My friend Chernoh and I have been talking about racing relay cross together for since our first car-ride to a race together in 2010 (he was out of town for RCX last year), so I asked him to go with me to the dance and he said "Yes". My girlfriend, always the best race support, offered to drive us both, so I put the trunk rack on the car Sunday AM and Chernoh met us at my place. The morning was nice, but as I was putting on the trunk rack it started to sprinkle. That sprinkle turned into a steady rain by the time we hit LSD and made our way to the south side. Our fairly late arrival (we left my house at about 11:10AM) gave us a fortunate parking spot, right in the front row about as close as we could get to the starting area. We carried our stuff over to the Sprocket's tent and set up camp.
The women were finishing up as we arrived, so it was a quick "drop everything and get a pre-ride in" as the rain fell steady on us. The course was fairly short and compacted into a very small, unused corner of the park. It seems our reputation as being "non-destructive" has been damaged with the Chicago Parks District, and we lost our more prime site from the last two years.
The first pre-ride lap was uneventful. I got a good sense of the layout of the course, and started to get my legs back under me. They didn't feel great, like I had never really recovered from the week before. I took it fairly easy, and tried to spend a little bit more time warming up, but there was still something amiss.
I came back to the tent, registered, and cheered at the Juniors who were starting their races. The rain had really picked up by that point in time, and I did not feel like trying to dodge the raindrops with my camera equipment so I left my camera in the bag under my sprawled out poncho.
After the Junior's race we got back on the course and tested out the worsening conditions. There were a number of significant holes in the course, one of which in the starting straightaway that took out a team-Pegasus rider on this prelap. He was a bit ahead of me so all I saw was legs in the air as he tumbled across the grass, but he was okay and his bike was okay.
I didn't feel "warm" yet, so after watching the start of the Men's 4's race Chernoh and I tooled out of the parking lot and made a loop to the west, north, east, and south making it almost to the Museum of Science and Industry, and when we got back we decided to do it again. Riding south on the woodchip path near the lake I turned on the gas a bit to try to wake up my heavy legs. It worked somewhat and Chernoh and I headed back to the tent to finish preparations.
The rain was steady on now, but it was still very warm both the water and the air, so it was not unpleasant getting soaked. We headed to the starting line, got our instructions, and waited for time to tick away. It was, as in years past, a Le Mans start. One partner would be sprinting across the starting line, around a tree and back into the transition zone where the second partner waited with the first partner's bike. There were a couple of new Cat 3s, and juniors who got call-ups, including one of the fastest guys there, the 17yr old phenom David Lombardo. There was some definite heckling and chattering about one of the fastest guys in the field getting a 10m head start. I was happy that I had a spot on the front-row, where I could (hopefully) show off some of that residual explosive power I spent all those years building back in college.
The whistle blew, and we all surged forward. My vision was narrowly focused on the the three or four guys who had a headstart, and I closed the distance before we hit the tree to turn around. I followed exactly in the footsteps of the guy in red and white ahead of me who made a bee-line for the inside of the tree, and grabbed a handful of bark to help pivot around and then sprint forward again. When we made it out of the transition area, there was only one person in front, the younger Lombardo. I had a great start, which of course meant things could only get worse.
Memories from the first lap: I did not feel any pressure behind me until we hit the second corner, then I could see the entire field bearing down on me waiting for any mistake to swallow me up. No pressure. I remember that on one of the early corners that was somewhat of an "S" curve, with really sharp corners and I took a line through the first one, and John Gatto came up on my outside as I was exiting the apex wide toward the outside. He leaned into my hip with his shoulder, but I was right on the edge of traction and could not change my line. He tried to push me, but I was not moving. He ended up bailing on the turn and busting through the tape off the course. Undaunted he just kept riding and busted back in on the other side of the second corner. Part of me was hoping that the tape wouldn't break and he would be slung backwards like a cartoon villain. It did, he wasn't, and that was the last that I saw of John Gatto until the race was over. Well, that's not entirely true. I got to see him charge out of the transition area every lap as I waited for my partner to arrive.
The second memorable part of the first lap was being accused of cutting the course by someone else on the race course. On the far south end of the course there was a single barrier right before a sharp 180 degree off-camber corner. The well worn line followed the inside edge of the hill on the outside of a bushy little tree. However, the course designers did not wrap tape around the tree instead routing it to the inside of the corner meaning the tree was square in the course and it was an option to take an inside line. That part of the course flattened out earlier, so I made a move on a tight inside line and was able to re-pass a rider who had just passed me. It didn't last long and he accused me of cheating as he sped by me again on the straight-away but I retorted that I was squarely between the course tape, and he dropped the issue. Okay, he may not have dropped the issue, but he dropped me. I never saw him again either.
That was really the last memory I have from the first lap. It may have had something to do with this. Or the part of this that shows my heart rate was was flat-lined between 93-96% of max for the first six minutes of the race (note that my HR monitor slipped down my chest in the rain and was not accurate for the rest of the race. I did not fall off that much during any of my subsequent laps). Morleigh told me on the way home that I had somehow managed to cling to a 5th spot during the first lap. I had lost track by that point in time.
The second lap was uneventful, or at least nothing happened that was memorable. Rain and wet grass. The third lap was the lap that as I was coming back toward the transition area I saw my nemesis-for-a-race for the first time. I was riding on the straight that was immediately inside the exit to the transition area parallel to the starting line and this man was coming out of the transition area.
Newtron Cole was, for some strange reason, behind me. My first thought was confusion. There was something very wrong with the natural order of things. I have an exercise ball in my cubical, he has a squat rack in his office. My job is pushing number around, his job is pushing people to excel. My thought was not one of survival, I knew that he would eat up the 200 or so yards between us most likely before the end of the lap. My only thought was "make him earn it." I wasn't giving up MY spot without a fight. I stood up and started hammering again. I just kept repeating those words ("make him earn it") over and over again as Newt swallowed the gap between us.
I almost made it back to the transition area, but it was not to be. Newt caught me just before the wide round off-camber 180 degree turn that lead into the final chicane before the home straight-away. I stood up and hammered on the straight but he was into the pit well before me. I tagged Chernoh and collapsed to one knee. Newt was standing nearby with a smile on his face. I knew it was all an act, he was hiding the serious hurt I put on him.
After a few minutes I caught my breath, got up and got some water from Morleigh, grabbed my portable shower and I got the built up grass off of my brakes and out of my derailleur, and waited for Chernoh to come around again. It didn't take long. He was looking really strong as he was coming down the home straight away, and as he rounded the corner and came over the barrier I saw something that blew my mind. Newt was still in the pit. Chernoh had made up the place that I had lost, and as I was taking his handoff and leaving the pit, I left with this thought.
"Oh no...not again."
I hammered out, but Newt's partner was right behind Chernoh, and before we hit the laser gates from Star-Wars, Newt was on me, and we were piled behind someone else who was a little bit slower than either of us on the sharp winding corners. Unfortunately I couldn't get around him, and when we reached the end, I couldn't match either of them on the straight aways. My high-end gear fell off, and I could not get up to speed. I don't remember how many more spots I lost after that, or how many more I gained. I was in a lot of pain and as the leaders hit their last lap right after I made it to the pit I found myself hoping that my partner got lapped and we finished the race one lap down instead of having to ride a sixth lap mostly alone. I would have gone out for sure, but I had already ridden my half hour (34minutes total) and I was ready for the first cross-race of the season to be over.
The leaders pulled a few hundred yards ahead of Chernoh, he was the fourth rider to finish the race, who was one lap behind. We finished in 22nd place overall, the 20th and 21st Cat 3 riders across the line. That was a big improvement for me from the last year, so I left happy with our race. I didn't fall down, Chernoh's new tubulars performed well, and left we did. We watched the start of the co-ed race, but as the rain was starting to fall harder we took advantage of the proximity to home, and headed back North.
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