The Planet Bike Cup. Day 1

I started writing this post on Saturday night before exhausting set in. It was originally titled "Exhaustion"

It's day one of the Planet Bike Cup. I took more than 400 photos, was outside all day mostly on my feet, and oh yeah...cyclocross race.

Oh yeah...

Cyclocross race tomorrow.

Everything went smoothly this morning. I was up early at 6AM, and then snoozed for another half an hour. My brother helped me get to the park with the tent, bike, and gear, and then he went to play basketball. I got some help getting the Sprockets tent to the very top of the Stanley run up. I ran a warm-up lap before the first race, and another before the second race. The grass was damp with a heavy dew and maybe some overnight precipitation, but the ground was not muddy. In the corners if it was slippery with dust if anything. I took a few pictures in between and changed from my warm-up kit to my skin suit. It was a little bit of a frantic dash by the end as I was trying to get everything situated, my number pinned on, and visiting the portable rest room. It never fails that once I get all layered up to race, the first thing I have to do is go into a small plastic box and try to disrobe without dropping a glove or an arm-warmer in a smelly blue place.

By the time I made it to the staging area they were already calling guys into the starting grid, but I was fortunate that I did not miss my call up. My number was 247 so the call up order was not determined by registration order as I was one of the top 25 guys to register. That was a little bit disappointing, but randomness is like that sometimes. Fortunately there wasn't much time to be disappointed. We filed into the corral and bantered amongst ourselves waiting for the gun.

Bang.

Yes, I believe there was a legitimate gunshot to start our race. That's pro, right?

I was kind of in the middle at the start and worked my way around to the outside edge. I was able to move up in some positions during this first hard burn and get closer to the front of the pack, but I was not able to sustain that pace for long. The speeds were very high on the dry grass, and there were a lot of open straightaways in the top half of the course. I kept hemorrhaging spots that I had burned hard to gain. I wonder if it would have been better to hold an inside position, not burn as hard, and then try to pick guys off at some of the later straightaways. Regardless, the race was on.

It was a combined Cat 2 and Cat 3 race which means there were lots of guys who were faster than me. Every time I was passed I thought to myself, "It's okay. He's Cat 2." When someone I recognized as a Cat 3 passed me I thought to myself, "It's okay. He should be Cat 2." Mostly I didn't think.

I do remember loathing the Stanley run-up. A long steep climb that some of the pros were bunny-hopping over the rail-road ties at the bottom and riding up. I was dismounting, leaning heavily on my bike, and then running up as fast as possible which did not feel very fast at all. The one lap that I did sprint hard up the hill I got to the top and realized that not only did I have to ride my bike again, but I had to be able to navigate some oxbow off camber turns, which was almost impossible without any oxygen.

I do remember some things about the last lap. Somewhere near the bottom of the Stanley Steamer I passed Austin who was on foot. He shifted over his rear chain ring and ground his chain along the spokes behind the cassette. Forrest passed me, and pulled away up the Stanley Run-up. There was a guy who was right behind me at the top of the run-up and we ended up in a dead sprint for 56th place. I had the lead, and I lost the sprint by about 3 inches because I stopped pedaling and tried to "lean" it in, instead of continuing to hammer past both the finish line and the point of vomiting. Part of me is kicking myself for giving up just a bit too soon, and the rest of me is kind of glad I did not vomit for 56th place. Fifty seventh place was uncomfortable enough.

I hung out and watched the pros race cheering on the Chicago natives I knew, and watching some of my teammates drink and heckle to the best of their ability. I got some help getting the tent taken down I packed up my belongings into my backpack, rode back to my brother's house to get his car, and then returned to the park to pick up the tent. The rest of the night was spent cleaning my bike, then cleaning clothes, and then finally cleaning me. I went out for a treat at Culver's and returned to my brother's house for a quiet evening of photo editing and writing about my day.