Relay Cross

I take my preparation for competition seriously. I have always been careful to not let my rituals of preparation develop into superstitions, but I have always been deliberate. Senior year of high school it was the trip to the Subway in a neighboring town on Friday after school. In college I had a habit of going into the stands a few hours before home football games and meditating. As a competitive cyclist Saturday has become my day for preparation. It started in the morning with laundry and a fresh clean kit. Saturday afternoon I took my bikes (both the Falcon and the QuBe) into the sink room downstairs to give them a bath. (I had been a bad bike owner and not properly washed my mountain bike after my last race. I hung it on the wall caked in mud and dirt.)

The Falcon had never been properly washed after last weekend's aborted Church Cross. I brushed most of the grass off, but did not get the underlying layer of mud and dirt removed. I didn't want to be the kid got picked on the first day of school because he didn't have a clean bike. It was also time to mount cross-tires on my new Fulcrum Racing 1s. Given the dry and grassy course I opted for the Michelin Jet-S tires I bought from Michael C at the team Johnny Sprocket Summer Bar-B-Que and parts swap. When the bikes were ready it was time for fuel. I put water bottles into the freezer, mixed up a batch of energy gel, and baked two loaves of bread for pre- and post-race roast beef sandwiches with cheddar cheese.

Sunday morning I woke up at about 8AM, and was really excited for the start of cyclocross season. I have spent a lot of time in the saddle trying to make my body better at cross-racing, and this was the first real test of whether or not that work would bare fruit. My preparations were simply stuffing items into a backpack, making sure I had all my essential (helmet, gloves, kit, shoes, bike, wallet) and non-essential (phones, foodstuff, camera, towels, sunscreen, pancho, etc) packed and ready to go.

In 2010 I learned a valuable lesson about riding to races.

Don't.

Living a car-free lifestyle puts a damper on my freedom of movement at times, but Jackson Park is a one-transfer bus-ride. I loaded up my gear and headed to the bus-stop. As I hit the street a bus was cruising south on Broadway, so I hopped on and caught it at the Diversey stop before the light could turn green.

The bus ride was uneventful except that somehow I managed to lose one of my gloves. The gloves were velcroed to the helmet, the helmet was clipped to the handle on the top of my backpack. When I reached back to unclip my helmet at 63rd St S, I was one glove short. A sacrificial offering made to the Public Transportation Gods for the sake of a good race. I rode the short distance east to the start of the race, and unlike last year at this time I knew exactly where to go, and exactly what to do. It felt really good to know where I was going (team tent) and what I needed to do to get ready to race.

I arrived just at the end of the Master's 40+ race, so my first task was to drop my gear at the tent and take a tour of the course. The transition area was almost identical to last year, except it was about thirty degrees cooler this year than it was last year. I was disappointed to find the course somewhat truncated with a substantial northern loop cut out of the course. I don't know how much of the distance was lost, but it was the place where I got a flat last year thus the only place I remembered clearly (other than the transition area). I made it back to the start, grabbed my camera and started shooting the women's race.

While the women's race was running, I started to become a little concerned that my partner for the day's festivities was not there. So I sent him a text message.

Me: I am at the park. Short fast track.
Sean: Great news, I am on my way down.

I was much relieved. It was the first time that I had heard from him since Friday when he was supposed to pick up a mutual friend's cross bike from the North Shop, but could not get the bike because it wasn't ready yet.

Forty five minutes later he texted me again.

Sean: Ugh I cannot get my pedal to thread onto the right crank arm. I am dying here.

I provided some useless advise reminding him that pedals are reverse threaded, a fact that he needed to know to be able to get the original pedal off the bike. Then reminded him that the South Shop was open on Sundays.

Sean: I put on flat pedals to ride to the South Shop. Manuel is sorting this out.

I take my race preparation seriously, so I was seriously freaking out that my partner was not at the race yet. His continued absence was seriously disturbing my sense of calm. It was only 12:45pm at that point it time, so it wasn't a huge deal that he wasn't there, but I was really looking forward to racing, and wanted to do well. Given my anal retentive routines of preparation, I was less than thrilled about the prospect of being sidelined by a pedal problem that could have easily been resolved the day before. I took my mind off the issue by taking more pictures of the women's race. I did a second pre-ride lap after the women's race, and a third after the juniors race. Before I knew it the fours race was beginning which meant that we were next on the track. My partner was still not there.

Registration closed 20 minutes before each race started, and I watched the clock tick-toc the seconds away until they were making last call for number pick-up. I asked the official if we were done, but given that we had pre-registered it was an easier prospect for her to not automatically DNS us both. A few minutes later Sean called to say he was at UIC and headed south. About 10 minutes away. They paged him over the PA while I was on the phone with him, and I told him that he had to hurry. I changed into my racing kit, had Becky pin my number on, and went to do some sprints and warm up a bit. Sean arrived, I took him to packet pick-up, and we were good to go. They were just ringing the bell lap for the 4s race when he arrived.

Sean was already warm from the uptempo ride to the race, so someone pinned his number on, and I sent him out on the track to ride a pre-lap. He had not been on a cross bike off-road since last November. He didn't even have time to ride a full lap. They started to call us to the starting line before he made it over the triple barriers. I explained there was just a little bit left, and we went for our starting instructions. Given that I was the senior partner, and had some idea of how the Relay worked, I took the first leg. That is to say I took the sprint. Also, since he had just ridden a hard hour plus 5 minutes, I figured the 7-8 minutes of rest would do him well.

So we lined up at the start, I made sure to find a spot in the front, knowing how important starts are in Cyclocross races. I went down in a 3 point stance, and at the whistle I was off. It was not a great sprint start. I stood up to fast, but I was running. At the first barrier I looked like a freakin' gazelle.

I was the fifth guy out of the transition area onto my bike. I pedaled hard, and was able to keep contact with the lead riders for the first lap. Towards the end I slipped a bit, as a few of the faster riders (e.g., the Cat 1 and 2 riders) came up from behind, but when I hit the first barrier into the transition I was in eight place.

Sean tagged in and took off. I huffed and puffed, got some water, and nutrients into my system, and waited for him to come around. He rode hard, but the lack of practice showed, we slipped another 6 places to 14th after his first lap. I tagged back in, tried to catch some guys, but ended up being either neutral or losing an additional place or two. The end of my second lap was marred by trying to ride very fast through the start-finish area, and coming onto the first barrier into the transition area with way too much speed, and not enough time to slow down, dismount, and get into a proper position. Instead, I did this.

Let's call it the steer-wrestle technique. It was not all that effective. I found out two laps later that I knocked my wheel out of true, and my brake pad was rubbing on my third and fourth laps. I was pedaling really hard, and not going very fast at all. I was doubting my fitness and my ability half-way through my fourth lap. I should have been doubting my equipment. I lost a few places, most notably to Forest and Austin, but I kept on moving. When I got back to the pit and realized my mechanical difficulty, I loosened the brake cable enough so it wasn't rubbing, and my last two laps were 3-4 mph faster than my previous laps. Clearly it didn't hurt on the cornering or deceleration, but on the long straight-aways I could really feel a difference without the brake rubbing.

On the last lap I was finally lapped by a number of the leaders which meant that Sean missed his opportunity to run the final lap. We ended up in 26th place out of 35 Cat 1-2-3 teams, and all in all I was pretty happy with that finish. We had some logistical and mechanical issues which kept us from performing at our best, and still finished not in DFL. I was especially happy with my first lap, and the last two laps after fixing my mechanical. Simply put it felt really good to be out racing with such a cool crowd of people, and I can't wait to do it again. Next cross-race is Sept 10-11th near where I grew up. I'm having crazy thoughts of racing two cross races, and then sprinting to Lake Geneva for a mountain bike race. I probably won't. Simply because there won't be time to adequately prepare. ;)

EPILOGUE

Sean wanted to ride home, so I rode with him. It wasn't a great idea, but given that I had a fairly low-milage week, I figured it wouldn't hurt.

It hurt. I started out riding with my backpack on my back, my camera bag on my front. That lasted from the start finish-line until we got to the LSP. I reorganized my belongings and got everything onto my back. That made it easier to pedal, but that allowed us to pedal much harder and much faster. There was a 10-15 mph strong and consistent head-wind the whole way north. We caught up with Nico, and the three of us worked together to fight the wind until we hit downtown. The it was Sean and I alone. I suggested heading inland to get behind some buildings, but Sean insisted the wind would let up when we got past Oak Street Beach. He was wrong, but it was okay. We rode north until it was time for me to turn off and head home. When I got home I was curious to know how much I was carrying, net amount of gear was 36 lbs including clothes and helmets. It was a long haul and my legs are sore tonight.