First lap mud-fest.

All pictures courtesy of skinnyski.com

You would be hard pressed to know the difference based on this weekend’s racing. Reminds me of the fall in the Willamette Valley when everything turns wet, muddy, slick, and soupy.

Yesterdays race was not for me. A course that was half ‘cross (open, grassy, wood barriers) and half mtb (singletrack, deep mud and sand, roots, and natural barriers) had me thinking to try my first double-dip weekend race as an expensive training run. It had been raining before my race so everything was wet and muddy and the two sand sections were unridable. As it was, I think I was handling the technical stuff better than most of the riders immediately around me, but I was more than happy to save my legs and energy for today’s festivities.

Skip forward to today–pouring rain about 5:00 am; dry when I get up, raining on the way out, but not hard. Pre-ride is wet, but not too muddy, but this is the one race where the A race is first. Back to the car to sit on the trainer for a while; it really begins to rain again. By the time I get back over to ride the course again, it’s nothing but mud soup in many sections. The Tufo tubulars aren’t giving me the grip I need around the corners, so a quick trip to the car to put the Michelin Mud’s back on the bike. Roll back in time to grab front row at the start, but bobble my clip in and fade back to 15th or so. Back up to 10th by the first sand pit (which I’m surprised to discover I can ride), but I make the mistake of not coming up to my tops and need to bail out and run the last few meters. Fight my way back up to 8th by mid-lap and get enough room to ride the course as best I can. Our laps were running longer than 8 minutes and the course continued to get muddier and soupier even though it had stopped raining. By mid-race, I’m starting to feel pretty comfortable on the course and have a short gap to the guy behind me so I put the pressure back on to get a better margin in case I bobble along the way. By the last lap, I’m in no man’s land, which is good because I nearly go down on the same corner twice and have to dismount on a short hill because of the soup. Sprint to lap someone in the last 100 meters and my day is done. Sixth overall and in B1, one spot behind CJ and one in front of Guy, both sporting the new kits (not cold enough for fleece skinsuit, yet).

Great race–for some reason I love racing cross more the muddier and wetter it gets.
All told, the weekend was a blast: 90 minutes of racing, 2 hours of driving, 2 hours of cleaning the bike, and I’m still working on the clothing. Could take a while.

You know you’ve done your homework when you get called up 3rd and can line up front and center without camping at the start line. The course didn’t suit me last year. It is held where they run the Boulder Short-Track mid-week series. It looks like a bmx course to me. Tight twisty, whoppy, off-cambery, etc. But, today’s course and the Ritchey Carbons with the Tufo Flexus tublars and the all-mighty Salsa scandium ate up the course. The tublars stick like glue. It was a perfect mix of technical and a long road section. The gun went off and it was a race to the single-track. I went into it 4th so I was happy with my start. Hole-shot Greg rocked out of the start and opened up great gap and was making the race happen. But he has been in tire hell all year with a rolled tubular at Breck and today he blew a tire. The next race I’m swapping his wheels with one of my sets and not taking NO for an answer. A few guys passed me and I was sitting somewhere top 10. I really need to get a good warm-up in prior to racing. It usually take me 10-15mins into the race to start feeling good. My plan was to get there early today, but a car accident and re-route of the highway sent me scrambling to get there 45mins prior to the start. As the legs started to warm-up at the 15min mark I started picking guys off and a few mechanicals were happening as well. At one point I was rockin with the WB. We battled it out in the early season 3 races last year, so I knew we would work well together. He had a mechanical a lap later. Jeff C caught me at one point in his first 35+ race after his recent upgrade to a 2. I had the the chase group (2nd-6th) for 2nd in my sights and just kept putting on the pressure when I could. They were playing a little cat and mouse because there were 2 green mountain guys in the chase group and a green mountain guy was in 1st, so the green mountain guys weren’t working. This worked out for me cause their screwing around allowed me to hammer the road section and catch on. At this point I made an attack on the pavement and had my head down and my HR maxed and almost went off course and had to slam on the brakes.. they flew by me.. I don’t know how I misjudged the corner, but when you are anaerobic crazy things happen. O2 is going to your lungs and leg, not your brain. I caught back onto them a 1/2 lap later but I was cooked. I rolled in 5th.

jared

Sitting 3rd in 35+ Open right now..At least I’ll get a call up and not have to camp at the start in the last few races before we move.

jared

Smither’s has footage.. He only have it 42seconds. Trackie!

Saturday: Ave HR 178, 188 high HR, 630 calories.
Sunday: Ave HR 176, 188 high HR, 748 calories.

jared

As CJ posted, it was hot. Hot, windy, and dry. Great for biking, not so great for running. Mix the two and you get an interesting experience.

Start was good–wasn’t going for the hole, just wanted to be up there. 4th into the first sweeping right curve, faded a bit, then back on at the base of the first run up. Running was definitely faster (than a 42×25) and I found myself at the front at the top. Nice treat in the first race on the new machine. Held it into lap two, then started to fade in the windy sections. Tucked in to recover, and was able to hold top five for the first half of the race. Then the bottom started falling out.

If you’ve every been dehydrated, you know the odd experience of shivering on a hot day, a day when you know you’re overheated and running low on fluids. Spent the last two laps shivering. Not uncontrollably, but enough to know I was in trouble. Tried keeping the pace up to protect a top 10 and grabbing water each lap, but no dice. Got passed by two on the first run-up on the last lap, had a gap to the next guy, but he got me on the final finish run-up. If the line had been 25 meters farther, I would have passed out from the effort. As it was, I could barely see the tape along the side before lifting myself and bike over and falling to the shaded ground. Took more than 5 minutes to feel alive and human again. Then began the long slow process of rehydrating without feeling sick.

Stats for all you number junkies: race time was 46:59; max HR was 190 (highest I’ve seen it all year!); ave HR was 177 (my medically tested AT is 173); 12th overall, 9th in Cat 3/4, just shy of points.

Now that’s what I call racing. When’s the next one?

andy

But it won’t allow me to run my double chainguard setup - chainstays a bit too wide. The full CX200’s come with a 48/36 on the front, not my freaky modification.

The new one will run it though…

The CX200 frame/fork didn’t come with a headset, so I picked up the sweet $200 Ritchey Headset in the pic. I will send the whole thing to a fellow Crossniac for $270 shipped.

scotthoule@hotmail.com

Headed down from suburban Denver to the shadow of Pike’s Peak.  The family came along because anytime you head to the ’Springs you should focus on the family.  With a not so stellar race in Breck I wanted to get another good start and sort it out from there.  Things did seemed to click as i did get a decent start sliding into around 5th as we hit the dirt. I held my position well for a few laps until a rider went down in front of me coming off the a tar section into some loose dirt.  This slowed me down enough that two chasers were able to get on my wheel. A slight bobble in a rough bumpy section and they gased it passing easily. Worked hard to get back up to them but the damage was done. Ended up 8th in cat 4, 35+.

Just got back from a weekend cross/camping trip in northern Minnesota. The race was the Red River Cyclocross Challenge, hosted by Great Plains Cycling. It was a well-run race, and a fun course.

The weather was warm and, being Moorhead, gale-force windy. We were in a park by the Red River at a course with about two-thirds grass and about a third through the forest on a clay-covered trail. The course had three elevations, each about six feet apart: high, medium, and low. The medium part was the grass, the low part was the clay-lined trail, and the high part was a thirty-foot long grassy mound that the course snaked over.

They curved the trail up one end of the mound, then around the other end end to make an off-camber turn, then ran the course back to end of the mound and off to build up speed into a set of double barriers.

The wooded part was a little tricky because of the clay. There was a descent that snaked between a couple of trees, then made a sharp right. Another section of trail had a hard right into a section of wet clay, and the run up was, of course, pure clay.

The race started pretty mellow, and I held on to a top five position for some time. I was smooth over the barriers, OK down the descent, and feeling good on the flats. It hurt, but things were looking good.

Then it showed pretty quickly that this was my first cross race. I dropped my chain at the top of the first clay run-up and waved the riders behind me around. The clay on the run-up gummed up my left cleat. I didn’t notice how much until the double-barriers after the mound. I came off the mound, began to dismount, put my right leg in between my left and the bike, and turned my foot. Stuck. I should add that I had also taken a risk and was using some new shoes and pedals for the first time…

By the time I got unclipped I was on my back with my bike upside down next to me. There’s a reason people wait by the barriers. It was awesome. I grabbed the bike, ran over the barriers, and got back on. I didn’t lose much time, but I lost some momentum and some confidence.

The rest of the race was the same. I lost a few places, started unclipping early to avoid getting stuck, and tried to keep my position. Then I lost a few more places.

I didn’t like unclipping my left foot early on fast dismounts, so I tried leaving my foot clipped in again before the double barriers. I landed on my back again.

I ended up racing the last lap or so neck and neck with another rider. If this had been a road race I wouldn’t have cared, but cross seems different, so I hit it on the double barriers. I didn’t end up on my back, and I got a gap for a little while, so I did the same thing a little later on the run up. This time the gap was enough to keep me ahead to the finish, to whatever super-high place I was fighting for.

So that’s it. I’m hooked. Next weekend I’m doing some traveling, so I’ve got two weeks to hit the parks again and practice the barriers before the next weekend.