around and the visor did wonders for keeping rain out of the inside of my glasses so I was pretty psyched about that. We hit the hill and the racing was still neutral until we hit the top of the first incline.. I say neutral, but I'm looking at my power meter and it's at 428W and I'm thinking "if this is neutral, I can't wait to see what the real racing is going to be like".. Once we're live the pace picks up and we're flying. We're descending down these narrow twisty roads that I've never been on. 30-40mph and wet, the cold is starting to set in.. But as long as the rain stays like this I'll be fine. We finish the first lap and hit the climb. It's a massive effort to stay with the group but I'm right there at the end of the climb. My confidence is good that I can stay with these guys today. And then the rain started to pick up... And then the skies went black... And then the thunder came and the skies opened up... It was one of those downpours where you have to pull your car over because the wipers can't keep your windshield clear. We're descending through the narrow, twisting roads and I can't see a damn thing. But that's OK.. Nobody can. You just hope the guys at the front of the field stay on the road. Any hole, crack, or bump on the road has become invisible. My brakes became ornamental. All I can do is try to follow the brightly colored shapes in front of me and not go down. If anybody goes down, everybody is going down. And then the cold really starts to set in. Wearing a short sleeve underlayer, a racing jersey, a pair of arm warmers and my shorts, I might as well have been naked. The first thing that happened was the shaking. Then the mental acuity starts to fade. I got sluggish. In a road race when you're at high speeds in tight groups there is probably nothing more important than your ability to stay mentally sharp. Throw in the type of conditions we were in and the importance multiplies. I'm trying to put in efforts to warmup but we're spending too much time going downhill and I just get colder and colder. The shaking is barely controllable and I start to feel like I'm going to crash. I hear a crash behind me.. About a minute later, another rider goes down in front of me and I barely miss getting caught up in it. There was nothing apparent in the road that could have caused the crash. I think his wheels came out from under him on the wet painted lines which turn to ice in these conditions. The field accelerates and I stand up to match the acceleration but the shaking makes the bike uncontrollable and I have to sit back down and power myself back into the group.. Then my chest starts to tighten and I'm having trouble breathing. I come around the corner off RT 12 and we start into the climb for the 3rd time. I stand up and there's nothing in my legs and my upper body won't stop shaking, I'm struggling to get air in my lungs. I see Michele (actually I can only make out the red and black umbrella with Michele's voice coming from underneath it).. She's screaming encouragement but it's over. I'm hypothermic and my body is shutting down. I pull to the side. My race is over. As it turned out, only 36 of the original 77 finished. I need to figure out how to dress for these conditions. I'm thinking rain jacket with the arms cut off, or maybe wrap my upper body in plastic wrap.. Or maybe I stay in my pajamas, drink coffee and read the paper next time. Road racing in those conditions is retarded if you're only doing it for "fun". Stewing in a hot bath a few hours later to get my core temperature back to something less reptilian I wondered why I put myself through this.

Sunday was supposed to be a "recovery ride" but since I only had a 52 minute race effort on Saturday, I decided I needed something a little more intense.. So I headed down to Wells Ave for the "A" race. I was wondering what kind of impact 40mph wind gusts would have on a crit, but as it turned out, it wasn't so bad. A field of about 40-50 with a couple local pros turned up. There was also a guy with a disc wheel, a tri-spoke front wheel, and an aero TT helmet. Everybody's first take on this guy was "WTF?".. Their second take was "i need to make sure I'm not next to him in the crosswind when the 40mph gust grabs his disc wheel". This was a fun, fast race. I spent more time than I expected to on the front taking pulls and bridging gaps. I finished with the main group and got in the type of intense effort I had hoped to get in Sterling.

My buddy Ryan had to stop at Ikea on the way home from the race, it was only about 15 minutes from where we were and he had to pick up some stuff. In the 40 minutes it took for them to find Ryan's stuff in inventory I came to have a better understanding of why people go on shooting sprees. I suspect the "Ikea experience" is much like the "Walmart experience", except the shoppers' focus being cheaply constructed furniture instead of cheaply constructed everything-else and without the smiley face bouncing around the store slashing prices. I wondered what we ever did to Sweden to deserve Ikea and made it a point to root avidly against them in the next Winter Olympics.

Another Race, Another Smackdown...

2010-04-25T16:09:00.000-07:00

Another race, another smackdown, another lesson learned. I keep coming back for more though, and I always come back with overzealous, unreasonable expectations. This week's hammer to the head came courtesy of the Master's 35 field at the Quabbin Road Race. A 62 mile hilly loop around the Quabbin Reservoir. Pipe dream of the weekend was that, if I felt good, I would try to spend some time at the front of the group and maybe even try to get in with an early break if one went. I didn't expect to finish with the break, I was really just hoping to see how long I could hang on to it, take a few pulls at the front, blow up, get dropped, and try my best to hang on to the main field for the rest of the race after they swallowed me back up. I keep forgetting just how strong the Masters 35 field is though. Every time I race long road races with long hills I get crucified by these guys. Granted I haven't been at it that long and have a lot to learn. At best, I'm an average Cat 3 with only a few seasons of road racing under my belt going up against Cat 1, 2 and 3 guys who have been racing forever. But what I lack in experience I make up for in hard work and determination. I have a lot of room to improve, and I continue to improve. That is exactly why I continue to ride with the Masters and why I'm OK with getting my ass handed to me in these races.

Forecast called for rain in the afternoon. We had a 9:05 start and we were expecting to miss the rain. Not so lucky though as it was raining and about 42 degrees as we rolled out. With a field of about 60, we had a neutral start, about 3 miles downhill. Absolutely frigging freezing. Once the racing started things warmed up quickly. My legs felt good, everything would go according to plan. I put in a couple efforts and worked my way to the front of group. Once there, positions quickly change as people come up along the outside and I found myself back towards the back end of the group again. I put in another effort on a short climb and worked back into the top 10 positions for a bit and fell back again. It was raining pretty hard and I was having trouble seeing. For some reason, the water comes up from underneath the front of my glasses and covers the inside of the lens. This sucks. Very poor visibility. I think there's something wrong with the shape of my face because other people don't have the same problem with their glasses. Maybe corrective plastic surgery to my cheeks will help? At about 9 or 10 miles in I'm warmed up and feeling strong. I decide it's time to get back to the front of the group just as somebody is surging up the outside of the field. I get on his wheel and follow him up to the front. I'm over 400W staying on his wheel, this is a serious effort. We get to the front and he keeps it pegged with me on his wheel. We're 1-2 at the front of the group and the rest of the field accelerates to get on my wheel. The guy pulls off. I've been over 350W for about a minute and a half at this point and I'm in front, expected to keep pace. I pull through and stay on it for about 10 turns of the pedals and then the group starts to pull through. I look up and we're just coming into a climb. Not too steep, maybe 4-5% grade, but there is absolutely no end in sight to the climb. I immediately sense disaster having just spent 2 minutes well over my threshold and now looking at a climb that is 2 miles long where I know the pace is going to be brutal. I stayed at my absolute limit as long as I could but people kept going by. The effort leading into the climb left me without enough to keep pace. As we came over the top of the climb, which was about 3 miles long, I lost contact with the group. We were 12 miles in. The first thought that went through my head is "there's 50 miles left, it's raining and cold, I won't catch the group again, and it's only 12 miles back to the nice warm truck and a cup of coffee". I hate that voice. It's weak. I turned around to see what other carnage came out of the assault on the last hill. As it turned out I was just the last of the people to be spit off the back of that climb and there were a bunch of riders coming up the hill behind me. 5 of us re-grouped and starting putting in an effort to try to catch back on. The main field was about 200 yards ahead of us at this point. We got into a paceline and buried ourselves to catch up. Unfortunately, it was very disorganized and there was one person, who every time through when it was his pull, would hammer his way off the front of the group with nobody on his wheel effectively blowing our paceline apart until we could catch back up to him and re-group. He would do this over and over again even after others in the group would say "Hey! Stay steady when you pull through so we can work together.". Later on in the race the same guy would add to the idiocy by not only blowing apart any attempt we had on a cohesive chase, but he would also inexplicably attack us on every downhill. It was bizarre..... Back to the story... On downhills we would hammer as fast as we could, and on flatter sections we would work a rotation (though not a very good one, see above), and on uphills it ended up with me in the front setting pace. Every time. I was hurting myself on the climbs, but I had to. I was climbing stronger than everybody else and they were all more than happy to sit in and let me set the pace. On one climb I pulled us to within about 100 yards of the field but on the next descent it was over. They were gone and we would never see them again. We chased our asses off for 10 miles at this point. Chasing is so much harder than riding in the main field. It's just like being in a break, you're a small group of racers trying to go faster than a large group of racers. The difference is that you're in with weaker racers and trying to catch stronger racers, whereas when you're in a break, it's typically the other way around with stronger guys trying to gain ground on slower guys. Regardless, the effort was killer. There were 40 miles left and we were just going to make it as hard a training ride as we could at this point. Every time we would come to another climb we would start to see more recently ejected riders and we would swallow them up into our group. By the time we had 10 miles to go we would absorb about a dozen riders and our field was about 20 strong. Every climb I would set a pace that very few if any in the group would be able to stay with and then they would catch back on during the descents. I knew that as long as I didn't blow up or start cramping that I would finish first amongst the dropped group of masters misfits. It played out just as I expected, there were three climbs in the last 5 miles. In each of the climbs I led the way and chucked a couple more off the back of our group. Starting the final climb, which was about 2 miles into the finish, the group was down to 5 which lasted about a half mile, then two of us, and then just me coming in with a substantial gap on the rest of what was left of our field... This was a small victory for me, being top misfit, but one that I would be happy with for today.

Lesson of the day: I'm not ready to play with the big dogs yet, but if I don't try then I never will be... That said, I probably didn't need to follow that attack as hard as I did early in the race, especially not knowing the course. Had I known a BFO hill was coming, it definitely would have been wiser for me to hang in the pack and try to stay with it since I know I'm not nearly strong enough to keep pace yet with the guys who are going to lead on the long climbs. I definitely would have made it through that particular climb intact under different circumstances. Maybe I would have gotten spit out later, maybe not. I have a lot of tactics to learn and need to keep improving my fitness. I'll get there :) Next up: Sterling.

It Begins... Marblehead Circuit Race

2010-03-29T10:04:00.000-07:00

First race of 2010. The focus of my training for the year is still 6 months away, but I know that the biggest part of getting shape for cross season happens now. Since the beginning of February I've been averaging close to 200 miles a week, with a healthy mix of threshold, tempo, and endurance work. Since the end of cross season 2009 in December I've logged about 1600 miles on the bike, 1000's of km on the skate skis, hours of trail runs and strength work. Sunday was my chance to see where I'm at in race conditions. As much work as I've done, I've had zero race efforts and zero fast group training rides. The Michael Schott Memorial Race was a Pro-1-2-3 field of 110 racers for 19 laps around a 2.2 mile rolling course on Marblehead Neck, right on the ocean. This was going to be fast and furious and, to be honest, I wasn't sure I was going to be up for the challenge. You see, I don't really consider myself a road racer, mostly because I treat road racing as a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. Lining up in Pro-1-2-3 open field was just asking to get my ass kicked. But that's exactly why I was there, to get my ass kicked, which in turn would make me stronger. Or in the technical terms that my coach likes to use, increase my CTL (chronic training load). Well this past week certainly did just that. Coming into Sunday I already had 200 miles in my legs for the week, including 56 miles from a 3 hour ride on Saturday. My goal for the race would be to hang on to the main field as long as possible, hopefully making at least half the race without getting dropped. On a rolling course, a stiff breeze coming off the ocean, and the pace being set by the thoroughbreds in the field, this was not going to be easy.

Normally, I would set a more aggressive goal for myself except for two things. There's a lot of guys who already have twice as many miles in their legs as I do and they specifically train to be winning road races in April. Those were the guys who were going to be setting the pace and those were the guys that I needed to be able to stay with, even if I wasn't going to be taking my turns at the front of the pack. I was secretly hoping that CCB (22 strong in the field of over 100) would put somebody up the road in a break and the rest of the team would spend the rest of the day blocking.

It was in the 30's, winds in the 20's, waves crashing off the rocks. I got out of my truck and immediately questioned my decision to do this race.. I looked around at the true road racers, they're easy to pick out, they just have that look. Ask anybody who has been to a road race and they will know exactly what I'm talking about. I felt like the zebra in "Racing Stripes" in a field full of race horses.

This is me. The zebra in the horse race.

I went and got my race number and then found Cathy and Mike Rowell, always the friendliest faces at any event, and it kind of put me at ease. Mike and I stood there shivering, lacking the proper motivation to get in spandex cycling kits with wind chills in the 20's. I forgot my race jersey, which didn't really matter since it was so friggin cold that I decided to go with my jacket for the race anyways. Knee warmers and Mad Alchemy medium embrocation for the legs. Embrocating gives any event a cyclocross vibe :)

The race started and two riders immediately went off the front, the other 106 of us following along at an average 25mph pace up and down the coast of Marblehead Neck. To my surprise I had really good legs and I knew it early on. My goal went from lasting half the race to finishing with the main field. In the third lap, just 10 minutes into the race, I reached down to grab a drink from my water bottle and my hand came back empty. I groped around a bit more searching for the bottle, but it wasn't there (I couldn't look down because I was shoulder to shoulder at 30mph and I thought it would be best to keep my eyes on the cyclist whose wheel was 3 inches in front of my own). Apparently, when I hit a frost heave in the early going my bottle flew out of its cage. I immediately regretted my brilliant decision to go with one bottle for the race as I had to look forward to about another 1:20+ with my heart bouncing between 85% and 95% max with nothing to drink.

There's nothing quite like riding shoulder to shoulder in a group of 100 riders at high speed. Huge adrenaline, non-stop for the entire time. There was a downhill S-turn that we were taking at 35mph. Any slip up would be devastating. At one point another racer came up on the inside of me to gain himself about 5 feet in the middle of the group. He squeezed in between me and another guy, as he brushed past me his quad hooked my elbow. I narrowly avoided a full jackknife that easily would have brought about 25 cyclists down on top of me. All so he could move up 5 feet. It's moves like this that cause most of the accidents in a race. Moves that make absolutely no sense made by people who have no clue. You see this fairly often in the 4's and 5's, but once you start racing in the master's fields and the 1-2-3 fields, it gets much safer and most of the guys are really solid in a pack. They have to be, otherwise it's just too dangerous for everybody.

With about 4 or 5 laps to go I was hurting but still strong. Out of water for an hour at this point, the pace was super fast, and the group had now chased down about 5 different breakaways. There was one break off the front at this point when Team Fuji (the McCormacks) moved to the front. Everybody knew what was coming next and when we hit the corner leading into the climb the pace pretty much exploded. I hung on yet again and another breakaway was pulled back in. At some point, I think with 2 or 3 laps to go, one more break got away and this time it would stay away. The two in the break would stay clear and beat the rest of the field by about 15 seconds. About a quarter of the field DNF'd, got pulled, or dropped. The rest of the field came across relatively intact with me somewhere in the top half of the field. I definitely achieved as much if not more than I could have hoped for in the first race of the season in a very strong field. Maybe I need to stop thinking of myself as the zebra at a horse race....

Gunstock Winter Triathlon: Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

2010-01-28T02:54:00.000-08:00

There's nothing worse than underestimating the suck factor of something I've gotten myself into. I knew the Gunstock Winter Triathlon was going to be hard, that's why I signed up for it. From the perspective of pure effort I expected it to be harder than a cross race because I knew I'd be at my limit for over an hour, maybe an hour twenty. I also had a weird expectation that I'd be able to ride my bike during the bike riding part of the tri, but then things don't always work out like you'd expect.

So about a month ago I signed up for the Gunstock Winter Tri. 4k run, 7k MTB, 6k skate ski, all on the snow. Somebody asked me, "which event do you excel at?".. Hmm, good question.. I run for two reasons. First, because there are uphill sprints carrying my bike in cyclocross so I need some ability to run when my heart is beating out of my chest, second, because when I'm strapped for time I can get a quick, effective workout in by throwing on a pair of sneakers and cranking out a 30-45 minute intense trail run (I refuse to run on the road). Is running a strength of mine? Hell no. In fact, I hate running. It's slow and it puts an unnecessary beating on my joints. Biking in the snow? A strength? Ummm, no. I don't do it enough. Of the 350 or so hours I had on a bike in 2009 I think 6 of them were on the snow. Skate skiing? This is becoming a strength of mine. I've been out about 10 times so far this year and have skied probably more than 150km. So my technique and strength is getting pretty good, but I'm still an average skier at best. Here's the way I looked at it when I signed up. Considering I wouldn't be one of the strongest guys in any discipline I hoped to lose no more than 3-4 minutes in any discipline for a total of 9-12 minutes behind the fast guys, like Kurt or Colin.. What I failed to factor in was the fact that I had never done a snow run race, a snow bike race, or a ski race, never mind all 3 in one event.

Kurt gave me some guidance about how to setup my transition area and warmup. Perfect. I was very organized. I warmed up a little too hard, but I didn't have much of a choice. You can't take it easy running or biking in the snow, and the ski course had a couple vicious climbs in it that I couldn't have taken it easy on if I had taken my skis off and walked up.. But that was fine, warming up a little too hard would be better than not enough. The biggest mistake I made, the one that would cost me several minutes, was my tire selection and not knowing enough to run crazy low tire pressure in the snow. Before the race I had a set of studded snow tires with big honking knobs on my mtb. Great on ice and snow, but they're really heavy. I knew the course wouldn't be icy and wouldn't require studs, so I figured I'd put my regular tires back on for weight savings. Think about that for a second, I figured I'd swap out a great set of snow tires to save about 3 pounds on my bike in a race on the snow where the bike leg shouldn't take more than about 20-25 minutes. I am such a fucking retard sometimes, but this is how I learn my lessons. The real killer is that being somebody who races cyclocross I know how important tire selection is for different conditions. My other set of tires are 2.0's with a low profile knob that are great for hard pack trails, not so much for soft, deep snow fields. In fact, at 20psi they were useless. During the warmup, the trails were freshly groomed and fairly hard pack. I adjusted the pressure in the back tire until I was able to ride the whole course without getting off the bike to push it, except for one steep section where the tires couldn't hook up at all. Figured I'd be good for the race. And, to be fair, this is pretty much what my expectation of what the course would be like during the race when I initially opted for the tires I had on the bike.

The race started with the run. 4k with several climbs that had me convinced there was way more up than there was down. Got my heart rate up to the ice crush setting where it would remain for the next 90 minutes. Because I do all my runs on similar terrain I was able to maintain a decent pace through the hills. I stopped getting passed about 3 minutes into the run, passed lots of people on the climbs, probably came in somewhere around top 20 to the first transition and only lost about 3 minutes to the fast guys. So far, so good. Then it was time for the bike. I was looking forward to this part because I fully expected to make up time on a bunch of runners who couldn't manage their bikes. Remember, my bike was going to be light and fast because of my brilliant move to take the snow tires off.... in a race on the snow... i haven't stopped kicking myself in the ass for this yet. Came out of the transition area, bombed into the bike course, and what was a nice rideable groomed trail in warmups was now a chopped up mess, much more similar to a snow beach because it had served as part of the 4k snow run.. Didn't see this coming. To say I struggled would be a gross understatement. If I was smart, I would have stopped the bike and let the air out to about 5psi. It certainly would have been an improvement over what I had. I ended up pushing the bike in places that I definitely would have been able to ride with my Nokians. I was too frustrated to think straight and just wanted to keep moving. The highlight of my bike leg was a spectacular endo in front of one of the two spectator areas of the entire bike path. I refused to brake coming down a downhill section with a bunch of riders in front of me. As I made a laughable attempt to maneuver my bike around them I ended up in the soft outskirts of the trail where my front wheel sunk to the fork, halting the bike, shooting me head first over the bars with the bike tumbling after me. It's fun and very forgiving crashing in snow though, so I quickly got up and took off.

This is me crashing my bike in the snow except for two things.

1-It's not me, and 2-It's not in the snow.

It was somewhere in the second lap that IT happened. My inability to manage my bike in these conditions had me struggling mightily through a section that was chopped up badly but relatively flat. I was getting so frustrated I was ready to shoulder the bike like in a cross race and just run the final 2k back to the transition area. I was putting everything I had into the pedals and I was spinning and sliding and mushing forward at about 3mph. And then she passed me.. Like I was standing still. I got girl'd. I felt like George Costanza in the "Shrinkage" episode when he got caught with his pants down after swimming in cold water. So inadequate. I yelled out "wrong tires!!!!.........too much pressure!!!!!...........please!!!!!". Well, not really.. I didn't yell out anything. I just kept forging ahead at 3mph swearing at myself convinced that this was the stupidest thing I've ever done, remembering immediately that climbing Mt Washington on my bike was still stupider. When I finally got through the bike leg I had lost about 10 minutes to the guys that I should have been no more than a few minutes behind. I got the skis on and headed out..... On legs that weighed 25,000 pounds...... Holy.. Shit! I did not see this coming either. And I knew from warmups that there was an absolutely vicious climb about .5km into the lap, which I was going to have to do twice since we were doing two laps. Luckily, by the time I hit the climb my legs had loosened up quite a bit and I was able to maintain a pretty good pace. Unluckily, there was a novice classic skier, that wasn't even in the race, that had fallen and was sprawled across the narrow climb that made it next to impossible for me to get by. I managed to s..l..o..w..l..y grumble my way past her and continue on. During the 6k ski I only got passed by 2 guys and they could flat out ski so I had no dissapointment there. Looking at the splits I lost about 5 minutes to the fastest guys which is about what I expected. So breaking it down I did about what I expected to in the run and ski, but screwed myself on the bike due to inexperience and stupidity, and the bike should have been my strength. I ended up 14th overall, which isn't really bad for a first timer, I guess. And I gained valuable experience, which at the time I didn't think would mean much because I was so frustrated that I decided there'd never be a next time. But like most things I try that are hard and have a real high suck factor, it took me about an hour before I decided I needed to do more. I need to get good at it. I need to be competitive. If we get some snow in the next week or so me and my snow tires might be lining up in Weston on Feb 6th for the Mass Winter Tri.. C'mon snow, I need redemption!

In 2010 I resolve to......

2010-01-08T17:26:00.000-08:00

.....become less of a control freak. I intend to do this by controlling everything so it's just the way I want it so that I don't need to be such a control freak about everything.

.....eat more burritos

.....use more acronyms with the "F" word in them

....cut some slack to the short-sighted meatheads who think an unseasonably cold weekend forecast in Florida is proof that global warming is a scam designed by Al Gore so that they can feel better about themselves when they're filling up their 9 mpg Chevy Suburbans. Actually, I take that back. Those people need to WTFU.

.....go a whole year without buying a t-shirt

.....try not to do anything or say anything that makes somebody want to punch me in the face. I believe that if everybody lived their lives according to this simple rule then the world would be a better place.

.....try to be less self-absorbed during cyclocross season.. For the three months of cross season this year, my training, my meals, my travel plans, my race schedule came pretty much before anything else. This year I also need to spend more time obsessing about my gear, my wheels, and my underlayer choices for different conditions. In other words, it can't just be about me.

....figure out what the hell the word, notwithstanding, actually means and use it in a sentence. It seems all the smart people know how to use it. Failing that, I will make up my own words that are pieced together from other words and use them instead. Like areyoufuckingkiddingme.

....find the cure for my short term memory loss. Even though I haven't had one in about 20 years, I remember the contents of a Big Mac because of the commercial from the 70's but I can't walk into an adjacent room and remember why I walked in there. Unless it's the bathroom.

....come up with an especially brutal workout for everybody at the gym and start each session that day with a bad impersonation of Drago from this scene of Rocky IV

....remind myself to HTFU when I hear the voice in my head screaming for me to stop while I'm training to increase my FTP by 10% this year. My stomach knots up just thinking about it.

.... learn to speak Flemish so that when I watch cyclocross videos from Europe I can understand more than "Nys", "Stybar", and "Albert". Although on second thought, do I really need to understand any more than that?

.... pretend to be wrong once in a while. Not only is the pressure of being right all the time stressful, it's actually a burden.

.... become an action hero.

....~~drink less coffee~~. fuck that

.... base my self-worth on my number of facebook friends

....find a non-alcoholic that drinks non-alcoholic beer

....shun with reckless abandon

....live vicariously through a 2 year old. Does it get better than having people cheer for you because you didn't crap in your pants?

....perfect the art of thinly-veiled sarcasm

....spend a full day at the Riverwalk Cafe chain-drinking espresso and blogging a stream of consciousness

.... Exile on Main St is the best album ever recorded. Just saying.

The Ice Weasels and I

2009-12-14T18:02:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-12-09T18:00:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

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.

Baystate Cross Day 2 Brought to You By the Letter "I": Ice and Ibuprofen

2009-11-30T16:43:00.000-08:00

7 hours of icing and ibuprofen, followed by 8 hours of thrashing as I unsuccessfully attempted to sleep on a freshly damaged shoulder brought me to 6am Sunday morning. I got up and grabbed a cup of coffee, winced as I couldn't raise it to my mouth with my right hand and decided that I would learn to drink left handed. Something that I must have had practice with in my double-fisted 20's since it wasn't that difficult to re-learn, not nearly as difficult as trying to brush my teeth left handed which resulted in me brushing my teeth in addition to my cheek and nose. My range of motion sucked and it was a real struggle to get my arm over shoulder height. I guessed that my handlebars could be held in a tolerable position but that the jarring of a race would suck. I also guessed that as long as I didn't crash on the shoulder I probably wouldn't make it any worse. This really didn't give me much comfort considering that it's harder for me to think of a race in which I haven't crashed than one in which I did. I took a 10 second lap around the house and confirmed my suspicions. Sitting on a bike was fine, riding a bike hurt, but only a crash on the shoulder would make it worse and I knew that once the adrenaline of a race kicked in the pain would be gone and I'd feel nothing but my heart crashing against my rib cage and my eyes popping out of their sockets like in any race. More ice, more ibuprofen, more coffee. I managed to get my bike on the roof rack and it was off to Sterling. Shifting hurt, I should have taken Michele's automatic. Am I doing the right thing or is this stupid? I was second guessing myself the whole way to Sterling. This is a hobby, right? I do this for fun. It's not like I'm getting paid. Is it really worth it? Then I remembered the $15 check I won for 5th place at Plymouth and it all made sense. This isn't just for fun, it's a career dammit! In all honesty, the reason I did it is because I could have sat at home in pain wondering how I would have done, or I could have raced my bike in pain and found out exactly how I would have done. All season I've been having a much better day on the second day of the Verge weekends and I would have been miserable for days with the Saturday race lingering in my head. I needed to flush it.

Tom Stevens designed the courses for the Sterling weekend. Guy is an artist!

photo byBanach

I start my warmup lap and the course was way more technical than Saturday's course. Way more twisty with a nasty steep off-camber descent into a 90 degree right hand turn that would dump me right on my bum shoulder if I dumped it. As usual, my Tufos were sliding in places that I really needed them to hold and this was not even at race pace. Crashes were a given. Honestly, these tires suck ass. What a waste of money on a tire that is only good in perfectly dry hard pack conditions, which translates to maybe one or two races in New England. Maybe the new Flexus is better with the added side knobbies. I'll never find out as I probably will never buy a set. Every turn I came into it was in the back of my mind that I was going to go down and finish off my already dodgy shoulder. Luckily, I brought along a set of new wheels that I just bought off Adam Myerson that had a hardly used set of Grifos on them. I threw them on the bike and took two more warmup laps and what a difference! All of a sudden I was able to go from cautious to aggressive. Much, much better handling. My legs felt strong, my lungs felt great like they normally do on day 2. It was going to be a good day. Finished my warmup on the trainer and headed off to staging.

I was really hoping I wouldn't win today because it would have hurt like

a son of a bitch to get my right arm over my head like Jonny BOLD here.

photo byBanach

Another 5th row start right behind the callups and I tucked myself in behind Matt Theodore. Matt's been beating me all year by as much as a minute or so, but I was right on his wheel at Plymouth a couple weeks ago and I was thinking if I could hang with him today I may be close to the points. The whistle blew and we're off. Clipped in clean and had a good start. Really nowhere to move from where I was in the middle of the pack but I didn't lose any places either so I came into the first 180 somewhere in the 40's. The group immediately strung out coming out of the 180 and I burned my first match of the day in a full balls out sprint that got me by at least 10 guys coming into the barriers. What was even better was that I recovered really quickly. The same effort on Saturday put me in the red for what seemed like forever.

I might have Myerson's wheels, but still lack in the icy coolness department...

photo byBanach

Into the 2nd lap I was still at the tail end of a group that had guys like Rowell, Larocque, Theodore, Meerse, Rosczko, Hornberger in it. There was probably 20 of us within 15 seconds of each other. As the laps went on the group was getting smaller and smaller as the really fast guys got off the front. By the time things settled out in the 3rd or 4th lap I found myself desperately trying to hang on with a group of Domnarski, Summers, Hornberger, Magur, Biederman and Gary David. My usual weaknesses were hurting me again today. My remounts were brutal. Even my dismounts were crap. How can you fuck up getting off your bike? At one point coming into the runup I came around the corner, jumped off the bike and fell over right into a thornbush with thorns the size of sabertooth tiger teeth (assuming sabertooth tiger teeth are massive flesh eating thornlike things). While I was clawing my way out of the bush, two riders ran past me and a bunch of spectators laughed and heckled me. I don't blame them, it had to have been pretty funny to watch.

Proof of the vicious tiger attack

At some point we were coming by a group of spectators that yelled to one of the guys in our group that he needed to move up 5 spots to get in the points. Holy shit, I'm sitting about 30th with 3 to go and I'm feeling strong! Nice! Getting down to 2 to go, we dropped Biederman and then Domnarski flatted. Then we dropped David. There were 4 of us with Hornberger and Wade Summers keeping a very slight gap on me and Mike Magur. David was chasing like hell but we had about 10 seconds on him. I was dying trying to stay on Magur's wheel.

It's kind of funny when grown men throw on these clown suits, but when they start doing it to their kids it's just wrong. I mean this kid's gotta get a date for the junior prom for Christ's sake! photo byBanach

We got the bell for last lap and I threw up a flare. I sprinted onto Magur's wheel and got by him coming into the 180. I drilled it coming into the stretch back towards the barriers but he was right on me. I came over the barriers like a jackass to his thoroughbred and he got a gap on me on the remount. Nothing but experience is going to make me better at that. I figure to be able to do my dismounts and remounts cleanly like that in another 3-5 years. I can practice them as much as I want in my backyard or in some field but unless you're doing it at race pace with your heart in your throat and somebody right on your wheel then it is not going to help. Well, it doesn't seem to be helping me anyways. I closed the gap back on Magur just in time for the runup and another remount, which he gapped me again on. Then I chased him into the woods, out by the horse jump through some more chicanes and caught him somewhere around where we hit the pavement. There were a bunch of sketchy turns on gravel and dirt in and around some fences and small hemlock-type shrubs that we were snaking our way through. Coming into one of the corners we both came in too fast and were wide of the line we needed to be on. Mike jammed his brakes to avoid hitting a hemlock head-on which got me overlapped on the outside of his rear wheel so I had nowhere to go but into the hemlock. A much cushier tree to hit than the one that smucked me the day before. I pulled myself out of the hemlock and resumed the chase. But he was too fast and smooth through the last few technical sections and I couldn't close the gap to anything better than 2 or 3 seconds. I ended up 28th on the day out of a strong Verge field of 60. It was my first Verge race ever where I finished in the top 50% and I was only 10 seconds out of the points.

Thanks for the wheels, Adam! How much for another 30W on my FTP?

And I was second guessing myself on whether or not I should even be there. Actually, this could just as easily ended up with me crashing on my shoulder and getting that admonishing shake of the head coupled with "You're a dumbass!", from people that just don't understand. But then again they've never gotten that $15 check for 5th place at Plymouth, how could they understand? Hahaha...

So PRO!

Race over, adrenaline gone, the pain seeped back into my body like the embrocation afterburn that you get when you put your pants back on after changing out of your kit. I drove pretty much the entire way home in 4th because it hurt to shift. I reached to punch the CD out of the radio but it hurt to reach so I just kept AC/DC Black Ice cranking, which at this point was on it's 5th run-through since the day before. The need to change it having yet to outweigh the pain required in making it happen.. Back home. More ice, more ibuprofen, and while we're on the letter "i" I had myself a big-ass bowl of ice cream.

Baystate Cyclocross Day 1: Instant Karma's Gonna Get Ya

2009-11-29T14:51:00.000-08:00

Tough week. Most of my training in the rain, head not into it, ass dragging. Felt like a serious CNS burnout and I was starting to worry about a major crash and burn for the last few weeks of the cross season. A lot of this was brought upon myself with the stupid rant I let loose on the internet last weekend. Monday morning reminded me of when I used to drink and would wake up after an especially hard night of drinking.. The kind where you slowly open one eye, try to figure out which room you're in (or house for that matter), check under the covers for clothes, and then try to assess the damage you might have caused. Man, was that a stupid rant to write. I agonized over it for 3 days, kicking myself repeatedly. But hey, I made a mistake, I apologized, and I moved on. But it definitely had a negative effect on my workouts this week, and coupled with the rain I was not enjoying the bike at all.. But Thanksgiving morning everything changed. I was out for a ride, the sun was threatening to come out, the fog in my head lifted, and I enjoyed the hell out of my training ride that morning. Did my "openers" in the rain on Friday, legs felt good, lungs not so much. Maybe just the weather? On to Sterling......

First Verge races in a few weeks. Overcast, windy like the loudmouth blowhard in the Mexican restaurant the other night, windchills in the upper 30's. I sheepishly went into registration to get my number, half expecting "Wanted" posters with my picture on it, hoping they'd have Jack's picture on them instead. Jack Hayden and I get mistaken for each other all the time and I was thinking this would be the perfect time for me to benefit from a little mistaken identity. Got a quick warmup lap in, surprisingly, the course was dry. I switched the "Muds" off the bike and put the Tufos back on. Warming up on the trainer before the race I was feeling gassed with any hard effort. Not good. Legs were good, lungs were not. Like I said, tough week. Put on my new kevlar, bulletproof team jacket and a Jack Hayden mask and headed over to staging...

As a matter of fact I did feel as bad as I looked...

I was smart enough to register early so I got a good number. I was in the 5th row right behind all the callups, not a bad starting position. The whistle sounded and we were off. I clipped in cleanly and got a solid start and stuck in the middle of the pack with probably 30 guys ahead of me. We quickly got to the runup and I was already hurting. Shit, this was going to be brutal. Came down the hill on the other side of the runup, over the horse jump and through some chicanes. I was getting passed and I had no answer. The first two laps I got killed. I was panic breathing. My legs are spinning the pedals, raring to go, screaming at me "Pedal harder you friggin wuss!", but my heart rate was through the roof and my lungs couldn't support the effort.

Random woman looking like she smelled something bad just happens to be standing

downwind from where I'm having a really sucky day. Coincidence? Umm, probably not.

This is what wanting to crawl under a rock and die looks like

I watched as a group with Matt Domnarski, Kyle Wolfe and another Horst guy pulled away. These are guys I've been able to beat this season, wtf! Then I settled in with the Carls.. Carl Ring and Carl Wittig. There was one or two others in with us too I think. At one point on the third lap I got passed by a guy in Team Fuji gear. I was astonished that I was on the third lap and I am just now getting passed by former pro Frankie McCormack. Holy shit, he must be having an absolutely miserable day. I got by Frank again shortly after that and never saw him again. Only explanation for this would be he had swine flu or was drunk, or both.

Unaltered photographic evidence of me in front of a Cat1 strong dude who was

apparently having a much worse day than I.

Speaking of being ahead of really strong guys having a bad day really late in the race, I also got passed by Steve Rosczko coming into the start of lap 4, but held onto his wheel as he went by. Coming into the runup I got back in front of Steve, but Carl Ring got by me. I hate getting passed on runups by guys with shorter legs than me, but apparently he had bigger lungs today.. So here we are on lap 5 and it's back to me and the two Carls. I got in front of the two of them and put the hammer down. Witting stayed on, Ring dropped. By the time we came back around to get the bell for the final lap, Wittig and I had a good 20 seconds on the closest chaser.

Out of matches.. Hey Carl, got a light?

We could see the group with Aspnes and Wolfe about 20 seconds ahead of us. At this point I had been pulling at the front for 3/4 of a lap and was straight into the wind as we came around the cinder track. I was on fumes. Carl comes out from behind me and says "let's go catch them". I looked over at him and spluttered "unh, oog, oof, hmmmngrrr". He must have understood because he got in front and I latched onto his wheel for a much needed draft. At this point I looked over my shoulder and I see my buddy Ryan Larocque. Ryan's one of the strongest guys in our field, one year removed from racing with the Pros, and typically finishing top 10-15 in the elite masters at the Verge races. My first thought was that he was in the lead and I was about to get lapped, but that idea was quickly dismissed because as strong as he is, he's still not going to be that far in front of Jonny BOLD (a name that must always be in CAPS), and the cyborg Aspholm. So Ryan must have come out of the pits after a flat or something and he was just coming back in. This is where the wheels came off for me and the bad karma I accumulated earlier in the week was going to kick me square in the balls. We hit the runup and instead of jumping off my bike, I just kind of poured myself off of it and fell over in the mud. I got up and stumbled up to the top hill. Remounted, but there was so much muck and grass in my pedals at this point that I couldn't get clipped in. I came bouncing down the hill with my feet bouncing all over the pedals, around the corner, back off the bike and over the horse jump. Finally got clipped back in. At this point Wittig opened up about a 10 second gap on me and I chased with everything I had, which at this point was about enough to beat my 10 year old in a 20 meter foot race. Still had enough of a gap on Ring that he wasn't going to catch me unless I did something stupid. Made my way around the pavement, over the barriers, very sloppily, and around the ballfield. At this point I had about 1/4 of a lap to go, if that. I could have just continued at my pace, rode the sketchy dirt/gravel 90's conservatively and finished in the position I was in, but I had actually closed to about 5 seconds of Wittig at this point so I stayed aggressive. I came into the first 90 on the gravel at about 15mph, barely braking. I leaned into the turn and my wheels went straight out from under me. No warning. No sliding. Right out. To make matters worse, an official disguised as a small tree was right on that corner and stepped into my path to make me pay for my unfair comments last week. I slid into the tree at full speed, missing my head by a matter of inches. I know how close it was to my head only because my shoulder took the full blow, which last time I checked, was right next to my head. The impact brought me to an immediate stop. I was stunned and I was in a shitload of pain. I heard a couple people asking if I was alright and I heard somebody take my bike away. Then I heard a couple riders go past. Then another one, maybe two or three. I had no idea what was going on really, I was completely dazed. I got to my feet and staggered to the guy holding my bike (as it turns out the people who helped me were my friends Mark Suprenant and fellow ECV'er Gary Passler who were camped out on the corner). As I grabbed my bike to take off I heard a voice say "You're going to finish?!?", to which I replied "Unhh". I looked behind me and there was a group coming up but I probably had 20 seconds on them. All I had to do was ride without incident as fast as I could and I would hold whatever position I was in. They were gaining on me but I was keeping a good enough gap. I had a piercing pain running through my shoulder but it was only about another minute to the line. As I came into the finishing straight I looked back and knew I had held my position. I came across with my arm in my lap as Richard Fries announced over the PA that "an ECV rider just came across the line who either ate too much gravy on Thursday and is holding his stomach or he has a shoulder injury". I ended up 39th on the day but only lost 3 spots in the crash.

Ryan in front, Aaron waiting to make his move from the back

Carl Ring came up to me after the race and said "Sorry to have to beat you that way, Kevin.".. And my immediate thought was "oh, you mean getting ridden off my wheel on the last lap and then coming from 20 seconds down and passing me after I slide head first into a tree, probably snickering as I writhe around on the ground in agony? you mean you're sorry for beating me like that? gee thanks, Carl".. Instead I just looked at him and said, "Uhh, I hit a tree.". To Carl's credit, he had a really good result on the day. Him and I regularly finish within a few spots of each other and have become something of each other's nemeses (especially according to crossresults.com). The medics hunted me down after the race having seen me cross the line with my shoulder hanging somewhere down by my knees, checked me out, gave me the OK with no major damage (no dislocation, no broken collar bone), told me to go get x-rays. No lollipop, but then again I didn't ask....

Shedd Park

2009-11-27T07:10:00.000-08:00

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.

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..