DRW

Last week, I did everything in my power to prepare for a good race, and life threw me a curveball. It made for an interesting story, but kind of a miserable race. This week's race went so smoothly that it there hardly seems anything to write about.

I woke up a bit early knowing that I had to be out of the house by 7 AM. Well, it wasn't that I had to be out of the house by 7AM, but I knew that I needed to cross the street before 7:30 AM least I not be able to cross it again for a few hours. Last year I made the mistake of not leaving the house until just before 8AM and it was too late. The marathon ran literally around my house and there was no way to escape it. I ended up standing on the west side of Broadway for about 10 minutes watching thousands of runners stream by waiting for a gap wide enough to cross the street. I found a diagonal brake about 20 feet wide and like jumping into a river I sprinted across and down stream looking for the far shore.

This year I was out when the sun was just starting to kiss the tops of the buildings along the lake, and there were no cars or people on broadway. There were a few police officers preparing for the flow of traffic with yellow tape across the side streets. Yellow tape?

I rode home from the Humboldt Park practice on Wednesday night with my friend Chernoh. We made plans to meet Sunday morning at the Ann Sather's on Broadway for breakfast. I was there a bit early, and spent some time writing and collecting my thoughts. Chernoh arrived. Then food arrived. We ate, conversed, departed, and drove to the southside without issue.

When we arrived the sun was bright, the weather was warm, and the trees radiated a warm yellow glow from every leaf. It's was fall, it was summer, it was a beautiful day for a bike ride.

I have still not mentally adjusted to earlier start time of the Cat 3 race. We arrived after the start of the 40+, and I was glad that I had dressed to ride so that there was no time lost trying to change. We had 10 minutes to drop our gear and get on the course for the first pre-ride. That first lap was a little bumpy as I had forgotten to let any air out of my road-pressure tires. I knew it was going to be a fairly good day, as I did not have any problems even with the reduced traction of a higher pressure tire.

After the pre-ride I pulled my camera out and took some pictures of the Master's 30 riders. I tried to be mindful of the quality of shots as I continue to learn the best ways to leverage my new camera. It was my best performance with my camera to-date. I did not take a lot of pictures, I tried to be more strategic, and I was not afraid to remove sub-quality pictures on the spot. It saved me a bunch of time when I got home sorting through two to three hundred photos. I came home with a total of 146.

After that pre-ride I went to the starting line and helped out a little bit staging the Master's 60+ riders right after the start of the women's 1-2-3 race. I have not done a good job the last two weeks of photographing the women's 1-2-3 race nor the women's 4s race. The new staging procedures should create some windows of opportunities for photographing the women before the Cat 3 race, but my first priority is getting warmed up and ready for my own race.

The new staging procedures were rolled out in the CCC for the first time this week to eliminate the "race-before-the-race" which I was not afraid to try and win. I was in the lead pack at Jackson Park, not so good at Hopkin's Park, but now I don't have to worry about it. It went very well and also helped the fairly redundant process of checking riders in for the officials.

There were fewer entries in this week's race in part because of the marathon and in part because of natural attrition over the course of the season. I ended up in the third row, behind Austin Warner and someone else I do not remember. Chernoh lined up right behind me, and waited for the officials to make their final announcements. The whistle blew, there was a surge forward and chaos just to my left. There was a collision and someone went down (I learned later it was Austin and Newt who got tangled, and Austin who went down). I was able to swerve around the pile to the right, and make a reasonable sprint with the lead pack. Maybe in the top 20 going around the first corner. I was where I wanted to be, and just needed to race my own race.

I do have a couple of memories from the race. First, I was able to ride the technical section of course at the top of the first big descent on my first lap. I didn't have to start dismounting until after lap 2. I remember this technical section because I was at the top of the hill heckling 30+ riders who were running that section.

"A nice elderly woman who passed through here a few minutes ago rode that section gentlemen."

I did not bunny hop the log at any time nor did I attempt it. I did not want to be the next Joey.

On my second or third lap, right after the log barrier, I remember being passed by one of www.crossresults.com nemesi, Paul-Brian from Half-Acre. I remember feeling the urge to burn a match right and try to put some distance between he and I, and I remember thinking to myself that no matter what I did right there in that moment, no matter how hard I burned, PBM would be there with me at the finish. He was too good, too smart, with too much endurance to try and sprint away from. I had to race my race.

So I raced my race. I took advantage of the long flat straight aways to use a different pedal stroke than for the technical sections. I put it in a big gear (Sur la plaque, fucktards) and pedaled at a relatively slower cadence to get some recover on the straights. I was able to save up to then get out of the saddle and spin up most of the hills pretty fast. I think I passed Paul-Brian again on the next hill climb because I played it smart and did not chase him down.

I made one really bad (and painful) technical mistake. On lap 2 or three as I was coming down the home stretch toward the starting line I was getting ready to dismount and cross the double barriers. I was happy with the barrier placement because I felt I was making up places on guys by being able to get back on the bike quickly. This time, not so much. I was coming in hot, so I was trying to swing my leg over my seat, get my self in position to step through, and slow down enough that I could actually hit the ground running. I trying to do those three things simultaneously I somehow did the exact opposite of what happened two times last week. Instead of being unable to clip out and wiping out because of it, my left leg, standing straight over the left pedal with 100% of my weight on the left pedal clipped out and fell to the ground. I was moving between 12-15 mph still at the time so the result was catastrophic to my "not falling on the groundness". I crashed and my bike fell on top of me. I did no damage to the bike, and just a little damage to myself. Scraped up my knee, had a hip pointer bruise, and a little blood dripping from below the knee. It slowed me down, shook me up a bit, but I remounted hoping there was no video or camera out at that part of the course (thus far I have found no evidence).

I remounted, overcame the pain in my hip, looked at my knee (small blood) and passed the general systems test of being able to continue going. The crash cost me contact with a pair of riders who I was riding with, and closed a gap behind me so other riders were able to catch up and make moves past me. Getting around someone was not a big deal given the abundance of long straight-aways. Somewhere around the fourth lap I hit the "I can't do this anymore / Why am I doing this again?" wall. I kept going.

On the penultimate lap I remember getting passed by two riders on the straight away after the log, whom I passed again going up the hill. I never bothered to downshift so instead of spinning I mashed it in a big gear and made it to the inside corner before them.

Later on in the same lap the same rider came up beside me and didn't quite get around me as we were going into a turn. He gave me a "Sorry, man" and I said, "I did kind of a dick move on you back at the hill, so no worries". When we hit the straight away, he was gone. I could not give chase.

On the bell lap I was pretty much spent. It is always a nice idea to think that "Okay I'm going to hammer it for the entire last lap" but the last lap was two additional miles of racing with two steep hill climbs. The real question was "How do I not blow up?" So I kept on at basically the same pace. I noticed my turns past the team tent and through the "technical section" were fuzzy and not crisp, so I tried to redouble my concentration and keep moving. The last time up the hill was hard and my remount at the top was sloppy. I think I lost contact with the guy in front of me somewhere at this point in time. When I made it down to the bottom of the hill, down the straight away, and made the turn to head back toward the log I was able to see who was behind me. It was Paul-Brian and Kyle from the Shop. They were not to far behind me, and I coming up fast.

Instead of trying to catch the riders in front of me, and possibly burning out, my strategy became trying to recover enough energy so that I would have enough left at the end of the race to hold off the challengers coming up from behind. There was still little over a mile of the course left to go, so I bleed off the lead I had built up over Paul-Brian and Kyle until the final straight away, and then stood up and sprinted home. PB later commented that my strategy worked with about 10ft to spare. I was happy I did not get caught by 3 inches again at the line.

I did a little bit of a cool down, sprayed myself down with water to get the mud off, and mentally reset with some calories and water. Thankfully bees were absent from that day. I went to check results and found that I placed 27th out of 64, and was quite satisfied with the day's effort and performance. I finished off the day taking photos of the 1-2-3s and the 4As. Chernoh and I were going to take off after the start of the 4Bs but I ended up going on a wild goose chase around the course looking for a brand new insulated camelpak water bottle that went missing. (If you found an extra one in charcoal I would appreciate seeing that come back to the Sprockets tent at the next race). It was a good race, a great day, and I took a couple great photos. All in all it was a good day to be racing bikes in Chicago.