tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7845279244102876112024-03-13T05:41:20.784-05:00My Racing ThoughtsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-90887822098227247022016-04-27T15:43:00.003-05:002016-07-15T17:57:05.601-05:00The Barry-Roubaix VISo yesterday was my sixth consecutive Barry Roubaix. Every year I've written lengthy blog posts detailing the experience. In revisiting last year's post, I was struck by the complete reversal of fortune between my 2105 and 2016 campaigns. My 2015 post started with a failed attempt at completing the Rapha Festive 500, and then detailed a very successful winter training program. I talked at length about acclimation to cold, and long lonely winter miles. This year I successfully completed the <a href="http://mythoughtsracing.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-kind-of-cyclist-who-could.html" target="_blank">Rapha Festive 500</a> for the first time, and then my winter training plan was completely derailed. Instead of long cold miles, I spent January, February, and half of March putting in a new kitchen. after a water-heater-flood-while-on-vacation destroyed our old one. In 2015 I had more than 700 miles in January and February. This year? Just over 100 miles in the same time frame.<br />
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Last year, when they announced the change in date of Barry from March until April, I groaned aloud. My entire spring gravel schedule softened as organizers of all three races I had done in 2015 (SouthernCross, Barry-Roubaix, Tour of the Battenkill) announced that they were moving each race back a month on the calendar to avoid the sometimes harsh and variable weather that made these events so interesting. But I have to admit, the extra few weeks benefited me greatly this year, as it gave me time to get a solid block of training in to prepare for the event. The 10 day forecast leading up to the event was for sunny conditions and temps in the 70s by mid-day. By far the warmest Barry on record, so all those winter miles would have been for naught anyway.<br />
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The biggest block was a five day training camp in Las Vegas with my new team, <a href="http://spidermonkeycycling.com/" target="_blank">SpiderMonkey cycling.</a> I rode a personal best 292 miles with 16,000 ft of climbing in five days, finishing with a 91 mile ride across Las Vegas and up into Red Rock canyon, and then back to Henderson. It was a good opportunity to clear out the legs and the mind, and get reconnected with cycling. Instead of looking at Barry Roubaix as my first real training ride of the year, it began to start looking and feeling like a race again.<br />
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Well, delusions of a race anyway. As I settled into a training routine back at home that involving my #secrettrainingride and an extended version with added 10 miles and pushed the total amount of climbing over 2,200 ft. As the miles and feet started to accumulate again, I set some very aggressive goals for myself, both process and outcome goals. I wanted to stay with the lead group for longer that I did the year before, I wanted to finish in under 3:15, and I wanted to crack into the top 50 in the Open 62 mile race. So I was less prepared and had more aggressive goals? What could go wrong?<br />
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We made a pretty big change in our trip planning this year. Four out of the last five years, I spent the night before the race at the Bay Pointe Inn on Gun Lake. This year, Morleigh wanted to try something different and called the Holiday Inn Express just outside of Hastings and asked if they had any rooms available. They did not. Each year they ask existing guests if they would like to make a reservation for the following year. They were completely booked for 2016 the day after the race in 2015. However, we were 3rd or 4th on the waiting list, and when they called for a cancellation we jumped at the opportunity to stay a few blocks from the start of the race instead of having to drive 20 minutes into town.<br />
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Friday we picked up Chernoh in the city, and stopped by <a href="http://www.johnnysprockets.com/" target="_blank">Johnny Sprockets </a>to make a last minute change in tires. I knew the race would be hard and fast from the gun with the dry and warm forecast, and I wanted to reduce the width of my tires 38 to a 33 for the sake of reducing drag. We made it to Michigan a little later than we had in previous years, but the later date on the calendar meant we were after daylight savings, and after the vernal equinox, so sunset was an hour later, and days were longer than nights. This gave us some extra daylight to explore after arriving in town. We checked into the hotel, and changed for a quick leg-opener. I put on long sleeves because I couldn't fathom it being warm enough for riding in just bibs and a jersey. Within 5 miles I had to stop and take off the base layers with sleeves, as it was just too hot for layers. As we were in town instead of at Bay Point, it allowed us to explore some new gravel roads including a few miles of the 24/36 mile course coming back into town. Chernoh and I had never seen those roads, as we had always both done the 62 mile race. We opted to skip the final climb back into town, and instead backtracked down Cook Rd to get back to the Ace Hardware to pick up our packets.<br />
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Big kudos to the race organizers and volunteers as yet again packet pick-up was well organized and took almost no time at all. We were in and out within a few minutes, and on our way back to the hotel we swung by the Specialized demo tent to chat with our friend Eric B. He was just getting ready to close up shop so Chernoh and I helped him break down tents and put away his demo fleet, and then made plans to have dinner in Hastings with the four of us. Dinner in Hastings was a nice change of pace as we had in prior years had our pre-race dinner at the Inn. We headed back to the hotel where Chernoh and I both wrapped some Salt Stick capsules in aluminum foil and taped to our stems for easy mid-race access, filled up our water bottles, and then settled into bed.<br />
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Being in town afforded us an extra 30 minutes of sleep, as we no longer had to worry about driving to the race course, parking, unloading, and then getting dressed. We were able to get dressed in race clothes, and head directly to breakfast. I tried to avoid eating too much, as I have done in some years past, with a good mix of carbs, protein, and fat. We returned to our rooms and made final preparations. Wardrobe is always a big part of getting ready for Barry. This year, with forecasted temps in the 70s in the afternoon, I was unsure how light to start. I opted for short-sleeved craft base layer with wind-stopper briefs under the UCI kit I bought in Richmond. I also had on arm warmers and knee warmers, as it was still a chilly 49 degrees when I made it to the parking lot. Nutrition wise, I opted for 3 of my homebrew gel packs, four Salt Stick capsules on my stem (in addition to the two that were already in each gel), and three bottle of water. I was ready before Chernoh, so I started with some laps around the parking lot while he was finishing his preparation. We then headed up to the course, rode out Cook Rd., and turned to come back to the start.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just a jersey?</td></tr>
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I had a small bag with a change of clothes for after the race in case Mor wasn't back from shooting when I was ready to change. The ride over convinced me that I was still overdressed even in a short sleeve base layer, so I stripped off the base-layer and warmers and shoved them in my bag and stored them in a safe place with my phone and wallet until the end of the race. At about 9:30 AM there were already guys starting to head to staging, with my extended roll to the start of the race and some stretching I was ready to go, so I headed up to staging and took a place near the front. There were already some people in the starting grid, including one guy who was sitting on a set of rollers 6ft off the start line inside the grid warming up. A friend from Chicago noted "Whenever I think I'm starting to take this too seriously, I'm comforted to run into THAT guy."<br />
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The start grid started to fill up as the seconds ticked away. I'm always amazed at how quickly the last 20 minutes before the start of a race slips away. Star Spangled Banner, invocation, and all of a sudden the field is surging forward across the line and down the street at 25 miles per hour. As the first wave flew down the road I did my best to stay near the front. As we made our way down Green Green street, some fast guys who were late to staging tried to sprint up the outside and then work their way in near the front. I managed to shift to the left from my spot in the middle of the pack, and get back into this flow and maintain a position near the front. So close to the front in fact that as we turned south on Cook Rd, and people sat up on the climb I continued to push into my pedals and surged off the front of the field. I wasn't the first one on the gravel this year, but I did take my turn at the very pointy end of the bike race which is more than a lot of people can say. I didn't really do it because I wanted to be on the front, I had found a comfortable pace and level of effort, was starting to feel warm, and didn't want to sit up quite yet.<br />
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We reached the base of the first sister, and unlike in 2015 when the field collectively sat up and watched David Lombardo ride away, the front of the field attacked, and it was as if they tossed hand grenades over their shoulders with how quickly the field blew up in their wake. They attacked and counter attacked up and over the first, second, and third sister, and by the time I reached the top of the 3rd sister the leaders were down the other side and out of sight, and only a comet tail of debris followed in their wake. I pushed into my pedals for the descent, made it across the highway, and made the left turn onto Hubble Rd. Since first year I did <a href="http://mythoughtsracing.blogspot.com/2012/03/barry-roubaix-2011-part-2.html" target="_blank">Barry</a>, I've always thought of it as "the cow climb"because of the Holstein cows that were standing in the pasture next to the road. The three sisters are steep, but I've always felt like the slog up Hubble Rd was the more dangerous climb. That's the one where people start to crack and the field really separates.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Already off the back by Hubble.</td></tr>
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That's why I stationed Morleigh at that top of that climb this year. It's really beautiful, important in the race, and no one is generally there. She got some great photos of the leaders on their way up, and lots of others on their way down. I saw her and cheered for her as we passed, but I was on the wrong side of the field to appear in any photos. When I crested the top, the lead group of about 50 was where David Lombardo had been the year before, at the bottom of the hill turning right. My goal of hanging onto the leaders was gone, so I focused on the next goal of doing better than in years past on the paved climb on Gun Lake Rd.<br />
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The road was littered with riders dangling backwards from the lead group like the tail of a comet. I didn't necessarily have any hope of catching back onto the leaders, but I was thinking about the big climb, and I was thinking about wanting to finish in the top 50. I had no idea where I was in the field, but I knew there were a lot of guys in front of me. I started to focus on "the next wheel" and started working my way forward. Road conditions at this point in the race were pretty sketchy. The dry gravel and sand made everything very loose and very dusty. I was fortunate that when I was in big groups the wind was blowing across the road, and only rarely was I in a position where I was caught in a plume of dust that I couldn't escape.<br />
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At this point it felt like I was riding well and racing smart. I was grabbing wheels when I could, taking short pulls when I needed to, and keeping my arms relaxed as we hit some pretty loose and sandy turns. As we approached a particularly nasty corner from Sager to Otis Lake Rd I saw David Reyes standing on the road which was not a good sign. I asked him if he needed anything, and he said he broke a derailleur hanger. I hollered over my shoulder that I did not have one of those, and pressed on as I caught sight of one of his teammates, Matt, ahead. Otis Lake Rd was the last section of gravel before the paved climb, so I settled back into a group of riders, including Matt, that struggled through the loose and sometimes very sandy trail. At this point I was trying to catch my breath and recover, knowing that the climb up and over the top was going to be taxing. I did my best to hold onto the tales of this 12 person kite, and mentally prepared myself for a steep climb.<br />
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When we turned left onto pavement we hit some downhill sections. I tried to hold back a bit, and stay with the group on the descents, saving up matches for the climb. When we reached the base of the big climb, I fully expected to be dropped off the back of this group, and to my surprise the pace of the leaders was challenging but I was able to match and hold onto the rope keeping myself together with the group. When we crested the top I mashed into the pedals and then got into a good tuck and blasted by everyone else. I was off the front of that group for the entire descent, and grabbed back on when we reached the next ridge on the other side. We had been riding for almost 45 minutes, and I realized I hadn't reached back to eat anything and had hardly drank anything out of my water bottle. I started to force feed a little bit, knowing it would come in handy later. It wasn't until we made two more turns and started to head back East on Duffy Rd. that I hit my first mini wall. We were climbing up a grade and the spring fell out of my step and I started to drift towards the back of my group, in danger of being dropped. I managed to dig a little deeper and stay with the tail of that group as we turned back onto pavement and headed south to Sager Rd.<br />
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In 2015, I had a pretty good run up Sager Rd., feeling strong and holding with the group I was with. This year I had some challenges with both my legs and with traffic. I had a couple of riders go down or come to a dead stop and had to take evasive action to keep rolling. The 2-track climb really split apart the group of 12 riders I was with, but was still with a couple of riders as we made the right onto McKibben Rd. As I looked back I saw some riders approaching fast from behind. I didn't sit up and wait for them, instead I pushed on ahead trying to catch the next wheel before I was caught. That didn't go so well, as I completely over-bake the left hand turn onto Mullen Rd and locked up both brakes and skidded for 15ft before losing enough speed to be able to make the turn. Within a half mile the group from behind caught me, and I latched on to the train of faster moving riders and followed them to the timing sensor which was set up just before the right hand turn onto Head Lake Rd. I asked the official where we were in the group as I was the last rider in that group. I was sitting in 74th place at mile 24.5. My heart sank a little.<br />
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As we headed south on Head Rd towards the Killer, it was a struggle to stay together as we were now fully emerged in the middle of the 24 mile field. When we reached the base of the Killer we were fortunate enough to be in a relative lull and had enough of the road to maintain momentum and stay mostly together as a group. Half way up I saw Mor standing on the left side of the road cradling a water bottle in her arm as she tried to take pictures. I yelled out that I didn't need the water which she acknowledged by taking a picture of me. Ironically out of focus because I set up the camera with the incorrect autofocus mode for her. I was suffering greatly just to stay with the group, but as I crested the hill and started to pedal towards the turn off I was not alone. And in a few moments we were really not alone as the leaders of the second wave finally caught up with me. I recognized Lucas Siebel on his single speed spinning away like a madman leading this group of 40-50 riders. I knew a dozen or so of the riders in this wave by name, and said "hello" and "It's about time." to a few of them as I settled into their wake and started to recover on the ride to Cloverdale. It was a big group, and my goal of finishing in the top 50 was further evaporating as I tried to figure out what percentage of that group of 40 to 50 riders were in my wave and what percentage were from the second wave.<br />
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At that point, things were starting to get hard. I didn't know how long I would be able to stay with that group, I had the sense that no one was attacking at the moment as we rolled through Cloverdale, but once we made it through Cloverdale all bets were off as the pace quickened and the accordion started to play. Someone would attack at the front on a climb and the whole field would serge to hold that wheel. The field would stretch, the attack would fail, and the field would compress. Each time hurt a little more. Ironically it wasn't a surging field that finally did me in and sheered me off the back of the group, it was traffic.<br />
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Just short of mile 40 we were going down a hill at a pretty quick pace, and there was a car on the left shoulder with a few riders huddled behind. There was also a car coming up the hill towards us, forcing the field into a relatively narrow chicane first moving left to avoid the stopped car, and then moving back right to avoid the oncoming car. The oncoming car did not pull over or stop so the chicane got tighter and tighter. I drifted too far to the left and had to grab brakes to slow down and get back to the right. The field continued to roll down the hill and attacked on the other side, and before I could drop an F-bomb I was dropped off the back and in no-man's land.<br />
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Things really started to go south at this point. I was starting to feel like I was cramping so I took a salt tablet. That sat in my stomach with water for too long without digesting or absorbing. The pre-cramping started to turn into actually cramping, so I took another salt-tablet, drank some more gel, and tried to soft-pedal and coast as much as possible to let my stomach catch up with my body.<br />
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It didn't work very well. By the time I made it to the aid station at mile 44 I was hurting and moving slowly. I had finished one water bottle and knew that after not seeing Mor in Cloverdale I was going to be maybe running low on water by the end of the race. It was starting to get really warm, and sweat was running off the brim of my visor. When a volunteer held up a full water bottle I grabbed it, and tossed one of my empty bottles into the ditch. All I needed was for my stomach to start working again so I could actually drink some more fluids.<br />
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After mile 50 things started to get very hard. There are some sharp punchy climbs in the last 15 miles, and at each one I wondered if I would have to get off and walk. I was with a pair of riders for a few miles, before getting dropped on one of those climbs. My legs, starting with my calves, were cramping for real now. I chewed my last sodium packets and tried my best to choke down some gel. A few larger groups, 10 - 20 riders mostly from the second wave passed me as we approached the finish, and one final group, just as I hit pavement to pull into town I turned around and saw a hard charging group of about 10 riders. I really wanted to try and stay with them up the last climb into town and beat them in a sprint, but my legs had other ideas. I just kept turning the pedals and watched them ride away. I did push myself as much as possible on the descent into town, but still didn't really have enough in the tank to make up any time. When I crossed the line I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had finished in my 3rd fastest time, 3:21:37. I was 71st out of 172. So five minutes slower than the year before, but only 9 places back in the field. So not exactly where I hoped to be, but still a pretty good result. When people asked me how my race went, the short answer was "Good, but not great."<br />
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I sat down on a bench for a while next to Brian B from Chicago who finished a few minutes ahead of me, and tried to drink water and get my legs back under me. It was still hot as we exchanges stories of how hard it was even though it wasn't cold. After a few minutes I came to my senses and realized I had better tell my wife I was finished, so I went back to the expo to retrieve my cell phone and instead found my wife. She took me back to the car where I drank some more water and laid down in the shade next to a church and looked very much like I had died.<br />
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My face and jersey were covered in brown dirt, sticking to anywhere that my skin was wet with sweat. There were claw marks on my head where the dirt blew in the vents and stuck to my scalp.<br />
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We had also decided to spend Saturday night after the race in Hastings. When Chernoh finished we gave him some time to get settled, hydrated, and come back to life, and then he and I rode back to the hotel. We showered and headed to the Waldorf for our traditional post-race meal. We then went back to the hotel and I started editing the photos that Morleigh had taken, while Chernoh graded papers.<br />
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The next morning Chernoh and I were up early, heading out for a recovery ride. I'd plotted out a route east of Hastings, somewhere that I've never been, and we took off in the early morning light. We rode easy for about 2 hrs seeing a few deer and having a lovely chat about training and life. Although the race was only "good" the weekend was certainly "great!"<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-84810033470197835022015-12-31T00:07:00.001-06:002016-12-16T13:27:53.226-06:00The kind of cyclist who could...When I first heard about the Rapha Festive Five hundred, in 2010 I didn't know what a "Rapha" was. I didn't know who Jeremy Powers or Katie Compton were. I hadn't met Tim Johnson, and had not raced against Ben Berden, Jamie Driscoll, or Steve Tilford. All I knew was that it sounded like something that was completely beyond my ability level. I had at that point completed just twelve Cat4 (i.e., 30 min) cyclocross races. I had never ridden over 50 miles at one time, and 500km was probably more miles than I had ever ridden in a month much less a week. But there was something about the challenge that got stuck in my craw. I wasn't the kind of cyclist who could ride 500km between Christmas Eve and New Years Eve, but someday maybe I could be that kind of cyclist.<br />
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Every year since, when December rolled around, I thought about the challenge. There was always some obstacle that prevented me from attempting it. Sometimes it was weather, sometimes it was illness, sometimes it was fear. It took four more years and more than 10,000 miles before I became the kind of cyclist who thought he could actually pull it off. In December of 2014 I started off strong with a 60 mile ride on Christmas Day (I erroneously thought the challenge ran from Christmas to New Years and lost a day). I then came down with a bad sinus infection and spent two weeks off the bike. It was disappointing to say the least.<br />
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This year I felt like I was in an even better place. I had ridden more than 5,200 miles (up from 4,000 miles in 2014), and completed a number of long endurance races. When I set out on Christmas Eve day to try and accomplish this goal, I hoped I could be the kind of cyclist to brave the elements and get his badge.<br />
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I'm proud to say that tonight I finished the Rapha Festive Five Hundred with room to spare.<br />
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<a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/455757953" target="_blank">Merry Christmas Eve</a> 12/24/2015 <span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">36</span><abbr class="unit" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; color: blue; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" title="Degrees Fahrenheit">℉</abbr><br />
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I started out strong with 100km on Christmas Eve. The wind was blowing in from the west at 15mph so I cut out in the early afternoon and headed south west. I found some new roads that I had not explored in the last three years of living in the suburbs, breaking a psychological barrier and crossing south of I-90 for the first time before looping North and returning through the historic Woodstock Square finding the spot where Bill Murray stepped into a puddle over and over again in Groundhog's Day. It was going to be that kind of week. 63.2 miles, 3:36:25, 1,496ft. Total = 101.7km<br />
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<a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/456182169" target="_blank">Christmas with Steve Tilford</a> 12/25/2015 <span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">37</span><abbr class="unit" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; color: blue; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" title="Degrees Fahrenheit">℉</abbr><br />
<a href="http://stevetilford.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IMG_3978-768x576.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://stevetilford.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/IMG_3978-768x576.jpg" width="320" /></a>When I got home, Morleigh told me that she had been reading <a href="http://stevetilford.com/" target="_blank">Steve Tilford's blog</a>, and he had announced he would be in Chicago visiting family and would be hosting a 2-3hr ride. I wasn't sure how I would feel in the morning, having just put in a hard metric century, but when I woke up on Christmas Day I felt pretty good, and immediately started to get ready for the ride. I drove into Mount Prospect, arrived with enough time to finish gearing up, and then we headed east towards Evanston. It took us about an hour before we got to roads I recognized, but I knew the way down Church into Evanston very well from years of riding with the Chicago Cycling Club. We met up with some additional riders in Evanston, and then headed down Chicago to the Lake Shore Path. We were riding mostly in non-rotating pace line, and taking turns hanging out chatting with Steve. I got my turn on the path, and started talking about the <a href="http://www.cheqfattire.com/" target="_blank">Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival</a> as we had both raced it in 2014. We then turned to politics and gun control, and by that time we had made it to Navy Pier and were ready to turn around. The wind was from the Northeast off the lake so we ended up single file crawling back North until we could get shelter in the city, and pushed far enough west for the wind to be in our face again. Steve spent most of the ride on the front pulling, and most of his time pulling chatting away. It was an impressive feat, and gave a glimpse of how strong he is. 56.6 miles, 3:17:39, 446ft. Total = 191.7km<br />
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<a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/457619997" target="_blank">Wind from the north, I ride north</a> 12/27/2015 - <span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">32</span><abbr class="unit" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; color: blue; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" title="Degrees Fahrenheit">℉</abbr><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEobYmjSWhXNylRZ5G9RfGq2meH32EhjYCRWo7fkkqLLavsLG1czSA0dCQs63vk3_uEb3K3sYZLv_rlkIH5z5FkpB-p6wD4TUSqSMpkIcBxRuzfT-dbnQelFo4lyIbar6b1zn9tRiq4gg/s1600/20151227_141026.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEobYmjSWhXNylRZ5G9RfGq2meH32EhjYCRWo7fkkqLLavsLG1czSA0dCQs63vk3_uEb3K3sYZLv_rlkIH5z5FkpB-p6wD4TUSqSMpkIcBxRuzfT-dbnQelFo4lyIbar6b1zn9tRiq4gg/s320/20151227_141026.jpg" width="320" /></a>I took a rest day on the 26th, and then started up again on Sunday. The wind was blowing pretty strong from the NNE, so I figured it would be a good day to take the Prairie Path north to Wisconsin. Round trip it was only 54 miles to the border. I knew I wanted to get at least 65 miles in, to get get back on track after taking a day off, so I set my sights on another psychological barrier, Lake Geneva. It was going to be a long 35 miles getting there, but I hoped with the tail wind it would be short work getting home. The highlight of the ride was seeing a shiny new gift card on the shoulder of the road which appeared to be undamaged. I spent some time wondering how much money it had on it, and what the threshold was for tracking down the owner. Maybe it was thousands of dollars, or maybe it had been completely spent. Despite having a tail wind, It wasn't short work getting home. The wet crushed limestone section of the path took it's toll, and the wind had shifted more to the east. By the time I got to McHenry I was pretty much spent, and I limped the rest of the way home. I made it back from Lake Geneva 15 minutes faster than it took me to get there, but it didn't feel like it. When I got home I immediately looked up the balance on the found gift card. Windfall for the ride = $0.85. 73.1miles, 4:17:14, 2,110ft. Total = 309km<br />
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<a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/459074958" target="_blank">Free Rides while you wait: CPR Cell Phone Repair Huntley</a> 12/29/2015 - <span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">27</span><abbr class="unit" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; color: blue; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" title="Degrees Fahrenheit">℉</abbr><br />
I lost another day to a wet and heavy snowfall on Monday. I did ride my mountain bike up to the Walgreens to pick up milk, which only reinforced the decision to not ride. It was heavy, wet, slipper, and would have been a struggle to get any miles in at all. Much better to rest and wait for the roads to clear, than to waste two hours going 12 miles. Tuesday morning I got a call from the Cell Phone repair place saying my screen had come in. I used that as an opportunity to get some miles in, dropping my phone of on the way west (wind was from the west again), and looping back to pick it up a few hours of riding later. I'm not going to lie. It was really hard to get motivated and get out the door. I puttered around for almost 2 hrs tinkering with my clothing, nutrition, Garmin route, and pulling a piece of metal and re-sealing a tubeless tire. I found an interesting feature on the map while exploring a possible route on Garmin Connect. Just south of the interstate I found a small landing strip which was lined on both sides by houses with very large garages. It's a community of pilots with their own personal airport. I added a loop around the airfield to my Course. The ride was pretty smooth and uneventful. I had to make some wardrobe adjustments at mile 20 and switched to dry warm gloves at mile 45, but made it back to the CPR Huntley after they finished my phone and well before close. I ended up making some extra loops in my sub-division to push the ride distance over 100km. 62.6miles, 3:30:32, 1,240ft. Total = 411km.<br />
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<a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/459715861" target="_blank">The kind of cyclist who could...</a> 12/30/2015 - <span style="background-color: white; color: blue; font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 12px;">27</span><abbr class="unit" style="border-bottom-style: none; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; color: blue; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 11px;" title="Degrees Fahrenheit">℉</abbr><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcxokeH7lAKIF6r8iYU9HjOha6ihBzg6USRG5DmLy55bYBB_7lQQazTk7UoAU9_J7lRibnNzX0yRdj6BiX1ntzEuQpx3FR67HwRpGCiVNRmVVDwc3VqdcAADaV1Gm4SlU_2hRFWJ0Ij8/s1600/20151230_185341.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjcxokeH7lAKIF6r8iYU9HjOha6ihBzg6USRG5DmLy55bYBB_7lQQazTk7UoAU9_J7lRibnNzX0yRdj6BiX1ntzEuQpx3FR67HwRpGCiVNRmVVDwc3VqdcAADaV1Gm4SlU_2hRFWJ0Ij8/s320/20151230_185341.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
Originally I had thought I would ride on New Years Eve. We had plans to take my niece and nephew to see the new Star Wars up in Wisconsin, and I thought that would be a perfect capstone to my festive 500, riding either part of the way and having Morleigh pick me up, or riding the whole way and meeting her there. But with only 90km to go, and a quiet day around the office, I instead decided to try to get another 100km ride in, and finish the challenge off a day early and save the logistical headache of arriving in Janesville sweaty and cold. The wind was again from the west, strong at 15-20mph, so I headed northwest, trying to reverse most of the loop I had ridden on Christmas Eve. I skipped the headaches of making my way north through Crystal Lake and Woodstock during rush hour, and headed west on Miller to Haligus, where I connected with the Lundhal route to Deerpath Rd. I skipped the big climb, and made my way west on River to Hwy 23, and took that over the smaller pass to Kishwaukee Valley Rd. My legs were pretty shot by this point, after 30 miles into a steady 10mph wind, so the return trip was not as fast as I would have liked. I had to stop at mile 37 and make some more wardrobe adjustments. I lingered a bit too long because when I texted Morleigh to let her know I was okay and about to get rolling again, she texted back letting me know that she was already getting dressed and coming to get me. I didn't need a sag quite yet, and sailed mostly downwind for another 25 miles. I stopped right before I got home at the grocery store to pick up some broccoli for supper, and she had hot chocolate with big marshmallows waiting for me when I walked in the door. A very nice treat to end an epic week of riding. 62.0miles, 3:37:01, 1,322ft, Total = 511km.<br />
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https://www.strava.com/challenges/rapha-festive-500-2015<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-32627436364489911082015-10-21T14:14:00.000-05:002016-12-16T13:42:00.650-06:00The Ten Thousand<h3>
"This wonderful byproduct of glacial neglect."</h3>
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Much was written about the first <a href="http://ridetenthousand.com/?page_id=18" target="_blank">Ten Thousand</a>. Such was the mystique, it was named as one of the top <a href="http://gearpatrol.com/2014/06/05/best-gravel-races-in-america/" target="_blank">10 Gravel grinders of 2014</a> a month before anyone had ever ridden the route. I opted not to participate, it didn't feel like the right thing for me to do given my fitness and training, and I was worried about the uncertainties of heat and weather in mid July. Of the friends who did complete it they said it was the best (and hardest) thing they had ever done on a bike.<br />
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The second Ten Thousand was building up to be an even better event. Instead of fighting the heat, humidity, and bugs of a midwestern July, the organizers moved the event to the cool crisp autumn. The start location had been moved further west to allow for even <i>more climbing</i><b>. </b>Then it all fell apart. Through a various set of unforeseen circumstances the organizers quit their jobs, and moved to different cities. There was <a href="http://ridetenthousand.com/" target="_blank">no one left</a> to host the event, and no one to <a href="https://farmdogsaresprinttraining.wordpress.com/2015/09/22/the-ride-formally-known-as-ten-thousand/" target="_blank">shake hands</a> at the finish. All that was left was a time, a date, and a cue sheet.<br />
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That was enough for me though. If your friend spends hours making you a mix tape, the least you can do is listen to it, right? I had spent the spring and summer training for longer harder events. I raced in three endurance mountain bike races of 33 miles, 57 miles, and 100 miles, and put in the training time required to not just finish but to finish pretty well for a first timer. By the end of September I had put in 4,300 miles with 172,000 ft of climbing which was 200 miles and 25,000 ft more than I had done in all of 2014. I was ready for the event.<br />
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It took a little negotiation to get my team manager (i.e., my wife Morleigh) on board. Her biggest concern was that I was going to try to do something foolish like ride the Ten Thousand on Saturday and then race a <a href="http://www.chicrosscup.com/" target="_blank">cyclcross</a> race on Sunday. We talked it over and I promised that if I did the full Ten Thousand route I would not do something so foolish as to try to race cyclocross on Sunday. Once the pinky swear promise was in place she agreed to be awesome and set up a SnowyMountain Photography rest stop for riders as she had done for the last three Axletree events.<br />
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<h3>
The wrong foot</h3>
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We arrived Friday night at our hotel in nearby Freeport, IL which is known as Pretzel City, USA. Morleigh googled the history of our location and confirmed that Freeport is still milking the 19th century for almost all of it's glory as Freeport's most notable claim to fame is that it was the location of the 1858 Lincoln Douglas Debate and a Pretzel factory about the same time. I stayed up a little later than I was hoping to, drawing maps and creating navigation points for potential aid stations for Morleigh in Google Maps. At 3AM I woke up. I spent 30 minutes trying to get the room cooler, my throat less dry, and trying to calm down. I was too nervous to get back to sleep as quickly as I would have liked.<br />
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The alarm went off at 5:45AM, were at breakfast by 6AM, car loaded and on the road by 6:30AM. I was hoping to be gone a little bit earlier, as it was a 25 minute ride to the start with a posted start-time of 7AM. We were cutting it close, but I had been planning and rehearsing my routine for getting dressed and ready for days. I thought for sure it would be no problem getting ready.<br />
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The weather forecast was very pleasant for mid-October. There was a frost-warning overnight, and temps were supposed to be in the low 30s when the ride started with a high in the low 50s. I erred on the side of not being too warm, and opted for summer mountain bike shoes with over the calf wool socks and toe warmers, a craft base layer under regular bib shorts, and then an Under Armor base layer under a jersey, wool arm warmers, and a Sugoi wind-stopper jacket with magnetically attached sleeves that could be pulled off and stowed quickly. I had some long finger gloves, a craft hat and a secondary ear-band. I was counting on it warming up pretty quickly. That never happened, it didn't warm up at all.<br />
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The second faux pas I made was thinking that I could carry one of our digital SLR cameras for the entire ride. Morleigh was very concerned about the burden of extra weight slowing me down, and the risk to equipment if I were to take a tumble. I agreed, but still wanted to give it a go. I figured the worst that would happen would be that I would get some good pictures during the golden hour and then drop the camera at the first aid station which was going to be at about 41 miles if need be. That didn't work out either.<br />
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<h3>
The grand depart</h3>
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The grand depart came mercifully a few minutes late. Since it was not an organized race with timing, things were more group ride-ish at the start with a few extra minutes being left for people to finish gathering their belongings and to lock up their cars. I recognized a few friendly faces, Bailey Newbrey was acting as the defacto event organizer, Brad Majors, a teammate from Chicago, and few others that I had met racing in and around Chicago were all gathered in long sleeves and winter leggings. The thought occurred to me that either they were over dressed, or I was under-dressed. Someone commented on me being brave. <br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-Pbs4HS6/1/L/TenThousand2015%25203-L.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">7:08 AM - <a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-Pbs4HS6/A" target="_blank">Riders gather in Stockton, IL for the start of the Ten Thousand</a></td></tr>
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The sun was just starting to climb over the horizon as about two dozen of us rolled out of Stockton, IL at 7:09 AM. Shortly after we got out of town, I unzipped my vest to be able to free the DSLR to snap some photos. I was riding my bike in a group while climbing over the rolling hills, so I took three or four really good pics of riders in the warm glow of dawn before I noticed the small print flashing on the screen.<br />
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"No memory card."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-QzgnhwR/A" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-QzgnhwR/1/L/TenThousand2015%252011-L.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">7:17 AM - <a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-QzgnhwR/A" target="_blank">My wife captured this photo with her DSLR on her way out of town.</a></td></tr>
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My expensive camera was now just a silly brick dangling around my neck, and banging into my thigh on every pedal stroke. It was preventing me from zipping my wind vest back up, so I was also losing a lot of heat on the fast descents and when we were riding west into the wind. My bare knees and my thinly veiled toes were already starting to get cold, and I was having trouble breathing in the cold air. I figured that if I stopped to fix any of those issues I would be in no-man's land for the rest of the 124 miles. So I soldiered on as best I could.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6YMz-Khco7vs-aBUdGoh8DCddRihPNitg3g11eMOqCUAH8RjFhO2PufEJJq8fHvAwo6Fssb8-KEMmixyHuiuHiA8v6i7nxzJ_oMerw9BMVdDJZTvypxjE1gqCUW_0SJ_cTvmPQ3TEIBM/s1600/20151017_085246.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6YMz-Khco7vs-aBUdGoh8DCddRihPNitg3g11eMOqCUAH8RjFhO2PufEJJq8fHvAwo6Fssb8-KEMmixyHuiuHiA8v6i7nxzJ_oMerw9BMVdDJZTvypxjE1gqCUW_0SJ_cTvmPQ3TEIBM/s640/20151017_085246.jpg" width="360" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Morleigh captured some of the ephemeral beauty of the early morning frost.</td></tr>
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Two miles later I got dropped on the second major climb. I couldn't get into a good cadence with the camera banging against my thigh, so I sat up and held the camera with one hand and tried to use the other to put power into the pedals, and just watched as the dozen or so faster, stronger, lighter riders disappeared up and over the crest. We were heading into the wind at that point, so as solo rider I didn't have much hope of catching back on. I mentally prepared myself for a long day alone. Morleigh had planned on being out on the course early to snap some photos during the golden hour. I found her a spot on top of a rolling hill at about mile 14 so I knew I at least had a place to leave the camera. As long as she didn't take off before I could get there.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lyXKKhrsEUM/ViMG-RkEIEI/AAAAAAAAR6E/ZpVWzSQ9W2Q/s1600/20151017_074740.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lyXKKhrsEUM/ViMG-RkEIEI/AAAAAAAAR6E/ZpVWzSQ9W2Q/s640/20151017_074740.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">7:47AM - After getting dropped I dug my camera phone out of a pocket and put it in my "Bento" box so I could snap photos along the way. </td></tr>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qO4EGlNBweI/ViMG-RxZ0QI/AAAAAAAAR6E/41v3aoJZOcY/s1600/20151017_080700.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-qO4EGlNBweI/ViMG-RxZ0QI/AAAAAAAAR6E/41v3aoJZOcY/s640/20151017_080700.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">An endless spool of gravel unwinding beneath my wheels.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-5BTN8cq/1/XL/TenThousand2015%252016-XL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-5BTN8cq/1/XL/TenThousand2015%252016-XL.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Six white-tail deer ran by while Morleigh was waiting for the first wave of riders, one can be seen darting across the road. </td></tr>
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I made it to the point where Morleigh was in about a half an hour as the burning cold in my fingers and knees turned to that comfortable numbness of winter riding. I waved at her as I rolled by, telling her the camera had no film in it. She yelled "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!", in disbelief. I rolled up to the car, took the vest off, and removed the camera strap.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-wF7zmNK/1/L/TenThousand2015%252022-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-wF7zmNK/1/L/TenThousand2015%252022-L.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">7:58AM - My brick and I find Morleigh and the car. </td></tr>
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I took off my shoes, put on my Specialized Defrosters, zipped up my vest again, and I took off. It was a quick pit-stop, but it was a big difference in pedaling comfort. A few riders had passed me while I was changing, so I put my head down and started to give chase.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgupy1fIsg5MMVH_nR34W86yymSbottxZC1XxhXG00w8oJIoWQaJpYcwyQYJESmek447yz7GNww_HxjMgVRE_hcU2bhB20JTEUUjWiQ0jIAw4wNNldhQCRb_SXKakAM1qurd57Kk7ISObA/s1600/20151017_081550.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgupy1fIsg5MMVH_nR34W86yymSbottxZC1XxhXG00w8oJIoWQaJpYcwyQYJESmek447yz7GNww_HxjMgVRE_hcU2bhB20JTEUUjWiQ0jIAw4wNNldhQCRb_SXKakAM1qurd57Kk7ISObA/s640/20151017_081550.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Riders stopped to take some snapshots overlooking the eastern most end of the course. </td></tr>
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<h3>
The B road</h3>
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For those unfamiliar with the term a "B-road" is an unmaintained "road" that appears on a map as a line, but on the ground it is often little more than two deep ruts separated by a strip of thick tall grass. They are one of the defining characteristics of an Axletree Gravel event, and this ride's B-road came mercifully early on at mile 19.5. It started out gentle and smooth but the "No Outlet" sign where Kempel Rd crossed Kent Rd. served as a warning to those who notice such things. We turned left from the relatively-well groomed Kempel Rd on to South County Divide Rd which quickly turned into an undulating mishmash of ruts, rocks, and roots as it dove into the valley. It was by far the most hair-raising part of the entire journey. The morning sunlight was playing havoc with my vision as it was low enough on the horizon to be directly in my eyes at points, but I managed to make it through unscathed. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8:35 AM - Looking back north from the end of South County Divide Road</td></tr>
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I had a moment of panic at the end of the B-road when I started to hear a "ting" from my rear wheel that sounded a lot like a broken spoke. I was familiar with the sound as I had broken spokes in the Gravel Grovel almost a year earlier, and again two weeks before this ride. As I slowed gently to a halt, I thought my day was over and I was going to have to hike back to town. I was relieved when found that it was just a piece of barbed wire tangled in my spokes. It had not done any damage, so I snapped a pic, removed the wire, and carried on down the hill.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">8:37AM - Barbed-wire in my spokes. </td></tr>
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<h3>
<a href="https://farmdogsaresprinttraining.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">If farm dogs are sprint training</a>...</h3>
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I had just passed the jog from E Krise Rd to Willow Rd back to E Krise Rd when I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned to the right, and saw a brown swiss cow charging down the hill straight towards me. I wasn't too worried as I could see there was a fence separating us. However, when she reached the corner of the pasture she did something completely unexpected. She lowered her head, lifted her feet, and lunged through a hole in the bottom of the fence. In an instant she was on the road next to me. I had enough time to think: </div>
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"Is this how I die?" before she changed course and started running next to me. I did not die so I did a very 21st century thing and pulled out my phone. </div>
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When she reached her barn she stopped running with me. I turned forward and headed onto the next adventure. I rode alone for another hour over rolling farm land.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">9:06AM - Looking west over hills I would soon be climbing. </td></tr>
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<h3>
Catching up</h3>
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After two hours of hard riding, the mental images and memories started to blur together. At about 9:45 AM I caught back up with a group of four riders just as we crested the top of another big hill. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">9:45AM After 2hrs in no man's land, I found some compatriots just before the small town of Woodbine.</td></tr>
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These roads were familiar to me, as I had ridden them at another <a href="https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/776457123" target="_blank">event</a> back in May with the <a href="https://instagram.com/stayrad_adventure_team/" target="_blank">Stay Rad Adventure team</a>. We rolled together down the hill into Woodbine where we picked up two more riders. From there we headed north across U.S. 20 into the Apple River Valley, where a surprise waited. I knew Morleigh was going to be out on the course, but not exactly sure where she would set up. She found a beautiful spot just after we crossed an old iron one-lane bridge. As we rolled past the table-of-goodness it took a little bit of convincing to get some of the riders in the group to stop. They were in a groove and had their minds set on the gas station in Elizabeth, but I was pretty emphatic that it was a good idea for everyone to stop.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">10:07AM Rounding a corner and seeing my wife is always a great feeling.</td></tr>
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<h3>
An oasis</h3>
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Once they saw the spread (pretzels, fig bars, stroopwaffles, Red Bull, Hostess treats, Gatorade in a variety of flavors, bananas, water, and whiskey) they dug in. As the group filled mouths, pockets, and water bottles at the snack table, I dug into the back seat of the car to sort out my wardrobe issues. Temps were still in the 40s with a cold wind from the west, so I stuck some chemical toe warmers to my thighs (a trick I learned at <a href="http://www.qoreperformance.com/" target="_blank">Interbike</a>), and put on some wool knee warmers. I then chugged an energy drink and had a Twinkie.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">10:09AM - Morleigh had set up an aid station at mile 40.5</td></tr>
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One of the riders was itching to go and started mustering the troops, and everyone pulled away while I was finishing up. I may have muttered something under my breath about dropping the host of the party, but I quickly caught back on the group and we continued on into Elizabeth. As we had stopped to refuel a few miles up the road, we didn't need to pull off the route to find the gas station in town.<br />
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The roads changed as we headed south and east from Elizabeth toward the next stop at Hanover. There were more trees lining the shoulders, and instead of continuous rolling hills there were four distinct climbs connected by relatively flat valleys. We caught up to Bailey and another rider on the first climb, and found Kevin and Brad waiting on the second bring our numbers up to 9. In the valley leading up to the third climb, we got separated again, but the hills, and waiting for one another at the top, kept us in a group of about 8-10. Brad put in a Herculean pull all the way across the valley, and it took everything I had just to hold his wheel. Bailey, on his single speed, got spun off the back, but was always back with the group or ahead of it by the top of the next climb. Bailey is a machine. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">10:57 AM - Going down the backside of the second climb south of Elizabeth</td></tr>
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I took a moment to call out when we hit 63 miles, which marked the half-way point of the ride. Things were starting to get hard, the tunnel was closing in and everything started to blur together. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">11:48 AM - Cresting the last hill leading down into Hanover</td></tr>
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<h3>
Last gas for 70 miles</h3>
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When we pulled into Hanover, at mile 65.6, it was me who called out the turn into the gas station, and was met with opposition from those who didn't think we needed to stop. When I told them it was the last gas station for another 70 miles, everyone pulled over. We saw the "leader" of the event, a man in head to toe Vision Quest gear (even VQ shoe warmers) coming out of the gas station. He took one look at us, shoved what was in his hands into his jacket pockets, and almost ran to get back on his bike. We watch him with a puzzled look as he sped away. We joked amongst ourselves, "He does know that there is no one in town waiting for him to finish, right?". I think everyone went in the store to purchase food, water, or both. I had 2,400 calories worth of energy in home made gel in a bottle on my frame, but knew that I was behind in consumption given it was pretty viscous in the morning's cold. I also had some fig bars in a back pocket, but wasn't able to dig them out while riding. I dumped my full water bottle into my mostly empty Camelpak, filled the bottle with the energy drink, and then topped off my Camelpak with water from a gallon jug that a fellow rider had purchased. I only had time to eat half my sandwich before the group was pulling out again, and I found myself scrambling a little bit to stay with the group. There were 8 of us at that point. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">12:12 PM - Eight of us together shortly after leaving Hanover</td></tr>
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From Hanover we had only one one steep ridge separating us from the Mississippi River valley. Once we got over this ridge the road turned to the northwest, which also happened to be the direction from which the wind was blowing. As we hit a small rise I started to free fall into a dark place. My pedals were turning, but I could not generate any power. The elastic snapped, and I started to drift of into empty space.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">12:26 PM I snapped this photo because it was beautiful, and because I thought it would be the last time I saw this group.</td></tr>
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<h3>
One Mississippi, two...</h3>
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As I fell off the back things got pretty terrible inside my body and my mind. I started to rehearse in my head the conversation I was going to have with my wife.<br />
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"I need you to come get me"<br />
"Where are you?"<br />
"Riding through the valley of the shadow of death"<br />
"Glad you didn't take the camera the whole way?"<br />
"Yes darling, now please come and find me. I'll be laying in a ditch crying."<br />
"Which ditch?" <br />
"I don't know. Drive west until you get to a really, really big river, then turn left."<br />
"Which way is West?" (Morleigh, bless her heart, is severely directionally challenged)<br />
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I started to snap out of it, and decided I had better keep pedaling at least until I could figure out where I was. At this point I had recovered slightly and was holding the gap at about a quarter mile. I could match their pace again, but I didn't have anything to close it down. I was riding solo into the wind, uphill, and on gravel. I could maybe win a battle with one of those, but not all three. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw my teammate Brad look over his shoulder, and then slowly start to drop off the back. I wanted to tell him, "No, stay with the group" but he is a much stronger rider than I am, so I just watched as he drifted slowly backwards towards me. It took some time for the gap to shrink to zero, but once I made contact with his wheel I locked on, and we started to claw our way back up to the other five or six riders. They disappeared around a bend, and when we made it to where they had disappeared we found that they had stopped to regroup and rest next to the driveway to a park overlooking the Mississippi. Bailey called out that there were bathrooms and water down at the boat landing, but everyone was still fresh from the stop at Hannover and we just kept rolling. Rolling along the river.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">12:50 PM - We reached the far Western end of the course on the banks of the Mississippi River at 76.2 miles. Given that Stockton is the highest town in IL, it was all uphill from there. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">12:56 PM Diggin Hill Rd. was one of the longest, hardest, steepest, and most beautiful climbs of the day. </td></tr>
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The climb out of the river valley was 2 miles long and 360ft up. The group splintered again on this climb, but I managed to stay together with a few other guys instead of getting completely dropped again. It appears that I was not the only one who was starting to feel the pain of this ride. We waited and regrouped, then dropped into the next valley, and over the second ridge where we caught sight of the town of Elizabeth perched on Terrapin Ridge on the distant horizon.<br />
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Washboarded</h3>
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We turned to the north dropping into and over valleys. At about mile 84 my Garmin flashed that it had "low battery". I had anticipated that moment, and prepared for it the day before rotating my Garmin screen and mount to "landscape" so I could plug in a battery-pack. I took advantage of a rest stop where we had caught up to two other riders to pull the charger box out of my Camelbak, and plug it into my Garmin. </div>
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I also lightened my load at the rest stop by sharing water from my Camelbak with some other riders. Guys started to roll down the hill as soon as they were full, so I hastily threw the battery pack into bento box. The charger was a little bit taller than the bento box, so the flap did not magnetically close. I didn't think much of it at the time. At mile 86 we hit a steep gravel descent which we had climbed up at the Illmanzo in May. I was eager to bomb down the hill so I got into a good tuck and started flying. A quarter of the way down the hill I hit a washboard section, and I felt something hit my leg. The rider behind me said "What was that?" and I looked down to see my bento box completely empty. My phone, the charger, and a container of electrolyte pills had all been ejected by the washboard. I was doing 35mph at the time so I slammed on my brakes and tried to skid to a stop without crashing out anyone behind me. I was a few hundred yds down the road by the time I skidded to a halt. When I looked down at the ground I saw the salt pills were at my feet right where I had dismounted. I picked those up and started walking back up the hill scanning the road and vegetation for the rest of my belongings. One other rider, who was looping back to Elizabeth and not doing the full route, waited with me while I walked back up the road searching. I was close to panicking because I had switched my phone to "Airplane mode" to save batteries so all of the photos I had taken that day were stuck on the device, and I had no option to call and try to echo locate it. If I couldn't see it, I wouldn't be able to find it. Deep breath. </div>
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As I was walking up the hill, the first thing I found, maybe 50 yds up the road was the outer case to the charging box which was still on the gravel road. I looked a few feet into the ditch and my eyes landed on the lid to the battery cover. There were no batteries, but I didn't care. Morleigh had more batteries in the car, and I had all of the required pieces. I continued up the hill another 50 ft and the sitting in the ditch on a pile of leaves, screen upward, and completely intact was my phone. It was a little dusty, but otherwise was in good working order. I was very pleased with how well my case and screen protectors had functioned. I said a quick thanks to my guardian angel as I put the charger pieces in my Camelbak and my phone back in my bento with the electrolyte pills. The magnetic flap once again closed and my phone was secure. I remounted and turned my attention to the empty road in front of me. The gentleman who waited with me was only going as far as Elizabeth which was just a few miles up the road. I still had close to 40 miles to go. As I approached the top of the next ridge, I was once again relieved to see the bright red trim on Brad's jacket. When I got within 100 yds he gave me the thumbs up(?) sign and I retuned an emphatic thumbs up. </div>
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<h3>
North of 20</h3>
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He turned his bike, and started down the other side of the ridge. We re-grouped on the flat and made across U.S. 20. It was a major psychological victory, because the next time we crossed U.S. 20 we would be done with the ride. Brad set the pace and I did my best to hang onto his wheel. Before long we caught up with four of the other riders, and continued our way north. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2:28PM - Brad and I catch back up to the other four riders. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2:42PM - We roll into Schapville, IL </td></tr>
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<br />
I didn't know where Morleigh would be setting up her aid station. I had mapped out a few locations between mile 90 and mile 110 where I thought she would be able to find a place, but the internet connection was slow in the hotel and Google Street View coverage was spotty. It was a wonderful surprise to be riding up a hill and around a bend and see figures standing next to a black car on the other side of the next valley. I let out a "WOOOOHOOOO!" and charged down the hill, and up the other side.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-L7zdXTK/1/L/TenThousand2015%252088-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-L7zdXTK/1/L/TenThousand2015%252088-L.jpg" width="426" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2:52PM - Rolling into the second SnowyMountain Photography rest stop</td></tr>
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When we arrived Bailey and Matt were already at the rest stop, and Morleigh told us that only one other rider had been through. It was the VQ guy. Congratulations good <a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-RkJNF32/A" target="_blank">Sir</a>, you appear to be the winner of the non-race. We enjoyed her hospitality, thanked her for being there, and then dug into the amazing treats that she had carefully laid out on the table.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-6V9TScd/1/L/TenThousand2015%252073-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="426" src="https://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/i-6V9TScd/1/L/TenThousand2015%252073-L.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">1:42 PM - SnowyMountain Photography knows how to throw a party</td></tr>
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I immediately went to the car and pulled out some batteries and electrical tape. I put batteries back into the charging box and then taped it right to my head tube. It was ugly but functional. My Garmin was down to 5% battery life, and we were 26 miles away from the finish. I didn't have a cue sheet as a back-up, and needed the navigation to stay on course. Especially if I was alone.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3:10 PM - We pass some trees in full fall foliage. </td></tr>
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<h3>
Them Apple Rivers</h3>
<br />
After the second rest stop, there were no doubts about being able to finish the ride. We dropped down into a valley, and climbed up the next ridge and then rode along the top. We stretched out again, with Brad and I pulling away from the other three in our group (Matt and Bailey were long gone). At this point we were on the ridge overlooking the Apple River valley, just a half a mile west of the first rest stop where we had been five and a half hours earlier.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">3:31 PM - "Hill blocks view" - They generally do that. </td></tr>
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The last 26 miles were a marathon in and of themselves...hard and quiet miles. Tired men grinding gears, mostly alone in their thoughts, everyone wrestling with their own kind of fatigue. You know, except Brad. We'd be riding along and get to a climb. I'd come to a near standstill and he would dance up it like a damn elf (LOTR elf, not Santa elf). These were new roads, but the views were similar to what we had seen at the start of the day. Combines harvesting corn, grassy meadows and tree-lined fence rows. The one notable exception was when we dropped in between the exposed limestone walls of Apple Canyon State Park. The park was only a mile wide, but it was beautiful and different than what we had seen before on our journey.<br />
<br />
<h3>
The flashback</h3>
<br />
We exited the park and climbed back up onto another ridge, this time heading east. We had travelled far enough away from the Mississippi that the roads resumed their adherence to the grid, irrespective of the contours of the land. From the top of that ridge we had good visibility in all directions. I had a flashback to an earlier part of the day when we were heading north on S. Rodden Rd southwest of Elizabeth. We came up and over the crest of the ridge, and we could see all the way across the valley to the next ridge. It was a beautiful vista, and winding up and over the next ridge we could see a thin ribbon of white disappearing over the horizon. It was a gravel road, and I remembered thinking that I didn't know when or how long it would take to get there, but I had a feeling at one point we would be on that ribbon of white disappearing over that next ridge. I had that flashback because as we were heading east along E Canyon Rd, I had that same feeling as I looked to the south and saw a radio tower rising up from a hill. I had a feeling we'd be getting very close to that tower before too long. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 12.800000190734863px;">4:30 PM - One last hidden gem, N Mud Road was a beautiful little valley with one of the steepest and loosest climbs of the ride to get out.<br />
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<h3>
Thanks Chad</h3>
<br />
We had regrouped somewhat, so I called out that we were at the farthest North point on our route. A mile or so later we turned right on Kupersmith Rd, and started our journey south. So I paraphrased Treebeard: "We still have 10 miles left, but it was all headed south, and somehow heading south always feels like going down hill." Unfortunately it wasn't all south. Chad had other plans for us. He teased us by routing us east to North Stockton Rd, which runs straight into town, then turned us back to the west, for a few more miles of riding into the wind and a few hundred more feet of climbing. The route took us to the base of that radio tower which was also the highest point on our journey at 1,132 ft above sea level. That was just 103 ft short of Charles Mound, the highest point in the state of Illinois.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">4:44PM - I've got a bad feeling about this kid. </td></tr>
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We rounded the back side of the mound that the radio tower sat on, and could see the water tower of Stockton in the distance. We were all smiles as we made our way onto the last stretch of pavement leading into town.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">4:54 PM - Finishing in a tie for "Pretty close to best place" the four of us wait to cross U.S. 20 back into Stockton. </td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">5:00 PM - At the car, I snap a photo of my salt-stained gloves. </td></tr>
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<h3>
The final turn</h3>
<br />
Rolling into town, I felt tired with a huge sense of accomplishment. My Garmin was quick to notify me that I had set new personal records for longest ride and most elevation gain. I congratulated my compatriots, and thanked Brad for coming back to get me not once, but twice and keeping me with that group. It was a huge morale boost, and I made a mental note to do my best to be that kind of kind to someone else in the future. I turned my phone on and texted Morleigh to let her know that I was safe and sound. She was about 15 minutes away from Stockton, which was perfect timing for me to cool down a bit, chat with Brad and Kevin, and be ready to change into some dry clothes when she arrived. We headed across the street to a local restaurant and had dinner together. There were about a dozen other riders hanging out, some from the short race, and Bailey and Matt who finished about 10 minutes ahead of us. They had already ordered food so Morleigh and I got a table to ourselves and she asked me, so how was it? And I started to tell her my story. <br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">5:00 PM - Morleigh suggests I snap a photo of my salt-stained face. </td></tr>
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<br />
<a href="https://www.strava.com/activities/415012328" target="_blank">The Ten Thousand</a><br />
126.2 miles (PR)<br />
10,745 ft of climbing (PR)<br />
32,436 pedal strokes. (PR)<br />
Elapsed time 9:45<br />
Moving time 8:57 (PR)<br />
Avg speed: 14.1mph<br />
Avg Temp 45F<br />
Average heart rate 137bpm<br />
Estimated caloric output: 8,252cal.<br />
<br />
See all of Morleigh's photos at <a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/2015-Cyclocross/The-Ten-Thousand-2015/" target="_blank">SnowyMountain Photography</a></div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-87381341486820879152015-04-28T11:52:00.002-05:002015-05-07T22:42:22.321-05:00Fishing the BattenkillSometimes life takes you on unexpected journeys. In February I wasn't really planning on racing the "Queen of American Classics" this year. It wasn't on my schedule of races. Southern Cross, yes. Barry Roubaix, yes. But a trip to New York didn't really seem in the cards. <br />
<br />
Then all of a sudden, it was. <br />
<br />
My friend and former athlete Marc suggested I come to New York for the Albany Spring Classic Track and Field meet. He was planning on coming out of retirement and throwing the javelin again.<br />
<br />
My friends and former athletes Brandon and Tasha invited me to New York to help them celebrate their nuptials on April 25.<br />
<br />
The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology accepted my poster submission for the annual conference in Philadelphia on April 22nd - 25th.<br />
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The Master's 35+ Cat 1-4 race at Battenkill was on Sunday April 19th.<br />
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Now all of a sudden, there were some dots on a map. Could we connect them all?<br />
<br />
Mor and I talked it over, looked at the calendar, and decided Yes! This called for an epic road trip. <br />
<br />
I booked my flight to SIOP to fly in and out of Albany the friday before the conference. I had Johnny Sprockets set me up with some S-works tubeless 24mm tires, box up "the Rabbit" (my Cervelo S2), and ship it to Marc's office. I reserved a rental car with unlimited miles. We packed our passports just in case.<br />
<br />
We flew in to Albany, and in a moment of travel brilliance I completely forgot about our checked luggage, and made straight for the rental car pick-up counter. Mor gave me "the look", and made her way to our abandoned bag, and saved us from a trip back to the airport later that evening. <br />
<br />
We then headed due north to Saratoga Springs to pick up the race packet and have dinner. at a lovely little place on Broadway called Wheatfields. We then headed back down to Troy to spend the night with Marc and Talia, our gracious hosts for the evening. Saturday morning we slept in late, then I went to work re-assembling my bike. I had brought my torque wrench (in the almost abandoned checked bag), so I was prepared for the moment. As I unboxed the frame and wheels, I had a moment of brilliance, and labeled all of the various pieces of packing material with a red sharpie so I would be able to put everything back just the way it came to me. I then moved onto assembling the bike. Having no repair stand made the work a little more labored, as I was trying to steady the bike and assemble it at the same time. It was relatively painless, and it felt good to be able to do that myself. <br />
<br />
I then took it out for a quick spin. I made it about a mile, and the Rabbit was making a small grinding noise as I pedaled. I wasn't able to determine the cause while I was climbing, so I pulled into a driveway and turned the crank manually. I found that my chain was grazing the edge of my chain-keeper once every rotation of the crank. I grabbed the chain catcher and tried to bend it, but instead of bending there was a "pop" sound, and the chain catcher got a little loose, and when I got back on the bike I quickly found that my front shifting had gotten really sketchy. I had to shift the chain all the way down onto the smallest chainring on the rear cassette to get it to go from the little to big ring up front. <br />
<br />
I figured I would adjust it that night when we got back from the track meet. I went home, took a shower, and we got in the car to head to the track meet. When I told Mor about my ride, she said: <br />
<br />
"Why are we not taking the bike to a bike shop to have it fixed?" <br />
<br />
<crickets><br />
<br />
So that night, after the meet, after dinner, it was time to adjust my front shifting. I could tell that the front derailleur had come loose, and that the bolt needed to be tightened. I opened the user manual back on my phone, found the right tension, and started to torque it up. Except that it didn't stop turning. It just keep spinning and spinning. Uh-oh. <br />
<br />
So I took the cable out, took the front derailleur off, and sure enough, the threads off the end of the bolt were completely stripped. It was no longer a bolt, just a peg. My only hope was to take off the chain keeper, thread the bolt back in, and pray that I could catch enough threads to limp through the race. Mind you, I was doing this work without a stand, trying to balance the bike with one hand and pull appropriate cable tension with the other, kneeling in a dark poorly lit porch. Even with the chain keeper removed, the bolk did not get enough "bite" to tighten to speck. The only thing holding the derailleur in place was friction caused by the cable tension pulling it down. You could wiggle it with your fingers. <br />
<br />
So I did the best I could, and did the walk of shame upstairs to tell my wife that HER intuition about MY bike was correct, and that we would be spending the morning frantically trying to find a mechanic. <br />
<br />
The Battenkill is a famous trout stream. When my parents came to help me move to Albany in the fall of 2000, they continued on to the coast of Vermont and Maine. At Christmas a few years later, my father said that he wished that he had at least tied a string to a stick and thrown it in the river just so he could say that he fished the Battenkill. So when he came to help me move back to the midwest in 2006, I arranged some time in the schedule so we could get licenses, fishing rods, and go fish the Battenkill, so it wasn't my first time in that part of the country. The race only crosses the Battenkill proper in two places, but crosses innumerable feeder streams and brooks, and circumnavigates it's drainage basin in New York State (the headwaters are in Vermont).<br />
<br />
The second day of the Battenkill is the smaller of the two days. On Saturday there were something like 6 different Cat 4 fields with more than 100 riders each. The combined 35+ Cat 1-4 field on Sunday morning had 18 pre-regs. The race predictor had me pegged as #16. <br />
<br />
We arrived at 7AM, 2 hrs and 10 minutes before the race, with the hopes of finding a mechanic on site who might have the required parts to fix the bike. At the time, I wasn't confident that I would even be able to start the race. It wasn't a great feeling. I rode from the parking to the expo-area and found that we were some of the first people there, and no mechanics had arrived yet. <br />
<br />
So I rode back to the car where I was uncharacteristically scrambling and disorganized. I was struggling to find the right mix of base layers, arm warmers, and socks for the cool temperatures, and was worried about whether or not I could even start the race with a bike that couldn't reliably shift into the big ring.<br />
<br />
[Pausing for the collective groan of my single speed friends...and moving on].<br />
<br />
Mor was not happy with my level of disorganization. It was not our normal style. Eventually I was able to pull myself together, get my clothing dialed in for what was shaping up to be a chilly morning (in the mid 40s at the start), and get my nutrition aligned and packed. I tooled around the fairground a little, running back and forth between the parking lot and the exposition trying to find a mechanic and get ready. I used the time to test out the bike, and found that even after my "repair", I could still get the chain on the big-ring if it was in the smallest gear on the rear cog AND I pushed the shift lever ALL all the way in, AND soft-pedaled. The worst case scenarios seemed to be dropping a chain and for some reason losing the ability to shift into the big ring. It wasn't pretty, but I was limping. I mentally committed to the race. <br />
<br />
The mechanics were not in the Expo at 8AM when they should have been, so I wasn't able to talk to them until about 8:10AM. Short story is, they weren't able to fix the issue, only get it working to about the same degree as I had before, and I didn't get my bike back until 8:45AM. I rode back to the car to say good bye and kiss my wife, and the first words out of her mouth were "Where are your water bottles?" She had put them on my bike, and I had not yet noticed that the mechanics had taken them off. It was that kind of morning. It would have been a long 68 miles with a single bottle of water. <br />
<br />
They say that the longer the race, the less you need to warm up. Well, with 1.5miles in spread over a whopping 11 minutes of warm-up time, I put that theory to the test. Just after 9AM I headed to the start line, and rolled up behind some skinny looking dudes from Boston. The "One2go,one2go,one2go" guy was on the microphone asking them about their team name. I learned that 545 Velo is a team out of Newton, MA. 5:45AM is the time they meet for their weekly Wednesday morning group ride. I shuddered at the thought. I am not a morning person. <br />
<br />
Without much fan-fare, the pace car rolled out of the fairgrounds at 9:10AM, and we were in following down a flat stretch of pavement. There was a neutral for a short bit, we turned right, and the pace quickened. My race strategy was simply to A) sit-in, and B) hold on for as long as possible. There were three Cat 1s, three Cat 2s, five Cat 3s, and four Cat 4s in my field. I kept reminding myself that I should not be the one attacking off the front this time. <br />
<br />
Things went well early on. A few fliers went off the front in the first 20 minutes, but did not hold their breaks. We cruised fast downhills and the climbs were short enough I was able to hold pace. I was working, but not dying. After 20 minutes I clicked my lap timer, to remind myself to start getting nutrients in my system. By the time I needed them it would be too late to intake. Six minutes later we were climbing up Meetinghouse Rd towards what I could see in the distance was our first section of gravel. I sense tell that the casual pace was about to get frenetic, so I tried to prepare by delicately downshifting from big ring to small ring up front. It wasn't delicate enough. Just as the field attacked at the first transition to gravel I dropped my chain. I had to dismount, wrestle with it for a few seconds, and then remount. The field was gone.<br />
<br />
I hit my lap timer again, to signify that I was now riding alone, and attacked the nothingness in front of me. As I crested the first big hill fueled by frustration I could see the pack down across the next valley. The only thing I could think to do was to go get them. So that is what I set out to do. At the top of the next hill were some photographers. I quoted "O'Brother where are thou" and asked them "How's my hair." Mor was there too, snapping photos just up the road. I had hoped to find her while I was still attached to the main group, but instead she got some great shots of me soloing off the back.<br />
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<br />
For the next 47 minutes I ground on alone into a crossing wind over and down the second significant climb. Every once and a while I could see the peleton ahead of me. Then a few stragglers who fell off. I put my crosshairs on their backs, and drove my feet into my pedals. I rode alone for 15.7 miles at an average speed of 19.7 mph.<br />
<br />
When I finally caught the next rider, we immediately started working together, and quickly reeled in the 3rd. I don't know what their thoughts about it were, but I was vocal in suggesting we all work together. We had turned into the wind, and after facing it alone for a few miles, it was such a physical and psychological relief to be able to tuck in behind a someone else for a few moments and catch my breath. How much of a difference did it make? I clicked my lap timer again, when we started working as a threesome. My average speed during that lap was .7mph faster than the previous solo lap, but average heart rate was 5bpm slower. More speed, less effort. Thanks Wilson and Patrick. <br />
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The effort was relatively short lived. We worked together for 22minutes, enough to cover 8 miles, and the unthinkable happened. We caught up to the leaders of our wave. Even the woman driving the follow car shouted encouraging words at us, that they were right there and we could go get them. Had I any breath I would have suggested that she take a pull if she was so interested in getting there, but I had none left, only espirit de escalar. We had closed the gap to 100m or so, and I gave one last final push to get us over the top and the three of us tucked in behind the lead 9 riders who were still together. I had been dropped because of a mechanical, and was somehow able to claw myself back onto the lead group. Pant, pant, pant. It was time to return to my goals of sitting in, and hanging on. <br />
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And so I held on, for a whopping 2 minutes and 20 seconds. The reason we caught up with the field is that they were all sitting up in anticipation of the start of the 3rd big climb. Meanwhile, the three of us were attacking like maniacs trying to catch back on. Which we did, just in time for a big attack half a mile up the road. In hindsight, there wasn't much else to do. Had we read the "signs" a little better, guys sitting up and drinking, slowing down, we might have been able to sit up as well. But had we done that, we probably wouldn't have re-attached at all. We would have reached the climb as a threesome, not re-attached, and likely been torn apart anyway. We definitely had different climbing abilities. The end result would have likely been the same. The three of us would have been minutes apart from one another, and minutes off the field at the top of the climb. But at least we can say that we worked together and reattached to the main group which is an accomplishment in it's own right. <br />
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So I was alone again. I made it to the top of the climb, and then set my sights on Wilson and Patrick, my two compatriots. I'm not usually vindictive, but I was just a tiny bit happy that neither of them had been able to hang on to the main group. I would have been more than a little pissed if I made that last big surge, got them reattached, and then fell off alone like a booster rocket and watch them speed away with the leaders. Nope, we were all three once again in No-man's land. I caught Patrick first. We were in the rolling flats between two climbs, and I passed him. I encouraged him to grab my wheel, but he did not and I pushed on alone. <br />
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Next was a junior from the 9:00AM field. I was more than a little disappointed when I finally caught him, and realized he was in a different field. I had been hoping I was reeling in a place from my own field. Instead I caught a child. Next up was Wilson in his highly visible red and white kit. Wilson was the first rider I had to chase down the first time I fell off. The hardest part about chasing him down Was that we were very evenly matched, with similar strengths, so he surged when I surges, and he slowed when I slowed. I finally caught up with him on what turned out to be the fourth climb. I gave him a fist bump, and he said, "I'm just trying to finish." <br />
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Me too my friend, me too. I had shifted into survival mode the second I got dropped the second time. We took turns pulling up the hill. We crested with me in the lead, but after we got up to 30+mph he passed me again, and then disaster struck again. The strong crosswind, plus chatter from the road, caused my chain to start bounding so much that it fell off the front chain ring again. I wasn't shifting this time, it just bounced off. <br />
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Not only did it drop into the gap between the small chain ring and the frame, there was now enough slack that the chain had also been sucked into my rear wheel and was slapping against the spokes. I slammed on my brakes at 35mph and locked up my rear wheel to keep the chain from snapping a spoke and skidded to a stop. If you look closely at my Garmin track you can find the exact spot where one click I was going 33mph and the next click I was at zero. Wilson disappeared down the hill and another rider, the second junior rider I had just passed, zoomed by just as I got my chain on and rolling downhill again. <br />
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Thankfully Patrick did not catch me, but Wilson was gone. I was able to catch up with the Junior again, and he decided to get chatty. I tried to maintain my composure and not get snippy, but I was not in a good mood having lost my chain and Wilson again. He told me about his racing crits in THE City (i.e., NYC), and the tour of the Catskills and something called the Devil's Kitchen. I mumbled here and there about Barry and SouthernCX and mountain biking, but mostly I couldn't talk because I was working REALLY hard to catch Wilson, and this teenager was riding along side me at a conversational pace. I can not tell you how badly I wanted to drop him, how many times I subtly attacked him over the next 20 minutes, but was unable to escape. The attacks were subtle not because of any sense of courtesy, but because I was completely out of matches. <br />
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He did give me some intel about the race we were doing. Apparently there was a big climb on Joe Bean Rd, one of the hardest ones in the race, coming up, and from there it was all downhill from there. Mor was out on the course taking photos at the top of this hill. I was in such a dark place that I didn't even see her bright white coat or hear her melodious voice cheering me on. She coined the hashtag #JoeBeanisNoJoke. I concur. <br />
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Unfortunately Joe Bean Rd was not the last climb in the race. One the way to the last climb, I started getting passed by the lead riders from later waves. I think I confused the heck out of Andy Schmidt, a midwest Junior from Lake Geneva when I said, "Mr Schmidt, nice to see you today" as he and three other younger juniors from the next wave passed at the beginning of the last climb.<br />
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Patrick, my compatriot passed me on the last climb too. He said "You are faster than me on the flats my friend" with a wink in his European accent, and I replied, "And you are faster than me on the climbs, Godspeed" and I never saw him again either. Things got really blurry from that point onward. <br />
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At mile 60 I was going to take the last salt pill from my handlebar, and fumbled it onto the road. I turned my head back and saw it come to a halt on the pavement, and made a snap decision to not turn around and pick it up, and just ignore the cramps that were building in my legs, and just get home. I had some nutrients left which I finished, drank some water, and started to pedal as much as I could. I was able to get enough sodium back into my muscles to finish the race without serious cramping. Just some of the "slow it down a bit" kind of almost cramp.<br />
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At the last climb of the race, a short but steep gravel climb with a switchback, another master's racer caught up to me. As he passed I saw his number was in the 200 series and called out that I was relieved he was in a different wave. I told him there wasn't anything I could do about him passing me, but at least I didn't have to feel bad about it. I was grateful that as I covered the last 3km there was no one coming up behind me. I checked often, as I did not want to be pinched at the line by anyone, and would find some strength to hold off anyone else from passing me. Thankfully no one else came. Mor was at the finish waiting and cheering, and my doctoral committee chair and friend Kevin was waiting the end of the chute with a bottle of water. He had raced the day before, but came back up on Sunday to get some miles in, see some of the race, and try to catch up with me a bit. He and I rolled around to cool down a bit, and chatted. It was very nice to see him. After that, we went back to the car. I took a shower at the fairgrounds, packed up the car with three suitcases and the bike, and set off for Portsmouth, New Hampshire to start the rest of our vacation. <br />
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The results: <br />
68.2 miles with 4,921ft of climbing in 3:35:57 (Avg speed 18.9mph)<br />
50 miles in no-mans land. <br />
12 out of 16 finishers (1 DNF). <br />
2nd Cat 4 finisher <br />
17min 27sec behind the leaders<br />
5:30 behind Wilson (first Cat 4)<br />
2:24 behind Patrick. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-43900591995856651602015-03-30T18:33:00.000-05:002016-04-17T21:17:37.114-05:00Barry Roubaix FiveMy cyclocross season in 2014 was good, but not as good as I would have liked. I hovered in the twenties and thirties in the local CCC races when I wasn't having mechanicals, flats, or just rolling around in the sand for fun. <br />
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Most of what I wrote in the first couple paragraphs last year's <a href="http://mythoughtsracing.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-barry-roubaix-iv.html" target="_blank">Barry-Roubaix wrap-up</a> remained true this year. The Barry-Roubaix is the boogieman that scares me outside into bitter cold to face snow and wind when it would be so much easy to stay inside and snuggle with my beautiful wife. (She is much better at snuggling than I am at racing bikes). This year, I took a couple of weeks off after the State Championships, and told my wife I was going to do the Rapha Festive 500 to kick off my Barry training. I rode 60 miles on Christmas day, and came down with a sore throat and upper respiratory infection the next. I was off the bike until the 6th of January. <br />
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Despite this setback, I still put in 400 miles during Janaury. That was more than I had ridden in all but three months in 2014. I continued to ride the "Gravel-We-don't-need-no-stinking-gravel" training route and the 20 minute intervals to the west, but I also created a new route. I drew a 20 miles loop that threaded it's way through the residential streets of my small suburb. <br />
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There were two advantageous features of this new route. First, I was never more than 1.5 miles from home. So no matter how cold it was, if something went wrong, I could always walk home. That gave me greater confidence to be out in colder weather. Second, there were more than 1,300ft of climbing with three climbs that hit 19-20% grades. To give it a point of reference, that's about the same amount of climbing in the 45 mile "Don't-need-no-stinking-gravel" route, whose steepest climb is the infamous "Wall" in Bull Valley which tops out at about 17% grade. I dubbed it my "#secrettrainingride", and rode it at least once a week. It wasn't a particularly fun route to ride. Most of the descents ended in stop signs or blind intersections. It was slow going (typically averaged 14-15mph) on my winter training bike, a 24-lb Specialized Tri-cross with full fenders. But it wasn't about feeling fast, it was about getting stronger by focusing on an area of weakness...climbing.<br />
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By the time Barry-Roubaix came this year, I had 1,156 miles in with 49,258 ft of climbing. Less than 20 of those miles were inside, and close to a thousand of those miles were in sub-freezing temps. There were a couple of "warm" weekends where sunshine drove the thermometer into the 30s and 40s, and we did make a trip to Georgia for Southern Cross (where it rained and was in the 40s). So when the 10-day forecast for Barry predicted temps in the low to high 20s for the entire time of the 62 mile race, I knew I was ready. <br />
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Being able to exercise in the cold is not just about mental toughness. Anthropological research on cold shows that the body's reaction to cold exposure <i>changes </i>with repeated exposure to cold. The below graph shows how skin temperature fluctuates when submerged in ice water. There's an immediate drop, then a rebound. Repeated exposure reduces the time it takes for this rebound to occur, increases the temperature of the rebound, and increases the pain-threshold for cold. The body also deactivates sweat glands to reduce the sweat rate and changes capillary blood flow, pulling them deeper to reduce surface heat loss. <br />
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It takes about 10 days of cold exposure (i.e., suffering) before the human body starts to adapt to the cold. My strategy was to be dressed lightly enough to be chilly during the 15 minutes (see above) as the temperature of extremities dropped, but to keep my skin temp above freezing after the rebound. Note, I did not say "to keep my hands warm". If I wanted to stay warm, I stayed inside. I wanted to finish my ride without doing any lasting damage to my skin or body, and to adapt my body and my mind to tolerating the cold. My goal was to be ready for whatever Barry county Michigan has to offer in late March. </div>
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On these early training rides, I would also carry an addition warm layer like a jacket and thicker gloves in a shoe bag for when skin temperature started to drop after the 80 to 90 minute mark. I could then add layers as needed mid-ride, or get my hands to actually be warm again. I have a good pair of winter cycling boots (Specialized Defrosters), and would always, on rides longer than an hour, use a chemical toe-warmer so keeping my feet warm wasn't much of an issue. By the time February rolled around I was going out without the additional layers. I still carried with me a pair of gloves that were warmer than the uninsulated full-fingered gloves I started the ride with, but I rarely used them. I knew exactly what I needed to stay warm for pretty much any ride in any conditions, and my hands were well adapted to the cold. I also had my log from 2014. I kept track of my clothing choices, temperature, and weather conditions for every ride I went on in 2014. This served as a handy reference when things got cold again. </div>
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Two days before Barry, I was kitting up for my last training ride, and was simultaneously trying to figure out in my head what to wear on that day (36 and overcast), and also what to wear on Saturday (20 and sunny). I drew a small diagram on a piece of scratch paper, and jotted down my thoughts about what to wear at Barry so I could focus on that Thursday's weather. Morleigh <a href="https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10101623167137002&set=a.10101623167127022.1073741832.16110125&type=1&theater" target="_blank">Instagrammed</a> a photo of it, which lead to a slew of comments and feedback on my FB feed. I chuckled to myself. I was confident that I had my wardrobe, and pretty much everything else about this event, dialed in. </div>
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So after I got home from that last training ride on Thursday night, we packed our bags. We loaded the rental car on Friday morning, and set off for Michigan with only one thing on my race-checklist that not yet checked off. </div>
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I needed a bike. </div>
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My Asylum Muese cyclocross bike was still in the shop. It turned out the list of damage from four hours of mud and grit at Southern Cross was more than just a cleaning. The headset bearings needed to be removed and re-greased, the bottom bracket had seized up and the bearings there needed to be replaced, and one of the rear wheel bearings had also seized up, snapping into pieces when Justin tried to remove it. But the guys at Johnny Sprockets had it all put back together and looking as sexy as ever when we swung by to pick it up on Friday morning. Unfortunately our friend Chernoh, who we also usually picked up in the city on Friday, had some personal matters to attend to and drove up on his own Friday afternoon. </div>
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Mor and I arrived in Hasting at about 5pm local time. I picked up the packets for Chernoh and I, and then we and I went out on the course in the car to scout locations for her to shoot on Saturday. She handles most of the camera work at this kind of event because I'm generally focused on the bike. We ended up droving most of the first 17 miles of the course and getting a really good sense of the course conditions. The first eight miles are key, because historically-speaking the worst roads on the course (Goodwill Rd, S Whitmore Rd, W Sager Rd., and Otis Lake Rd) are all in the first quarter of the race. On Friday they were in the best condition I had ever seen them in. They were hard, fast, and smooth with very little loose gravel on top of the frozen hard-pack. Short of an overnight deluge, it was going to be a very fast race. </div>
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We followed Gun Lake Rd, down to Mullen Rd, and made our way back north to the east end of the Sager Rd climb. Rick, the event organizer, had sent out an email on Thursday announcing that this section of road, which we have bi-passed for the last two races, was once again "in play." We parked the car, and walked back in to check out the course conditions. There were some deep ruts, which could be dangerous if you got caught in one, but at every point of the climb there were at least 2 or 3 lines which were smooth, fast, grippy, and wider than many single-track trails. In other words, course conditions were "I probably should have brought my road bike" good. Or as Paolo from the Bonebell said "It was 62 miles of hero dirt". </div>
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Morleigh and I scoped some shooting positions, I broke off a few branches and removed debris from the trail, and then we headed back to the car. I changed into my practice kit, and made plans with Morleigh to meet back at the hotel. I road down Sager Rd and found nothing but smooth sailing on file treads at 55psi. I turned around and climbed back up the steepest part to check traction on an ascent and had no issues at all. I was happy with my tread choice, and made my way back to the hotel where we had dinner, met up with Chernoh, and went over our plans for shooting and riding. </div>
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I was amped and struggled to fall asleep on Friday night. Midnight came and went well before I was asleep, and Saturday morning came very early. We were at breakfast when it opened at 7AM, cars loaded and on our way before 8AM. We arrived in Hastings, and immediately set out to get bikes ready, and get everything I needed for the beginning and end of the race out of the car so Morleigh could be free to shoot and not have to worry about making her way back to Hastings for my finish. Our friends Rick and Mary Ann from Team Intent were kind enough to offer up some space in their tent, so I dropped a few bags there, and went out to warm up. As per usual I toured the town of Hastings a bit, and as I came back past the starting gate I was admonished by the timing official for the way I had wrapped my number plate around my steerer tube, and not to my handlebars. Shortly there after I beamed with pride (and Morleigh with horror) as an announcement was made over the PA reminding everyone that they had to attach their number plate to their handlebars. That was MY scofflaw announcement. Despite the fact that everything I know about electromagnetism and RFID chips tells me that it didn't matter whether the tag was pressed closely to carbon fiber or not, I complied. During the race I did see at least two other people with improperly hung number placards, one wrapped like mine around the steerer tube, and the other hanging provocatively from underneath the saddle. It turns out both were scored appropriately. </div>
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It was about 9:35-9:40AM when riders started queuing up in the starting grid. I cut my warm up a few minutes short to grab a good spot. I did some leg-swings along the fence to finish my warm-up, and then made small talk and banter with my fellow competitors (one of whom was actually riding a road bike with 24mm slicks). At 10AM when the leaders rolled out and we surged down Green Street I was in the fourth row, right where I wanted to be. </div>
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As we were pre-driving the course the night before, Morleigh asked me, "How long are you going to stay with the leaders?" I told her where I had fallen into no-man's-land the last couple of years (2013 = The Third Sister, 2014 = Hubble Rd climb), and that I hoped to make it a little farther than either of those two places.</div>
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As the peloton rolled out of Hasting, I held a good position on the left side, hugging the painted yellow centerline. A few careless gentlemen made the false assumption that both lanes were closed to traffic and were passing on my left. They were quite startled by the first of a couple oncoming cars, and sandwiched in ahead and behind me. It turns out the streets were not completely closed to traffic. We made the left hand turn onto Cook and despite being "unleashed" continued to roll at a reasonable pace up the pavement. It was not accidental that I was on the left side of the peloton because in past years, once we hit Cook Rd the field has started to rotate clockwise because no one wanted to pull. When I was on the right or in the middle, I found myself pushed further backwards than I liked as we approached the first Sister. This year as we came upon the "Pavement ends" sign, and the right turn onto Yeakley Rd, the field was still rotating clockwise, and I found myself in a novel position. I was within the top 10, and had an opportunity that I had never had before. So I did what any mid-pack cat 3 would do, I attacked. </div>
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With a few hard pedal strokes around the right hand corner, I was in the front of the field, surging downhill, and was the first rider of the day to hit gravel. For a brief moment in time, for the first and possibly last time in my life, I was winning the whole damn thing. If only I could have held on for another 60.5 miles. (Spoiler alert - I couldn't). </div>
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Unfortunately the course turned uphill. My 150m gap evaporated into nothing, and the entire field exploded past me and up the first Sister. But not quite. It was a combination of me being a little bit stronger than in years past, and the field being a little bit more reserved than in years past. I was able to keep up with the leaders over the first two sisters staying solidly in the top quarter of the field. As we crested the second Sister, my legs were burning, and I didn't know if I would be able to hold on to the leaders up and over the Third Sister. I coasted down, took as many deep breaths as I could to slow my heart rate, and then got ready to give it everything I had left to hang on. </div>
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And then two miraculous things happened. First, instead of getting out of their saddles and hammering, the leading edge of the knife blunted. It seemed that everyone sat down and started to spin, forming a shoulder-to-shoulder line across the width of the road. It appeared that no one wanted to take the lead up the hill into the NW wind. This allowed me the moment I needed to get my legs underneath me and hold onto the field for a while longer. Second, <a href="http://www.juliemcgrawphotography.com/2015/Barry-Roubaix/i-zHRQ4Ss" target="_blank">David Lombardo did what I can only dream of doing</a>. He attacked, and held it for more than a few seconds. (Spoiler alert - for 60.5 miles). </div>
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I made it over the Third Sister with the leaders. That was a major personal victory for me. The field was starting to get dangerously strung out at this point, so there was no time to celebrate. I stood up into my pedals, and flew down the next hill making up spots and trying to reattach myself more solidly to the core. When we reached the next climb up Hubble Rd, either I was stronger than expected, or the field did not attack as hard as in previous years, but I was able to keep the elastic from snapping once more. I remembered from last year, that when I crested the hill on Hubble Rd., I could see the whole lead pack had already made the turn east onto Goodwill Rd. This year the leaders were just 10 second in front of me on the descent, and there was a lone rider heading east on Goodwill Rd. I didn't know who it was at the time, but David Lombardo was so far out in front it didn't seem possible that he had even started with us. He looked like some Pro out on a training ride who just happened to be using the same roads. </div>
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It's not that I wasn't hurting, or that I didn't lose time on that climb, but all that mattered at that moment that I was still close enough to reel myself back on during the subsequent descent. There ahead of me I recognized a kit similar to one of my own. "Is that Brad M?" I yelled as I pulled up next to him. He said that he had been trying to catch me since the start of the race. Funny because I had been trying to catch him for a few minutes. He passed me on the 3rd Sister and didn't realize it. </div>
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For the next six miles the field hummed along as a massive body of 60 some riders strung out over 20-30 seconds. As previously noted, this was the part of the course where for the last two years the ruts and potholes caused a massive loss of water bottles and the fields to shatter into tiny groups. This year, the road was smooth. There was no brake-checking to create a gap for the lead 10, we all hummed along as a giant mass. My wife cheered and snapped photos as we made our way past a small pond on Goodwill Rd. David Lombardo had been through 35 seconds earlier. </div>
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Don't get me wrong, this mid-pack Cat 3 was still working hard, but not nearly as hard as in the past two years when I was already in no-man's land by this stretch of road. Then I was reconnecting with teammates and trying to form some sort of chase group with shellshocked survivors. This year I was flying with the leaders with a big stupid grin on under my Cold Avenger Pro. We were going so fast that when we turned north on Otis Lake Rd, despite the 5mph wind from the North, the leaves were blowing to the north, being sucked up in our wake as we went by like a semi-truck howling down the highway. But all good things must come to an end, and so to came an end to that free-ride. When we made the left onto Gun Lake Rd, we also approached the biggest climb in the race. It was here that the field attacked, and despite a valiant effort, out of the saddle pushing a big gear, I hit the wall, the rubber band snapped, and I lost contact with the leaders. But all was not lost, there was still 49 miles of racing to be done. </div>
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So I grouped up with another Chicago native, Paul H from Jus de Orange, and someone else I didn't know, and we struggled up the climb together. There was another threesome about 20 seconds ahead of us, and their was a collective understanding that it would be better for everyone if we could catch the group and form up a chase group of 6 of us. It took a few miles of effort on pavement, but once we hit the gravel again, we caught up and started rotating through as a group of 6. We were all shellshocked, and took turns pulling, but the leaders quickly faded into the distance. We saw them for the last time when we made the turn onto Gun Lake Rd. They disappeared around a bend and were gone for good. So we focused on recovering a bit, getting our legs back under us, and mentally preparing for the infamous Sager Rd climb. I had just been there yesterday, but it had been a few years since I've actually ridden up it (2012) so I had kind of forgotten how short it is. As previously noted the conditions were really good, so the whole thing went by in a flash. I remembered to say "Hi" to my wife as we blew by, and she cheered us on from behind the camera lens. </div>
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Morleigh captured photos of more than a few riders laying in ruts, but there were no real issues in our chase group. I pulled to the left when someone bobbled, and attacked to keep us moving, but the six of us were still pretty much all together by the time we turned right on McKibben Rd, and we had even picked up a couple more refugees. We were a group of eight now in what may have been the second or maybe third chase group. </div>
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As we crested the top of the hill on McKibben Rd I found myself having this conversation in my head. </div>
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"Congratulations! You've made it over all of the big climbs in this race." </div>
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to which another part of my brain replied. </div>
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"Hey idiot. You forgot about the Killer." </div>
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But I was with a group of eight strong guys, and as we descended on the flats I suggested, and got concensus, that we set a moderate pace on the way to the Killer, re-group at the top, and then start to hammer in an organized fashion. So that's what we did. We kept a good pace, but were not flogging ourselves as we made our way towards the Killer. I kept looking back for chase groups, and there was no one in our rear view. That was the second sign that I was having a good day. In the past two iterations of the Barry Roubaix, the leaders of the second wave had passed me just after making the turn onto Mullen Rd. I had never made it to the Killer without having been absorbed by, and subsequently dropped by those ladies, gentlemen, and occasional single-speeder. </div>
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When we reached S. Head Rd., we slammed into the middle of the 24 mile racers making their way toward the Killer. Now that we weren't alone, the 8 of us picked up the pace a little bit, making our way alongside the long line of Chillers. There was some definitely some "make way for the leaders" swagger as we hit the base of the steep climb, and we all were out of the saddle trying to put on a good show. Secretly in the back of my mind, I was just hoping that they would wait for me a bit at the top. It turned out that I was able to hold my own with the group I was in. We were spread out a bit, but I did not get dropped on the Killer as I had in the past. Another sign that things were going well. We re-grouped at the top, and were catching our breath on the way down Head Lake Rd, when a new rider pulled past. First one, then two, then three. I recognized Chris Lombardo, and I called out that it was the leaders of the second wave, and that we should grab on if we can. We had made it past the Killer before being caught. Yet another good sign. So I did what I did the previous two years, I tried to grab on to this group and hold on for as long as I can. Then something strange happened. They sat up. </div>
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At first, it was great. Here I was holding with the leaders of the second wave. The year before I was only able to do that until the first hill, and then I was unceremoniously shot out the back. This year, we were going at pace in which I could even muster the oxygen to mutter a few words to the guys I knew. I said "Hi" to Chris Lombardo, told him David was looking strong when I last saw him (although I didn't realize how strong until after the race). I said "Good day" to Lucas Siebel who was up front doing major work on his SS. But when we hit Cloverdale, and my heart rate dropped into the low 120s that I started to get a little worried. The 40plus guys weren't concerned about it, but I was worried about being caught from behind by other riders from the first wave. If they could catch onto my gravy train, it could cost me places at the end of the race. I decided to take matters into my own hands, and moved to the front to start trying to pull things along. Faster would be better. So I moved to the front, and started to do what I thought was a little bit of work to pick up the pace. When I turned around again, for the second time in the race, I was 200m off the front of a large group and no one was behind me. No one ever takes seriously the attack from the mid-pack Cat 3. At that moment, I probably just should have put my head down, and gone as hard as I could. Instead, I soft pedaled into the next hill on Cloverdale Rd and got soaked back up by the surging field, and then struggle to recover as the field then decided to attack. </div>
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Even though I was very worried about hanging on, I was able to keep connection with this now large group of 40-50 riders. About this time, in almost as impressive fashion as David Lombardo, Paul S from the Pony Shop took of on a flier of his own. He pulled away on climb, looked back at the top, and then he was gone. He opened up a gap and before long was completely out of sight. Meanwhile, as I had feared, another group from the first wave had caught us, as Andrew H from Tuxedo Thunder and a few other new riders started to mix into this peloton. It was what it was, and all I could do at this point was hang on. I worked when I had to work, I recovered when everyone else was recovering. In other words I played the game that is road racing. </div>
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I continued to take the Salt Stick capsules off my handlebar one by one, every 45 minutes to an hour, continued to sip from my tube of homemade energy gels every 20-30 minutes, and drink nutrient-laden water as much as I could. Thankfully the temperatures rose above freezing by the mid-point of the ride, and the sunshine was quite pleasant so the more relaxed pace did not equate getting cold it could have. I could feel that my belly was a little cold, but my legs, arms, fingers, head, and face were comfortable the whole race. I could feel how much a difference the Cold Avenger Pro made whenever I pulled it down for nutrients. It also kept a lot of road grit out of my mouth. It is still the best piece of winter cycling gear I own. </div>
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There was one weird thing that kept happening during this part of the race. Every once and a while I would get the feeling that I didn't have sunglasses on anymore. I'm not certain if it was the cold, the grit, or the lack of oxygen in my brain, but a few times I instinctively reached up to the back of my helmet to grab them and put them on, and then realized that they were still on. </div>
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The second half of the Barry course, the part after Cloverdale, is perpetually fuzzy in my mind. I have always had a Garmin on my bar so I knew where the turns were, but I was never zoomed out far enough to know exactly where we were on the course. There were certain places that were familiar, certain climbs I recognized, but I couldn't really point to where they are on a map as I can with the features from first half. The Three Sisters are right here, the Killer is right there, and this is Sager Rd. The second half is always a blur. This is the spot where Chernoh rode away in 2012. This is where Mike Palmer passed me. Here is where I pulled away from Joe last year, but I couldn't point to any of those spots on the map and say "this is where X happened". That blur was even fuzzier this year because of the disorientation that comes from riding in a pack. It requires such attention and vigilance on the immediate surroundings, the beautiful scenery gets lost in making certain that wheels don't overlap and that you don't fall into a pothole that everyone else swerved around. </div>
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It was like that until mile 48. We were coming up on one of my favorite descents, and again the field was sitting up, just coasting down the hill at 18mph. At this point in time, the yo-yo efforts were starting to get to me. I much rather prefer to ride how I train. Set my heart rate at 155-160 and keep it there. This fast-slow-fast pacing was not to my liking, but I kept reminding myself that on average I was going faster with less effort that I would be able to alone. But we reached S. Broadway St., and were coasting down one of the largest descents, and people were braking, I had to do something. I moved to the left, took 5 hard pedal strokes, got my speed up to 30 mph, and then coasted the rest of the way down for 3/4 of a mile. Again, the field did not follow, and I opened up another gap. I didn't do it to get away, I did it because I really like going fast down that hill. It's one of my favorite descents on the course. It turned out to also be my last hurrah with that group, because over the next two hills, the field surged just as my energy was waining. There were a couple of really steep punchy climbs, and I didn't have the legs left to cover the attack. I found myself alone in no-man's-land again at mile 50. I didn't really think that I had kept my goal of finishing in the top 50, but I was not giving up. There were still hundreds of riders behind me, all of whom wanted my spot. I took a few hundred yards to compose myself. I tried pulling a fig-bar from my stem-bag, but when I put it in my mouth it was frozen and too dry to chew and swallow. The feeling of solid food in my mouth at that moment turned my stomach, so I spat the un-masticated bar onto the gravel. I ripped the last salt stick off my handlebars, finished an energy gel, and yelled in my mind to the riders behind, "If you want this spot, come and get it", and attacked the emptiness. </div>
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I was in no-man's-land, but I wasn't alone. I could see some other riders ahead, so I put my head down and started to try to reel them in. When I passed the first one, I encouraged him to "Grab a wheel" as I went by, but he wasn't in a position to do so, and I continued on alone. At mile 51 I passed my wife, dropping an empty bottle of nutrients, so I could take a bottle of water out of a back pocket and actually start to drink it. Riding in the peloton had prevented me from being able to comfortably and safely make a seat-tube to rear-pocket bottle exchange. Seeing wife allowed me the opportunity to jettison an empty fuel tank, and re-hydrate. </div>
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There was a group of three riders, including Paul H from Jus de Orange, just 14 seconds ahead of me when I dropped this bottle. I kept the ax to the grindstone and caught up with them in the next couple of miles. There were just a few more punchy climbs between mile 55 and the finish. We separated a bit as I blew up on one of them, then came back together as someone else blew up on the next. When we hit Quimbly Rd, I knew we were close to the finish, as we crashed into racers from the 36-mile and 24-mile race. There was a definite jolt of energy that came from knowing, even though we weren't with the leaders, we had ridden twenty more miles than these these folks, and were in exactly the same place. We could also almost smell the last stretch of pavement that lead into town. In my head, I was already hardening up for the last few miles. There was going to be a battle amongst the now five riders who were clumped together, and I wanted to win that sprint. The game was on. </div>
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We took turns pulling, continuing to rotate, and even as we approached the final climb into town no one was able to make a decisive move. On the descent, I took some hard pedal strokes into the lead and then started to coast and recover for what was certainly going to be a final sprint. Paul H pulled around me, and tucked into an aero position, and I glued myself into his wake. Then disaster struck. Clank! We hit an invisible pothole, and it drove my rear tire into my rim, cutting my tube. Within less than a second the tire was completely flat and I was riding on just the rubber + rim. What do I do? In my head I immediately started to do the math. I was less than a mile from the finish. It would take 5 minutes at least to change the flat. This video flashed in my mind. </div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" class="YOUTUBE-iframe-video" data-thumbnail-src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/PUoCSzVmhhQ/0.jpg" frameborder="0" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/PUoCSzVmhhQ?feature=player_embedded" width="320"></iframe><br />
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The plan of action became clear. </div>
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It's only a rim. Ride until you can't ride, then run until you can't run. </div>
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So I rode. Needless to say, the rear wheel did not corner well, and handling was sketchy at best. I was able to moderate my speed through the four 90 degree corners and continue riding in. I was so gentle and smooth with my lines that I did not even pull the bead off the rim. Unfortunately there was no glorious sprint to beat Paul at the finish. I got passed by a guy in the final 100m, but I rode across the line in 62nd place with a time of 3:15:23. It was less than 3 minutes off my personal best, which was set in 2011 when it was 30 degrees warmer. </div>
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Paul H finished 60th just behind Andrew from Cyclocross Magazine at 3:14:40 and 3:14:41 respectively. So I figure the flat tire only cost me about 43 seconds and maybe three places at most. Had I stopped? One minute would have cost me 10 places. Stopping for 3 minutes would have cost me 17 places. I carried my bike back to the Intent tent, changed the tube, and then went and did my cool down. </div>
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As previously noted, it was not my best time at Barry, that was set in 2011 at 3:12:xx, but it was my best overall placing. Perhaps the biggest win was that I was able to finish the race without cramping. Yes, I got tired, got dropped, but not because I was cramping. It feels like I'm starting to get the hang of this endurance stuff. </div>
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That's good. Because my first 100 mile mountain bike race is only 3 months away. </div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-16973539898968938912014-09-25T13:53:00.000-05:002014-09-25T13:53:42.849-05:00The triple double - Part 2It was a short week. I worked on Monday and Tuesday, and Wednesday morning we loaded up the car and headed north towards Hayward. We stopped in Madison for lunch at a cute little cafe called Manna, Wisconsin Dells for shopping at the outlet mall, and in Eau Claire to try on cowboy hats and have an Orange Julius. I have two sets of Uncles and Aunts who have houses on the same Lake southeast of Hayward, and we met both of them for dinner at a small bar/grill in Stone Lake. We went back to Del and Nancy's cabin, and settled in for the night. <br />
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The next day we slept in late, exhausted from the drive. I got up and started to get ready for a training ride, and Morleigh wanted to use that time to explore Hayward. She had never been. I spent some time staring at maps, and found what appeared to be a lovely 37 mile loop that headed in roughly a square, 9 miles south, 9 miles east, 9 miles north, and 9 miles back to the west. When I set out at 1pm it was very cool, about 30 degrees cooler than my last ride. It was certainly a shock to the system. <br />
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The ride was beautiful. I had found some abandon roads that run parallel to the new highway. The road was cracking pavement and the trees were overlapping over the road making a lush green tunnel. On one section I startled and immature bald eagle from a perch in the tree, and he swooped down in the tunnel, a bit of flesh dangling from his talon, and he flew down the tunnel slowly ahead of me about 15 ft off the ground, and maybe 50 yds ahead. He let me follow him closely for maybe 10 seconds before finding a gap and swooping up out of the canopy. <br />
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The stretch of the route running east was on a bicycle trail which was a converted rail bed. The gravel was wet from the previous night's rain, and slow going. It was simultaneously rough from the large irregular stones, and soft. The lubrication provided by moisture allowed the wheel to sink in deep. It was rough going. Eventually I got tired of slogging through the wet and mud, and jumped back off the trail onto the highway. <br />
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The north leg was notable only for the unexpected glacial moraine that I was climbing up and into. The first two legs paralleled rivers, and were cut flat, but the third leg scrambled up, and up, over some steep undulations. My path back west was meant to be my prep for the Fat tire fest, a long gavel fire road that cut horizontally across the Lacout Orelles reservation. The ground continued to undulate, but the net was definitely downhill as I headed back west. I was making very good time until I dropped down one steep hill into a wide flat valley, maybe a mile from end to end, and saw the road disappear under a tranquil blanket of water. As I looked ahead, wondering how deep it really was, I could see along both sides of the road the tops of the vegetation growing on the margins of the road. It was about knee high grass and shrubs, and looking at the topography of trees and the adjacent hills, I felt pretty confident that the water was at it's deepest 18-20 inches. The water was clear, but had the color of cherry cola from by the vegetation and mineral content. I could see the gravel as I approached the edge of the puddle so I kept rolling slowly on my bike. <br />
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Eventually I pulled out my camera (while riding) got it out of it's waterproof case, and help it in one hand as I continued to ride. The scene was surreal, and the video captures some of that.<br />
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I had to dismount in the middle of the video because the top of the water was finally approaching the bottom of my bottom bracket. I know the bearings are sealed, but I have learned from past misadventures that "sealed" is not "submergable". The water was cold. When I got to the far side my feet were numb, and there was a car approaching from the far side of the lake. I stopped to wave him back, and then continued on my way. I made it off the fire road without further incident, and onto another road which was a little more "improved." It was still gravel, but wider and more recently graded. As I rolled over the top of a random hill I saw a black spot along the should of the road. I immediately recognized it as something out of place, something different. I had a feeling I knew what it was so I started to reach for my camera so I could take video as I rolled past. As soon as I got my hand back, to my rear pocket a car, the oncoming car I had seen since leaving pavement, rolled over the next hill. Sure enough, as the car approached the black spot on the other side of the valley it turned an ran back into the woods. The clear and distinct profile of a black bear lumbering into the foliage. <br /><br />I returned back to the Cabin, and shared my accomplishments. My wife had a great time exploring Hayward, and we grilled out dinner with my Aunts and Uncle's again. <br /><br />Friday we spent the day resting, and preparing. We went to town and did some shopping for some vital clothing I was foolish to leave at home including warmer socks and knee warmers. We then made our way out to the course, and drove the route from Hayward to Cable, so I could get a sense of what lay in store, and so Morleigh could get a sense of where she wanted to stage herself for photos. We found many of the fire roads onto which the course had been re-routed, and actually were able to drive a significant amount of the course. We ended up at registration, got my number and our media passes, and headed back to the cabin. We stopped at a very nice restaurant (we even got a relish tray and a candy dish to bookend our meal) on the way back to the cabin, and then made final preparations and went to bed.<br /><br />The alarm was set for 4:15AM. We woke up that early so we could head into town and place our bikes in the staging grid when it opened at 5AM. We arrived in town at 5:05AM and there were already a few bikes queued up. We flipped Stumpy upside down, and then tried to figure out if we were going to stay in town, or head back to the cabin. We ended up heading to the Norske Nook, a local Norwegian-themed restaurant, and sitting in the parking lot for 40 minutes snoozing waiting for them to open. We had a nice breakfast, and chuckled to ourselves when we overheard the group at the table patting themselves on the back for being up so early, and how no one would have their bikes out when they went to the starting grid after breakfast. We finished our meal, and headed back to the starting line. The sun was coming up, and the area was starting to bustle with activity. Morleigh grabbed the camera, and I ended up helping some of the volunteers hang banners over the staging area. Eventually it was close enough to the start of the event to start warming up. I had put my mountain bike in staging, so I used my CX bike to warm up. I got some funny looks and questions about my choice of ride, but assured everyone who asked that I had no intention of riding the course on a cross bike. <br /><br />The last half hour passed quickly. The ghost bike patrol started their work at precisely 9:30AM and the no-rider bikes at 9:45AM. At 10AM the cannon sounded, and we were off. I wish there was more of an opportunity to savor that moment, of being in a throng of 2,100 mountain bikers rolling down a small city street, but my eyes and attention were laser-focused on the seething mass of wheels around me, avoiding, merging, passing, surging. The first turn was to the left, then back to the right. The divided high-way split the field and I positioned myself towards the inside. You can actually pick me on the areal drone footage, as I used the median as a highway to squeeze pass some people when it faded from elevated bank to just some rumble strips. It was as soon as we turned that corner that the race was on. <br />
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Within seconds we were flying east along WI Hwy 77 at 30mph. It was at least 5 minutes above 25mph. My eyes started to roll back into my head and my heart felt like it was going to explode. There was a crash 3/4 of the way to Rosie's field, the start of the actual off-road part of the race, but it was far enough ahead of me and to my right that I was able to flow outside onto the shoulder to get around it without being caught up in it. We made it to Rosie's field, I saw Morleigh taking photos on the right side of the course, and then I blew up climbing the hill. I wasn't done racing by any stretch of the imagination, but I definitely settled into a pace heading up the hill that was slower than the group I had been riding with. I lost maybe 50 or 60 spots as riders swarmed up from behind. Once we made it into the more undulating part of the course I was able to recover and match speed with the field I was riding with. The big concern was a course re-route at mile 4-5 around a large puddle that race organizers warned could cause bottlenecks. I was hoping to get there before the masses piled into the narrowing and jammed up. We didn't have any issues, the field had already narrowed into a single file line by the time we hit the puddle, and we navigated around it without issue. <br /><br />A few miles up the road, at mile 6 we made it to the first road crossing, and re-routed out onto the long stretch of gravel. At this point, two things happened. First, my lungs started to "wheeze" as they are sometimes prone to do when exercising in cold air, and second my friend from SpiderMonkey, Johnny5, came up on wheel. He said "Hey, grab my wheel and let's go", and I would have liked to gone with him, but I was reduced to nasal breathing trying to get my lungs to relax, and had no gas to accelerate. He disappeared with a wave of other riders, and I sat in with the group I was with, hoping to hold on. Only 31 miles remaining. From here on in it was suffering and pain. My wrist, which had been giving me problems for weeks, locked up to the point where I was doing descents at 20-25mph on rough gravel roads and couldn't grip the handlebar with my left hand. My back too, started to lock up as it became the main shock absorber over the rocky and rut-filled fire road. I was in a group of riders I did not know or recognize, except for Abby Strigel, who for some reason was racing on the back of a tandem with another woman. We were riding in the same pack for almost 30 miles. They pulled ahead at times, and dropped chains and fell back, but we spent a lot of time near on another. <br /><br />The big obstacle of the event is the infamous Fire-tower climb. The trail jumps 211 vertical feet in .44 miles. I hadn't seen the hill before, except on video, so I wasn't certain what it would be like. It took me about 5 minutes of granny-gear spinning, but I was able to ride the whole hill which in and of itself is an accomplishment and not a guarantee. At the top of the hill they said it was all downhill from there. They lied. It turned out there were two more big hills to cross. At this point though I was in survival mode, focusing my effort not on speed, but on continuing effort. In the last few miles another group of riders caught up to me, including Kelly from Psimet and the rider from Higher Gear who finished 3rd in my category the week before. I would have liked to hang on with that group of riders, but this is where being a first timer hurt me. I didn't know the course well enough to appropriately ration my effort. Could I really burn a match on this small climb, or was it the start of another big climb? I wasn't certain so ended up being a little more conservative that I probably needed to be. But as I was heading up what turned out to be the last hill, my quads started to cramp. I had managed my energy and sodium very well, and powered down the hill as the big-top tent came into view. I was able to get back two more spots on the sprint to the finish, and was so happy to see my beautiful wife standing there at the finish waiting for me. It was most definitely the best part of my whole day. <br /><br />The course modifications due to rain meant the course was shorter than it had been in previous years. The official distance was 39.5 miles, but that must have been measured to the center of the course. My Garmin only showed 37.5 miles ridden, in just over 2:25:54 which was well ahead of my goal of finishing within the qualifying time for my start-gate (2:31:00 - 2:46:00). I was happy with it. My overall place was 267th which doesn't sound all that good, until you learn there were more than 1,800 finishers. The winner, Brian Matter, finished in a blazing 1:59 (first time winner was under 2hrs) and my friend Johnny was about 15 minutes ahead of me. Despite the wrist and back pain, it was a great weekend. <br /><br />The next morning we were up early again, and on the road. We stopped for hot chocolates and gas in Eau Claire, lunch in Madison, and in Lake Geneva to race. The weather when we got there was amazing, the field was large and full of friendly faces, and it promised to be a great race. My race was the last of the day, so we got to watch the Pro Cat1/2 women and single speeds battle it out. Hey, there's Abby Strigel...totally winning her race. Sadly, even though we spent most of Saturday together doing the same thing, I would not be winning mine. <br /><br />I had finished out the previous year very strong in the CCC, with low enough points to end up on the front row at staging. I didn't get the hole shot, but was in 4th place as we rounded the first corner, and was able to hold that position through some of the early twisty turns. But at the first slight uphill straight-away, the field started to surge around me. A couple guys here, a couple guys there. I made it over the barriers still in good position, but by the time we got to the bottom of the course, my inital salvo had been fired, and the long gradual gravel climb was once again my demise. I couldn't put much power into the pedals, so I downshifted and spun my way to the top. Meanwhile, the field surged by. <br /><br />But I knew it was going to be hard to come and race with less than 100% of capacity, so I just gave 100% of what I had. I worked on maintaining speed through the corners, trying to get good lines and maintain speed. I had settled into a position in the middle of the field, some riders in front that I was trying to keep up with, and a few riders behind that I knew I didn't want to catch me. It wasn't a smooth race. I dropped my chain twice. The first time was in lap 3 while running up the hill after the double barriers. The first lap I remounted quickly at the bottom and rode up, but didn't have the legs to do that every time. I don't remember what I did to dislodge my chain off my front chain ring, but I did remember, while racing, about a cyclocross clinic that started by having people practice putting chains back on by using the front derailleur. So while running up the hill, I used one hand on the right hood to work the derailleur and the other on the pedal to turn the crank, and was able to pop my back chain on whilst running up the hill. <br /><br />The other time I lost my chain it was in the rear on the second to last lap. I was battling with Steve Shaffer from Village Verdigris for 22nd place, and my chain jumped over my cassette into my spokes as I was powering up the hill. I had to dismount to get it out, and when I looked up Steve was gone. I thought I might be able to catch him, but his last lap was something like 17seconds faster than his previous lap. I could not keep up with him, so instead, I did the most foul and evil thing you can do when racing. I started looking over my shoulder. I started racing not to get the spot ahead of me, but to avoid losing my current spot. But it had been a long weekend, so I attacked the hill, and spun my way through everything else. The fellow behind me closed in to where he was entering the sand while I was leaving, but I was able to power into the finish without having to contest a sprint. I took a few laps, gave some high-fives and atta-boys, showered, and went to Tuscan's for the second weekend in a row for a lovely dinner before driving home to wash bikes, unload the car, and get ready to repeat one more time. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-20813904668927731412014-09-23T18:02:00.004-05:002014-09-23T18:02:57.324-05:00The triple double, Part 1I haven't done much writing here in a while. As previously noted, the <a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/" target="_blank">photography</a>, getting and being married, working, training, and racing has been taking precedence over the writing. However, I got some positive feedback on the blog this weekend (i.e., I heard tell that someone was actually reading it), so I figured it would be worth while to jot down some notes about my season thus far. <br />
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The official Chicago cyclocross season doesn't begin for another few days, but we at SnowyMountain Photography have been hard at work. There was the trip to Hawaii, the climb up Haleakala, and a full road season. Road you say? Yes. This year instead of racing in the dirt and the hills of Wisconsin, we ended up staying closer to home and risking our lives in the circles of death that are American-style criteriums. Those are all stories for another day perhaps. This story is about September of 2014. <br />
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I spent most of the summer ignoring the biggest race of my year, the Chequamegon Fat Tire Festival, a 40 mile point-to-point mountain bike race near my Aunts and Uncles's cabins in Hayward WI. I applied for the lottery in February, and was selected with 2,100 other people for the full-length race. Instead of doing what I should have been doing, and spending long hours on my mountain bike, I mostly ignored it. I can count on one hand the number of times I pulled Stumpy off the wall and rode this summer.<br />
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But at the beginning of September it was time to get serious and start planning, and not just this weekend but the entire month. Looking at the race calendar I saw something disturbing. With a little bit of planning, a few nights in a hotel, we could race six races in three consecutive weekends. I broached the subject with my wife/coach/partner/love/soigneur/manager hoping she would talk me out of it, and instead she thought it was a great idea. So we made a plan, and when the time came, we executed. <br />
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My wife suggested we head out to a local park on the way to the gym, and she would spend some time video taping me going over barriers. I took my bike on a quick loop around the park, and after 3 minutes of riding on grass I had that awful realization that nothing I had been doing for the last 8 months had done anything to prepare me for the start of CX season. Maybe next summer I need to remember to pull the CX bike and the MTB off the wall a little more often and get dirty. But I digress. RelayCX was also a pretty big shocker to the old system. I got a good placement on the LeMans start, and then proceeded to get passed by almost everyone on the first lap. Sigh. Thankfully my partner was able to battle back, and we ended up in 20th place (out of 28 teams). <br /><br />I had a few days then to ramp up my practices. I burned in a small loop in the easement behind our house, and rode laps until my wrist hurt so bad I couldn't go any more. At the Night Bison, I started out hard and ended up alone off the front, and stayed with the lead 10 until an attack at mile 38 fractured us into 6 and 4, then 5 and 3. I felt pretty good at the end of the ride having covered 53miles of gravel at an average speed of 20.2mph. <br />
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On Saturday the 6th we headed out early on a drive to the first official CX practice in Sheboygan, WI. The drive up was sunny and uneventful. We arrived in time to see some of our friends from Chicago race in the women's and SS race, and to pre-ride the course a few times. It was familiar as I had raced a WORS race in the same park a year earlier, although there was less single track and we stayed entirely on the south-side of the road. The Eliminator (steep hill) was still part of the course, and as I tried to ride up it the first time, my chain skipped when I stood up to start putting down power. I went to the bottom, and tried again. Again my chain slipped. <br />
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I took my bike to SRAM neutral support, and Ben hooked me up with a new chain. After the next race I went back with my new chain, and tried again. Less skip, but I still couldn't make it to the top. I had to dismount just below the crest. The rest of the course was bumpy and fast with a steep gravelly descent. <br />
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As I was walking out of registration after my final pre-race trip to the rest room, I saw one of the promoters walking out the door with a piece of paper in his hand. I asked him if it was the start-list for the Cat 3 race. He nodded, and I asked him<br />
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"How many do we have?" <br />
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"Fifty-two"<br />
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"Wow, that's really good considering there were only 3 people pre-registered two days ago"<br />
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He chuckled. <br />
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"Just kidding, there are only eleven." <br />
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"Finally! A reasonable chance at a top-10 finish in a Cat 3 race." <br />
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With only 11 pre-registered, I wasn't two concerned about staging. I arrived as other started to gather, we were loaded into the start grid, and we were off. With my explosive speed off the line, I got the hole shot. Unfortunately with a gifted teenager or two behind me, I wasn't able to hold it for long. Morleigh was taking video on what I think was the third lap, and I had already fallen back to sixth. It was a close 6th, and although I was hurting, it felt like I could maybe recover for a few laps and still contend for a spot on the podium. Then, on the steep gravelly downhill I got a pinch flat. I could see the rock coming, triangular like a shark's tooth sticking out of the ground, but at 28mph there was no time to change lines and I hit it hard. I was completely flat by the bottom of the hill, and on foot for probably half the course back to the pit. <br />
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Andy Swartz, father of Caleb who was leading the race, was in the pit and asked me what I needed. I yelled "mountain bike", and he gave me a puzzled look. I tossed my cx bike at him as I entered the pit, and ran over to my mountain bike, which I had the foresight to place in the pit. I grabbed my Garmin and went out to finish the race. I was there for training, so there was no point in getting a DNF. I was lapped by the leaders shortly after leaving the pit, but I couldn't grab back on and keep pace. Besides, I had another race tomorrow, there was no point in turning myself inside out trying to make up an entire lap. I finished the race DFL, 8th place out of 8 finishers with 3 DNFs. Not the way I wanted to start the season. <br />
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We packed up that night and drove back south and stayed in Brookfield, WI. The next morning we were up early and headed to Lake Geneva for WORS #10, Tredfest. The goal was to get more time in the saddle, so instead of racing Cat 2 Sport as I did the previous year, I raced the Open Clydesdale category. It was three laps instead of two over a much longer course. This was the 4th year in a row that I was racing the course, so I wasn't too concerned with pre-riding. My main concern was the rock garden which we had been routed around in the sport category. I got Morleigh set up on top of the hill with chairs, tents, and the cooler, and then went into the woods to run over the rock garden a few times. <br />
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I probably should have looked a little more before attempting it to find the right line, but I took a quick glance, and then rode up the trail to come at it with speed. I made it all the way through the garden unscathed, but then as my wheel dropped out of the garden over the last big rock, my weight came forward and I tumbled over my handlebars onto the ground. Thankfully I was clear of the rocks, so I landed on dirt and was uninjured. I picked up my bike, went back to the top and tried it again. The second time I made it through by taking a slightly different line, and keeping my weight farther back. Lesson learned. I didn't want to go all the way down, so I slammed on the brakes before I hit the chute, and ended up stopping and twisting on my front tire, pulling away the bead and losing about 20psi of pressure. I walked my bike back to the tent, inflated the tire, and went off to warm up. It was what it was, I was either going to make it or miss it. The bast strategy, I was advised, was to let it rip. <br />
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My race started shortly after the pro race, and while we were in the starting grid we found out that one of the riders in my wave had put up a cash prize for the pro men and women who made it around the first lap the fastest. Someone asked what we got, and Don, the legendary race organizer said, "Nothing, there are enough sand-baggers in this field already, we're not about to reward any of you for that." I was certainly not sandbagging. <br />
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When Don yelled "go" to start the race we surged up the hill. The course started with a straight climb, then wound around and back down, and then up 2 more times in the first half mile. The last climb was around the back and all the way to the top. Like the rock garden, the top of the hill was reserved for the pro/comp guys so I had not climbed past the lift-tower before in a race. I was in the back half of my starting wave by the time we hit the second climb. I was able to make up some spots on the third climb, as many guys blew their wads on the first two, even though it's the 3rd that is most important. At the top of the 3rd you dive into some really fun descending single track, and have time to recover and no time to pass. If you're fast through the single track, and no one slow is in front of you, it's easy to make up time. At the start I was only able to identify 4 riders in my category with the "C" written on their number plate. After the third climb there were two in front and one behind. I caught up to the first rider as we were heading up the Son of a Butch climb. I could see that I was faster than him in the single track, and he was very tentative through the rock garden. So I made a move and passed him on the open double track, and tried to open up a gap. 3/4 of the way through the first lap, I started to realize how long 7 miles of single track really was, and I backed off the tempo a bit so I could actually finish all three laps and not blow up too completely. <br />
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It was fun to be on the mountain bike, but neither my back nor my wrist were strong enough for the task at hand. Both were very sore, and I had to back off the gas even more in the second lap to allow my back time to recover. At the start of the 3rd lap, I caught up with another group of riders, one of whom I recognized from previous years racing WORS. He was hurting and in the open of the ski runs I could see him free-falling back towards me. By the time we got to the final climb I was nipping at his heels, and I squeezed by him right before we entered the single track. I had never beaten this particular rider before (and I really wanted to), so having him behind me gave me a little bit extra on the next two big climbs. <br /><br />I don't remember much else about the last lap. I know I caught up to and lapped a few of the women in the open field. I know that the top 5 in the men's pro race lapped me. My back was on fire, my wrist hurt so badly that I was seriously considering going and getting and X-ray, and my arms were tired enough that my handling was getting very sloppy. There was nothing in my legs left to climb, so I spent a lot of time sitting down on climbs and spinning, something I rarely do. However, I did not see any C's pass me at the end, so I was pretty certain that I had ended up 2nd in my category, and that is how I ended up. We broke down our encampment, and headed south. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-46147645377004218712014-03-28T00:37:00.003-05:002016-04-27T15:47:20.254-05:00Barry by the NumbersI'm a data guy. <br />
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Collecting, analyzing, and making sense of data is my job. <br />
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So when I finished the 2014 Barry-Roubaix, and wondered aloud whether it was harder than it had been in previous years, I thought I would do what I usually do, and ask the data. <br />
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The chart below shows the relationship between time and placing for six editions of the race. For this chart I combined the 40+ fields and the Open field in 2013 and 2014 because in the first four years they let the stallions run with the geldings. <br />
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There are a few things to note. The first three years the race (2009, 2010, and <a href="http://connect.garmin.com/activity/75270427" target="_blank">2011</a>) was two laps of a 32 mile course. The most recent three years (<a href="http://connect.garmin.com/activity/161697829" target="_blank">2012</a>, <a href="http://connect.garmin.com/activity/288895309" target="_blank">2013</a>, and <a href="http://connect.garmin.com/activity/465756752" target="_blank">2014</a>) the race was added to the <a href="http://www.ultracx.com/" target="_blank">American Ultracross Series</a> which required a single loop, and the race was shortened to roughly 62 miles. In 2013 and 2014 the start was moved from Yankee Springs State Recreational Area to downtown Hastings, and registration limits were expanded from 1,500 to 3,000. <br />
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Thus we would expect that the first three races to be slower. They were of a longer distance with more elevation. In the last three years the number of registrants increased dramatically which influences the slope of these lines. More registrants of similar ability makes for a flatter line. <br />
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The lines below clearly cluster into 2009-2011 and 2012-2014. The first cluster had slower winning times (intercept with Y axis) and fewer registrants (length of the line). The second cluster had faster winning times, more registrants, and tighter competition. <br />
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So back to the question, was 2014 more difficult of a race? <br />
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There are two ways answer this question by looking at the above graph. If we draw a vertical line at any finishing place, we can see which race required the fastest time to achieve that place. <br />
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For example, in both 2012 and 2013, to get 50th place you had to finish in about 187 minutes. In 2014, 50th place was a full 13 minutes slower at 200 minutes. Across the board, at every placing 2014 was a slower race than the other two races <i>held on the same course.</i> So 2014 may have been faster than the all of the years in the first cluster, but it was much slower than the prior two years. <br />
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If we draw a horizontal line, we can see in which year would a given time lead to the best finish. 200 minutes would have put you on the podium in 2009, but in 2012 that would have gotten you one hundred and twenty fifth place. In 2014 that same 200 minutes would have ended up in 49th place. <br />
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But what about individuals? How did they fare year over year? <br />
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The chart below looks at the year-to-year differences in times for those men who competed in the Barry-Roubaix in back-to-back years. The number in parentheses on the X-axis shows the number of men who competed back-to-back. The graph shows the average time difference (green triangle) as well as the minimum and maximum differences. <br />
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There were only 13 men who completed the race in 2010 who also finished in 2009. For these finishers, as well as for 2011-2010 the average time was just a little bit slower each year. <br />
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The fourth edition of the Barry was by far the fastest. This resulted from both the unseasonably warm temperatures as well as the shortening of the course which also reduced the total elevation gain. The average rider improved by 37.4 minutes from 2011 to 2012, and the every rider who rode in both years shaved some time off in 2012. <br />
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An interesting note? The person who had the largest increase (51.3) from 2010 to 2011 was also the same person who had the most improvement (-79.8 minutes) from 2012-2011. My friend Mike Hemme had a mechanical early on in 2011 and ended up walking back to the start shortly in the race to fix it, and ground out the rest of the race solo. He came back in 2012 and finished 18th overall. <br />
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For the 97 gentlemen who returned in 2013, the course was less forgiving than in 2012. The average time was 4.3 minutes slower, and for the 118 who returned from that cold-frozen mess, they found that the mud was even slower (by more than 13 minutes) than the cold. <br />
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The story for the women and singlespeeders is not as straight forward. The top five women were slower in 2014 than in 2013, but things are not as clear in places 6 thru 25. The most important trend is the growth of the women's field from 3 in 2009 to 35 finishers in 2014. <br />
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Oh yeah. And single speeders? U cray. <br />
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So how did I do? I shaved just under a minute off of my time this year and I'll say it out loud. I feel pretty good about that. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-53906710179693478372014-03-26T13:08:00.001-05:002014-09-23T08:18:42.720-05:00The Barry Roubaix IVFor the last three years, the Barry-Roubaix has been, if not the beginning of spring, than the final last gasp of winter, the end of my personal winter. It has been the marker on the calendar that has motivated me to continue training through the dark and cold, and keep building strength from the end of cyclocross season to the beginning of the next season. This winter has been particularly brutal. My training miles were down from 2013, in part because of a December bout of the flu, and a January respiratory infection. However, the quality of training was definitely better. <br />
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Last summer, I moved from the city of Chicago's Northside to the Northwest suburbs, and over the course of last summer through group rides and exploring solo discovered there are places here where the earth actually bends upwards towards the heavens. After living in a place so flat that highway overpasses count as elevation, it was a revelation to find these wonders of nature littered about the landscape. I created a Garmin course that incorporated as many of these "hills" (as the natives call them) into a training loop. I called it the "Gravel-We-don't-need-no-stinkin'-gravel" training ride. It is a 43 mile loop with 1,700ft of climbing, with three sustained climbs at 12-24% grade. In addition to some 2 x 20 minute intervals on a flat but windy course to the west, I spent a lot of time pushing myself to the limits in negative and single digit wind chills, and temps in the 20s. So when March came, I felt I was ready to redeem myself after a sub-par performance in 2013. <br />
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As we did last year, my fiancee Morleigh, my close friend Chernoh, and I left for Michigan on Friday morning before the race, making our way to the Ace Hardware in Hastings to pick up our numbers, then checking into our hotel before heading out for a pre-ride. This year we headed east from the hotel, and actually made it onto the western edge of the course, and we found a little bit of gravel to test out. It was wet, but not too wet. It seemed like it was going to maybe even be fast. <br />
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Then overnight it rained. It wasn't a lot of rain, but with the ground already saturated from run-off, and the snow still covering most of the land, it didn't need to rain much. We were however thankful that the precipitation had passed, and there were patches of blue in the sky as we drove into Hastings. We had a volunteer parking pass because Morleigh was going to be out photographing the race for <a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/" target="_blank">our little enterprise </a>while I was racing. I took about 7 photos before the race started, and she took more than 500. <br />
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In the past years, there has been a lot of hemming and hawing the morning of the race, trying to figure out what to wear. This winter I've been using a spiral bound cycling daily log (a Christmas present from Morleigh's daughter Lexi) to keep track of the clothing and weather on each and every ride. This allowed me to sit down the night before the race and make a check-list of things to both wear and cary with me. Having the list made getting ready in the morning much easier. I laid my clothes out in the hotel room, and everything else was packed neatly. There was still the customary rummaging through bags in rented mini-van 30 minutes before the race started, but it much better than our first year when we rolled up to the staging with less than 30 seconds to spare before the race started. <br />
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I knew from past years that I wanted to be close to the front, so that I could at least try to hold with the leaders for a while, so I slipped into the starting grid next to some friends from Chicago who were near the front. I found my teammates, Joe and Karson just a few rows behind, and we made plans to join forces somewhere beyond the chaos. I finished up one last-minute task in the starting grid that I had forgotten to take care of earlier. At SouthernCX I used electrical tape and cellophane to make a electrolyte pill dispenser on my stem. For Barry I had grabbed some aluminum foil, and used the 10 minutes in the starting grid to put two extra electrolyte pills within easy reach on my stem. <br />
<br />
Then it was time. I took off my jacket and hung it on a sign where Morleigh would find it, and surged with the field to the starting line. At precisely 11AM EDT we rolled off to the west, into the moderately strong northwest wind. Before we got out of town, my teammate Karson had made it up to where I was, so I tucked in behind his wheel. We were on the right side of the peloton, and as the field surged across both lanes, I heard someone wonder aloud if the road was closed or if the center line rule was in effect. Shortly thereafter an oncoming pick-up truck answered that question, and the pack flattened back out into a single lane. As we turned south on Cook, once again some riders started to push across into the lane of oncoming traffic, but for the most part we held tight in the right lane. At this point I was in the top 50 riders. When we made the turn to the right, back into the wind and got our first taste of gravel, there was not the explosion in the front that occurred the year before. The wind played a factor here, along with the soft ground. No one really wanted to go out hard and pull big into the wind so early in the game. So the field held together at least until we hit the Three Sisters. <br />
<br />
I held on Karson's wheel as we powered up and over the first two sisters with the field. The peloton was still thick around us, and with everyone's legs still fresh the Sisters again seemed much smaller than they did my first year when I had to walk up the third sister on my second lap. At the base of the third sister I was still on Karson's wheel and had more momentum coming down the hill than he did. I had to roll up on his left side to keep from running into him and just as I did he he veered to the left to avoid someone slower in front of him. He drug my front wheel out from under me, and I had to unclip my right foot and step out to the right and push my body back up and over my bike to keep from falling. Had we been going much faster I would have crashed and caused a major pile-up, but quick footwork got me back up and pedaling without missing a beat. <br />
<br />
But something was wrong. When we got over the crest of the hill I could feel and hear the my wheel rubbing on the left front brake. I could see a wobble as it was rotating. I had knocked it out of true on Karson's wheel. I knew that I couldn't ride 62 miles dragging a front brake. I knew that stopping now was a race-killer. I was still connected to the lead peloton, and if I pulled over for even a few seconds I would probably loose not just the lead peloton but the whole field. So I reached down and grabbed the end of the brake cable and disengaged my front brake. It's a race, who needs to stop? <br />
<br />
That was enough stop the rubbing, and I focused again on maintaining contact with the lead group. We made the left turn on to Hubble Rd, and started up the second big climb, the one I remember as "the cow climb" because during my first Barry, the adjacent pasture was full of dairy cows enjoying the first green grass of spring. This year it was full of snow. Half-way up the climb I fell to the back of the group, and saw a small but dangerous gap opening in front of me. I peaked over my shoulder to see see how far back the second echelon was. There was no one in sight. I was standing with my back to a cliff, and a long fall behind me. I looked forward and hammered my way back onto the group. As I passed another rider who was falling back, I turned to him and said, "It's a long way down" as I powered by. I re-attached myself to the tail, but this climb had done it's damage. The leaders had sheered off a gap, and the larger group was starting to fragment into a few smaller ones. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but somewhere in the potholes and mud of Goodwill Road the leaders pulled away, and Karson and I were left with a few other stragglers in no-man's land, fighting to close a gap of a few hundred yards. We started at this point to run into two unfortunate things, deep mud and puddles, and the stragglers from the earlier waves. We started to fall further and further back. When we reached the first section of sweet pavement we were maybe 400 yards off the next large group. <br />
<br />
Karson and I joined up with a few other riders, and we started working together trying to catch the next big group. We did a single file pace line for as long as we could, and some faster riders (P-B M from Half-Acre and Avi from Cutting Crew) joined us, and then pulled away from us on the long climb. They were clearly trying to catch up to the next group, and Karson and I were both pretty cashed. Once we made it over the big climb, we both decided to sit up for a bit and recover. We could have tried to push onward and tried to close the gap on the group of 20-25 riders visible in the distance, but I knew that were mostly taking it easy. We'd blow ourselves up just to catch back on, and would be dropped as soon they hit gravel again. My suggestion was that we recover ourselves, and wait for the first wave of Master's 40+ riders who would be coming by at about the same time as we would have caught that wave. <br />
<br />
My calculations were correct. Right at about the 20 mile mark, just after we turned onto Mullen's Rd, the first wave of 40+ riders crashed into us from behind. Karson was behind me, and when I found a gap in the line I snuck over and joined in at their frenetic pace. I lasted about 4 miles before I got dropped heading up a small hill. I turned to look behind me, to check on Karson, and he was not to be seen. I was hoping he had grabbed onto the 40+ group with me, but he was not able to hold on. I made a slight miscalculation about how quickly we were coming onto the Killer, and sat up perhaps a mile too soon, but regardless that group was made up of small wiry dudes, and I would not have been able to keep pace with them up the Killer. So I sat up a bit, and conserved some energy for the steep grind. <br />
<br />
As some other riders noted, the Killer isn't really that bad in this new course. It's not the steepest or longest climb in the ride, but it's name comes from the days when it was at mile 12 AND mile 44 of the original course. The second climb was the one that broke many spirits, including my own. On this day I was able to make it up the hill without breaking myself, even having enough energy to pull down my Cold Avenger Pro and <a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/Sports/Cyclocross/BarryRoubaix2014/i-fk8Bnzc/A" target="_blank">smile at Morleigh</a>, swerving in her direction asking for a kiss-hand-up. She told me I was crazy and to keep pedaling.<br />
<br />
I made it up and over the Killer, taking a moment to glance backwards at the top. There were just a few red tags behind, and no group visible in front. I was in no-man's-land. I hardened my resolve, and thought back to the thousand miles or so that I had been grinding in the countryside. It was preparation for this moment. I put my head down, and pushed firmly into the pedals. I continued to pass yellow and blue tags for a few miles, until we hit the turn-off when 62 milers headed south, and all others headed north back to town. The road was crowded before the turn off, and like the first year, it was desolate after the turn. There was a lone straggler ahead, and when I made it to the first corner I glanced back to the turn. There was no one behind. So I pushed onward to the south. When I was approaching Cloverdale, I happened to turn again and glance over my shoulder. This time there was a pace line of three men who were closing in fast. Again I made a tactical decision to sit up and recover as we rolled into town, and when they came by I clicked the lap-timer on my Garmin and grabbed a wheel to see how long I could to the tail of this new tiger. <br />
<br />
I did much better than I expected, holding that wheel for the next16 miles. I was completely red-lined just holding, so as they rotated through I made space for each one as he came to the back and tucked behind the last wheel. A few times I pushed to the front on the gravel and got encouraging words, "do what you can do", and made a point to get out in front on the pavement where I could push a big hole for them to recover in. When we next encountered Morleigh hunkered in front of the van she hollered out that we were only a minute or so behind Joe, another of my teammates, and that we should go and catch him. By this point in time I had lost all sense of where we were on the course, and even what direction we were headed. I was putting everything I had into holding wheels, and couldn't even be bothered to flip over to the map-screen on my Garmin. It didn't really matter where we were, I just needed to hold this wheel. I kept repeating those words, "hold that wheel" in my mind over and over again. We came up on Joe after making a right-hand turn onto a climb. I hollered at him, telling him I was riding with a group and asked if he could grab a wheel. He said he was pretty cashed, and to be quite honest, so was I. The last few ridges we had climbed, I had stretched the rubber band to the braking point with my group of three, and I think they might have even been slowing down just a bit at the top to let me re-attach for a few climbs. I decided to cut the cord and ride with Joe for a bit. He was in pretty rough shape, so I did most of the pulling. It felt good to be able to do for him what Chernoh did for me the year before. <br />
<br />
So I rode with Joe for another 7 or so miles, until we pulled onto Broadway and two things happened. First, being on Broadway meant that we were on the final leg of the course, and I started to hear the finish line whispering my name. Second, we were on a steep downhill, and I got into the aero position and simply pulled away. Joe told me that he was grateful that I pulled him for as long as I did, and that I could ride my race at any time. So I rode. <br />
<br />
I was in no-man's land again for few miles, and I was able to grab onto a few wheels here and there as they made their way past. One fellow on a mountain bike asked me if I knew what mile we were at as he blew by. For the first time that day, I flipped over my Garmin to check. We were at mile 52. Only 10 miles left to go. Another group of three passed me, and I was able to grab onto their wheel for a bit, but fell off again before too long. About 5 miles from the finish I was swallowed up by a larger group of 15 or so riders who were mostly from the second wave including the lead two women. Once again I mentally committed to holding on, and was able to ride with this group all the way into town. I was fortunate because I think everyone was hurting, and no one in particular wanted to take a big-hard pull into the wind, and into town. <br />
<br />
The final approach to Hastings was new this year, and included a pretty steep climb on Broadway. As we approached I mentally prepared to get dropped, but again, no one wanted to take the lead up hill into the wind, and pace slowed to something that was manageable for me. As we approached the top, my legs finally gave out and started to seriously cramp. As rolled over the crest, I grabbed a drink of water, and decided to do something foolish. If I was going to blow up, it was going to be one hell of an explosion. We all started to pick up speed as gravity took over, I dropped into my aero position and sunk my weight into my pedals. I pulled out to the left and hammered for the bottom of the hill. I don't know how many I surprised, but when I reached the bottom I peaked and saw that I had strung out the field somewhat. The ladies surged forward along with a few men as we entered the first left-hand turn, and I decided to just completely bury myself in these last few block. They were mostly 40+ men, SS, and women, but I didn't know how many Open men there were, and didn't want to lose 5 spots because I was afraid of to dig deep. <br />
<br />
Shut up legs. <br />
<br />
I maintained a spot in the front four or five as we turned left, then right, then right, then left, then right, and on the final left I was out of the saddle and sprinting for all I had. The pain was intense as I fought through the cramps, but was able to maintain my position. I gave a little celebratory bunny hop at the finish line, and that was it. My fourth Barry was in the books. I was smart enough to press "Stop" on my Garmin, but not smart enough to look at my time before clicking "Save". I had no idea how fast I had ridden. <br />
<br />
Thankfully Morleigh was at the finish line taking photos for just that reason. We looked at the time stamp on the photo she took when I crossed the line, 2:29:34 PM CDT. A full minute ahead of my time the previous year, and I had a feeling the course was slower this year. I hung out at the finish for a while, congratulating and consoling friends, teammates, and strangers. I felt really good about my performance, about my ride, and about my day. It was about this time that I remembered 3 hrs earlier I had detached my front brake. I looked down at my wheel, and discovered that my wheel was out of true because one of my spokes had snapped 3 miles into a 62 mile race. I was lucky to have been able to finish, much less had my second-best time ever. The plan that Chernoh and I had to ride together never materialized. He wasn't able to get a hold of that first wave, and spent the rest of the race finding packs trying to catch up. Once he made it across the finish, we headed back to the mini-van and spent a few minutes recovering, then changing and getting warm. We drove to the Waldorf Brew Pub for lunch, and then onto the highway headed back home. <br />
<br />
Morleigh looked up results on her tablet on the way home. I finished 67th in a time of 3:29:32. The sprint had paid off because there were four of us who finished within four seconds of one another. Had I sat-up and given up at the top of the hill I could have easily been back in 70th place. Although it wasn't my best time, it was my best finish ever, and I managed to improve on my time from the year before under difficult conditions. <br />
<br />
The details:<br />
Nutrition: Two insulated bidons mixed with hot-water and my special mix of nutrients, plus 2 Salt-stick pills opened and dissolved in for electrolytes. One uninsulated bottle of water, and a "gel" with the same mix of nutrients and salt. Two salt pills from my stem, taken 2hrs and 3hrs into the race. <br />
<br />
Clothing: Craft Wind Stopper (ws) briefs, Craft tights, Craft Short sleeve ws base layer, Craft Long-sleeve ws base layer, Capo thermal speed suit, Capo short sleeved jersey (mostly for pocket-room), swobo arm-warmers, Craft beenie, and a Cold Avenger Pro.<br />
<br />
Bike: Specialized 2013 Aluminum Crux, SRAM Rival GXP crank, front derailleur, SRAM Force shifters and rear derailleur, Avid Shorty Ultimate Brakes, and Fulcrum Racing 1 wheelset with Michelin Jets at 58 PSI. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-80746218015065119542013-11-20T00:51:00.001-06:002013-12-01T20:18:20.969-06:002013 A season in haikuWe didn't take any photographs this weekend at Indian Lakes. We have both been working hard this year on our photography, and felt like we needed to take a weekend off and just enjoy being at races together. The injury Morleigh sustained at Woodstock when an errant rider crashed into her and broke her rib didn't help either. Our camera is not a "one-handed" kind of operation. The weather also made it a pretty easy decision to leave the expensive weather-sensitive equipment in the safety of the car. An umbrella does little to protect against sideways rain. <br />
<br />
As such I find myself with a lot of extra time this week. In past years I have written detailed race reports about every race, but this year my post-race effort has been put into photography. At the suggestion of a friend on Facebook, I have decided to summarize my season of Cyclocross racing with a series of Haikus. <br />
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<u>Jackson Park - Relay Cross, Cat 1/2/3 Open, 33rd of 34 teams</u><br />
I won the Le Mans!<br />
Boom! Just keep on running man.<br />
Fat man, little bike. <br />
<br />
<u>Lake Geneva Cross, Cat 3, 41 of 53. </u><br />
Pouring rain all day.<br />
Medicine clogs the engine<br />
A muddy good time.<br />
<br />
<u>Trek Cup Day 1, Cat 2/3, 72 of 88</u><br />
A very fast field,<br />
Tangled in tape, dropped my chain.<br />
Never recovered.<br />
<br />
<u>Trek Cup Day 2, Cat 2/3, 72 of 79</u><br />
A solid first lap,<br />
Boom! Hard crash into the ground.<br />
Run to pit, get pulled.<br />
<br />
<u>xXx Jackson Park, Cat 3, 31 of 99</u><br />
Start seventy sixth.<br />
Turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn, turn<br />
Drop chain, just miss points.<br />
<br />
<u>xXx Jackson Park, Cat 1/2/3, 50 of 73</u><br />
Gambling for points,<br />
5 sec intervals? All day. <br />
Let the Wookie win.<br />
<br />
<u>BBVP Dan Ryan Woods, Cat 3, 42 of 89</u><br />
Bottleneck at woods.<br />
Watch the leaders ride away,<br />
Sat up, no bell lap.<br />
<br />
<u>Psychocross, Cat 3, 24 of 57</u><br />
Surprised at how fun,<br />
I rode a clean and fast race.<br />
Best finish in years.<br />
<br />
<u>Carpenter Park Cat 3, 19 of 68</u><br />
A wide open start,<br />
As if running from Sasquatch.<br />
Hammer hard all race.<br />
<br />
<u>Sunrise Park, Cat 3, 21 of 69</u><br />
The course runs backwards,<br />
Bunny hop here, brake check there.<br />
Sprint hard to hold place.<br />
<br />
<u>Campton Cross, Cat 3, 21 of 69</u><br />
A tactical race,<br />
Battling for position,<br />
Out of gas last lap.<br />
<br />
<u>Psi-clocross for life, Cat 3, 33 of 58</u><br />
Third place into woods,<br />
Lungs sieze up, no oxygen.<br />
Free falling backwards. <br />
<br />
<u>Indian Lakes Day 1, Cat 3, 22 of 74</u><br />
The mud changes things,<br />
Wind is howling from the south,<br />
Only one mistake.<br />
<br />
<u>Indian Lakes Day 2, Cat 3, Race Cancelled</u><br />
Wrestle with the storm,<br />
Enthusiasm waining,<br />
Happy to be safe. <br />
<u><br /></u>
<u>Melas Park, Cat 3, 14/63</u><br />
Dress to invade Hoth,<br />
six point five laps, no rear brake.<br />
Best finish ever.<br />
<br />
<u>NorgeCX, Cat 3, 23/41</u><br />
Very bump course.<br />
Unlike me to fall so much,<br />My soul, it doth hurt. <br />
<br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-60127606430272338022013-08-26T21:17:00.000-05:002013-08-26T21:17:00.955-05:00Playing catch-upI'm sorry Racing blog. I've been neglecting you. I've been riding, racing, training, crashing, and flatting...the whole nine yards and I haven't told you about any of it. Mountain biking has been going very well this year, and I've been spending much more time working on the <a href="http://www.snowymountainphotography.com/" target="_blank">Photography</a> than I have journaling and writing. This is true in both my personal and public journals. There are a few stories though that are really good and need to be told. Look for them soon. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-76992334293629768492013-08-26T21:09:00.004-05:002015-12-31T00:10:54.401-06:00Ultra Ever Don'tYou've probably seen the YouTube video advertising the product Ultra Ever Dry. If you are anything like me (and maybe if you are not), you immediately made the connection between a hydrophobic coating that can repel mud and our shared love of riding bikes in the most unsavory of conditions. If you are like me you immediately thought of all the things (Frame, tires, shoes, jackets) that you could coat with Ultra Ever Dry and improve your performance in adverse conditions, and be less dirty when you get home. <br />
<br />
But you were probably smart enough to leave it at that. You were probably smart enough not to throw money at the internet and eventually (after long backorder) get two pumps and two bottles of Ultra Ever Dry delivered to your house. <br />
<br />
But I did, and now you can learn from my mistake. First, if you are tempted to use it, read and follow the safety instructions. This "nanomiracle" is packaged in some pretty noxious solvents, and during the few minutes I took of my respirator the fumes were headache inducing. <br />
<br />
The process was pretty straight forward. Spray on a base-coat, and twenty minutes later, spray on a top coat. Unfortunately something was wrong with either my batch of base coat or the sprayer, because the base coat came out as a heavy stream as from a squirt gun. There were no adjustments that could be made, so I ended up spraying this thick vicious liquid onto a number of things and then using a brush to paint it around. It was not pretty, but I was able to get a layer of base coat on three pairs of cycling shoe (Specialized Road, MTB, and winter Defrosters). I then coated two rain jackets, and looked at my three bikes and figured I would try it out on the one that was first in line to get dirty, my mountain bike. By the time I finished applying the base-coat to all of things, it has been 20 minutes since applying the first coating, and it was time go back to the beginning and start applying the top coats. <br />
<br />
The top coat had the exact opposite problem as the base coat. It was so thin it vaporized into a very fine mist that was a little hard to manage because spray was billowing away from the target. However, the top coat went on with much less effort than the bottom coat. And so I waited for 30 minutes for the top coat to dry while I cleaned up my sprayers and tools and the area where I was working. When I returned in 30 minutes, what did I find?<br />
<br />
If you watch the YouTube videos closely you will notice that everything they test is white, beige, or otherwise light in color. Why? Because the top coat dries to a translucent smokey color. On the black parts of my bike, it looked like a paint effect, on my black jacket and shoes it looked like a mess. Not a hot mess, just a mess. If you look at the back of the bottle it has a warning that it may discolor dark objects. Duly noted. <br />
<br />
But aesthetics aside, did it work? Yes, and it was pretty freaking amazing to watch. The spray of water wouldn't even touch the surface, it would bounce off like tiny rubber balls. There were some parts of my jacket that, because of the problems applying the base coat evenly, were not superhydrophobic, but most of the jacket repelled water remarkably well. However things were not so great with the shoes. My road and summer mountain bike shoes were hit and miss. It turns out that the coating was not enough strong enough to keep water from forcing its way through the mesh on the toes, but the sold leather parts repelled water just like the video. It worked especially well on my Defrosters, winter shoes that did not have mesh vents. But there was a problem. The ultra-ever dry softened the ratchets on the sides and I snapped off both of them on my mountain bike shoes before I realize what was happening. I then tried on a brand new pair of road shoes I had coated, thinking it was a problem with the age of the first pair, and stopped with a third broken ratchets in my hand. I waited another 24 hrs, and the plastic hardened again, and I have not broken another one since. So if you use it on or near plastic, beware!<br />
<br />
And my bike? It repelled water, just like on YouTube. <br />
<br />
So if it worked, why am I recommending against it? <br />
<br />
If you read the fine print on the bottle you find some pretty interesting statements. Like the coating is not permanent and under ideal circumstances only lasts about 6 - 8 months, and my favorite part? The coating can become "ineffective" if you touch it with your fingers. And you are not actually supposed to clean it with soap, brushes, or anything other than a gentle spray of water. So basically, if you use your object the Ultra-Ever Dry coating goes away. Here's why. <br />
<br />
Ultra-ever dry is a two-coating system, the base layer is a clear polymer, that has what I am assuming a strong negative electric charge. The top coat contains the actual nano particles dissolved in a highly volatile liquid that evaporates leaving a coating of positively charged nano-particles clinging to the negatively charged base-coat. When you touch it with your fingers, or anything really, it is very easy to wipe the nano particles off the base coat because they are basically a layer of dust with either a weak electrostatic or Van Der Waals force holding them to the surface. <br />
<br />
Once the top coat is gone, something peculiar happens. The bottom coat becomes a magnet for dirt and grease. For example, I have a plastic-bristled brush that I have used to clean cassettes and chains. I will use it on the frame to help knock off dried on and piled up mud. With the ultra-ever dry the grease from the bristles jumped off the brush and bonded to the exposed bottom coat. The only way to remove the grease was to scrub with a clean rag, which very quickly meant rubbing off the polymer bottom coat. It took less than a week for my superhydrophobic bike to become super-grease-and-dirt attracting. This means it requires scrubbing and soap to get it clean, which in turns removes more top coat, which exposes more bottom coat, which collects more dirt. It took another month or two (and one afternoon of vigorous scrubbing) to get all of the base coat off of the frame and components of my mountain bike. My jackets are no longer completely superhydrophobic either, it seems that wearing and touching clothing can also separate the top from bottom coat. So they still look messy, and only parts of them repel water as they should. <br />
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In closing, Ultra-Ever Dry is a neat trick of nano-engineering and will give you amazing results, provided you use it on something that you only want to bring out as a parlor trick on occasion. Using it on anything that has to be worn, ridden, or touched on a regular basis is not worth the cost. <br />
<br />
On a completely unrelated note, I have a pair of Ultra-Ever Dry sprayers for sale if anyone is interested. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-74920292791659229222013-03-30T14:43:00.000-05:002013-04-04T08:36:22.027-05:00The Barry-Roux-TriThree weeks ago, my girlfriend asked me about my goals/expectations for the upcoming Barry-Roubaix. I gave her my answer. I said that I thought 3:30 seemed like a reasonable expectation for how I would finish, and she was confused. Why would I would I expect to perform worse than the year before? It's not that I wanted to ride slower than I did last year. I would have loved to say I was going to do even better. <br />
<br />
But I told her that in hindsight I could see that my strong showing at the 2012 Barry Roubaix was a confluence of favorable factors which were mostly beyond my control. First, winter gave up the ghost in February of last year, and the race in March was rather pleasant, not too hot, not too cold. <br />
<br />
Second, I happened to spend very little of the race alone. I was able to attach myself to a group of riders that were probably a bit faster than me, and maintain contact with them from just after Cloverdale until the the Sager-Shaw-Sandtrap. I benefited from the support, camaraderie, and shared work of others for 40 miles of a 62mile race. Third, I was healthy last winter and had just over 1,000 miles of training in between Jan 1 and the start of the race.<br />
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This year was shaping up to be a different animal. Winter was holding strong, and showing no signs of relenting. I felt like I was training smarter (more 2 x 20 intervals), but two different bouts of illness, a respirator infection in late February and a cold in early March, set me back at least 2 weeks of training. Third, in contrasting my first Barry-Roubaix with my second, I realized how fortunate I was to be able to work together with that group for long as I did. I feared I wouldn't be able to do it again, and tried to train accordingly. I spent many miles grinding alone in the dead of winter.<br />
<br />
So when the week of the Barry-Roubaix finally arrived, it was surreal. I had been training for this one race continuously for four months, and all of a sudden it was time to pack up a car and drive deep into the Mitten. Morleigh and I had made our hotel reservations in December, not wanting to end up in Grand Rapids like we had a year earlier. Our friend and teammate Chernoh asked us in Feburary about our plans, and we happily offered him the extra queen bed in our room, as well as a ride to Michigan. <br />
<br />
Whereas some on Facebook were daring one another to pack less and less for the Barry-Roubaix, Morleigh, Chernoh, and I rented a mini-van so we could carry our excessive quantities of preparation. Morleigh and I discovered last summer the joys of taking minivans to races because we were able to fit multiple bicycles inside the vehicle without any dis-assembly, seat three people comfortably, and still fit all of our belongings. Morleigh and I generally prepared for everything from sub-freezing temps to 50s and rain.<br />
<br />
Our trip to Michigan went smoothly with good conversation triumphing over the time and distance. We left on Friday morning, and arrived without incident in Hastings, MI at just after 1PM EST. We stopped at the <a href="http://www.walldorffbrewpub.com/" target="_blank">Walldorff brewery pub</a> in downtown Hastings for lunch. We each had a slightly different lunch-time sandwich, and tried the gambit of fries (regular, garlic parmesan, and sweet potato). It was a great way to start our racing weekend. <br />
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After lunch the plan was to head back to the hotel to check in, Chernoh and I were going to change for a ride, and Morleigh was going to take a little nap. I was curious to see the course conditions so we followed the race-route out of Hastings on our way back to the hotel. When we made the right-turn off of paved spur into the course into the course proper I was completely taken aback, and my jaw literally dropped open. First, despite having studied the map of the course for weeks and having ridden it twice before, I had absolutely no idea that as soon as we turned off the spur leading out of town we had a date with the three Sisters. The land around Hastings undulates wildly, but there are two sections that are so positively evil that they have been named, and less than four miles into the race we were going to tackle one of these sections. In some ways it was a relief, because that meant we didn't have to tackle them at mile 40 when there was nothing left in the tank like previous years. But it also meant that I would have to burn three matches very early in the race to maintain any sort of contact with the main field. With fresh legs people were going to attack these hills like pinatas at a birthday party. <br />
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The second source of shock was the road conditions. They looked to be much worse than my imagined worse case scenario. There was at least 2-3 inches of sandy-muddy-slush coating all three hills. The car in front of us was leaving a rut 3 inches deep. I felt foolish having suggested in a team meeting four days prior that file-treads might be good enough despite the conditions. <br />
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We continued driving the course, and found as we went further along course conditions deteriorated even further. There was one section shortly after the third sister that was completely rutted with basketball sized pot-holes. As we drove over them in the car (slowly) water splashed out and drained back in. I remembered this "bad" section from prior years, but it seemed to be much worse, like a war had been raging all winter. There was no clear line, and no "shoulder" upon which to avoid the holes. After the ruts we dropped into alternating patches of slushy valleys and completely frozen snow-covered hills. I'm not going to lie. Even though it was my third, dance, I was nervous. When we neared the section that had been taken out of the route, I wondered aloud how bad must that have been if these parts were still "good"? We headed north to Gun Lake Rd, and made haste to the hotel so we could check in, and Chernoh and I get out for a pre-ride before dark. <br />
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Chernoh and I changed into riding gear, pulled our bikes out of the van, and had a short conversation about what we should do. We quickly came to consensus that neither of us wanted to get ourselves or our bikes dirty and wet, so we opted to cruise up the road on the west side of Gun Lake, turn around, and come back. It was an uneventful ride except for a quick loop around a residential block to get a better look at a flock of turkeys moving through a field. As we were riding I called out "turkeys" and pointed to our left, but Chernoh did not see them until we looped back, stopped, and then he could see them moving against the background. He said he never would have seen them on his own. Later on Chernoh and I both noticed the same fox-squirrel frozen dead along the side of the road. I thought about bringing it home to Morleigh as a trophy, like a cat would bring home a mouse, but decided against it. I did tell her about my idea later. She agreed that discretion was the better part of valor, and would not have found any humor in having a dead squirrel as a mascot for the weekend. <br />
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But it was very good that Chernoh and I went for a ride, because a short way in I could tell something was wrong with my bike. After a half-hour my knee hurt and I could not put down any power. When we found or first real hill and decided to sprint to the top, Chernoh blew me out of the water. He was seated and just pumping those long pistons, but I had to get out of the saddle to put any power into the pedals. Even then I could not make up the gap. When we got back to the hotel, I looked closely at my seat post, and sure enough when they put it back in after the tune-up I had earlier that week they put it at the wrong height. I should have checked with a tape measure at home, but I had to pull it up another 2-3 cm before it felt right. We did another 15 minutes down and back to the East, and then Chernoh hung out with me in the parking lot, while I changed my tires to a more aggressive tread. After our bit of course reconnaissance I was a little nervous that the Michelin jet file-treads that worked so well last year, would be sketchy this year, so I opted for a slightly wider Bontrager Jones CX. It's all about floatation they said on the internets...all about flotation. As we were wrapping up with my tires, Eric D, another Chicago local
from xXx, stopped by to chat. It turns out that after picking up his packet, Eric took his bike out and
actually road the three Sisters. He told us that he could feel the
resistance of the slush (i.e., having to push it out of the way) but it
didn't cling to his wheels or his bike the way mud would have. His
file-treads made it up the hill just fine. That provided some
reassurance, but it was not enough to convince me to undo the work that I had just finished. <br />
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We showered, changed, and headed to the hotel restaurant for food. I was a little bit disappointed that the menu had changed (duh, it's been 2 years) because we had some great food when Jason, Chernoh, and I ate at the bar my first trip out. The food was good, but my chapped lips did not agree with the heat of the Cajun pasta I had ordered. I had to borrow some chapstick from Morleigh, and order a glass of milk to sooth the burn. Nothing on the desert menu really spoke to Morleigh and, so we settled for a bit of ice cream and a bite of Chernoh's nutella lava cake. <br />
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After dinner, Morleigh and Chernoh got ready for bed, and I went down to the hot-tub. I was hoping that some massaging jets and heat would help refresh my legs, as they had felt a little bit leaden on our pre-ride. Also? it's kind of a tradition. This is the third year in a row I've included a dip in a hotel hot-tub as part of my Barry-Roubaix prep. The trip downstairs was uneventful, and I tried to keep it brief. I was back in the room, showered, and in bed by 11pm. <br />
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We were up early the next morning. We went back to the hotel restaurant for breakfast at about 7am. It is here that I made what may have been my first mistake of the day. I think I ate too much and too much protein. My stomach was full when we left, and it still felt full a few hours later when we were on the starting line. I was trying to store up calories, but the big breakfast was not sitting well a few hours later at the start. <br />
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After breakfast we made hast for Hastings. We emptied the room, loaded, the car, and headed northeast. We found the world looking much different than the night before. The warm yellow glow of afternoon sunshine was replaced with a steel gray curtain of clouds, and any hint of spring had been replaced with a bone chilling cold. <br />
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After circling the closed off section of downtown, and getting the lay of the land we found parking on the street in Hastings two blocks east of the finish line. By the time we found parking, it was time for Chernoh and I to start our respective pre-race rituals. Morleigh checked the weather one last time, and found the forecast did not call for temps above freezing until 2pm. All week it the weather had spoke of highs in the 40s, but it was turning out to be a very cold day. Chernoh and I went for a ride south east of town, and again my legs felt heavy. Breakfast sat heavy in my stomach, and I had kind of a bad feeling about what was about to happen. For as much as I wanted it to be a great day, it felt like it was going to be one of those days. <br />
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By 9:40AM the starting corral was already starting to fill up, so we made our final preparations and headed over. I had posted on Facebook our location, but we did not see any of our teammates until we were lined up. Even Chernoh and I were split up as he had gone for one last trip to the bathroom, and I kind of regretted getting caught up in the mix as a last minute urge hit me. I stayed put though, hoping the anxiety would fade after the start of the race. The mayor spoke, they played the Star-Spangled Banner, we surged forward to the starting line proper, and at precisely 10:00AM we were off. I was not too far from the front, maybe 5 rows back when the pack took off down the street, and I rolled along holding my spot. I did not want to burn any matches getting out of town because I knew the three sisters awaited. The pack remained dense, with a few riders cheating the system and using the opposite lane as a passing lane, but the majority held their position in the peloton. <br />
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When we hit the main loop and turned right onto Yeckley Rd, the front of the field exploded down the hill towards the first Sister. I acutely remembered my first trip over the three Sisters two years earlier. My first time over the third Sister the people who lived at the base of the hill was blasting "Eye of the Tiger" from a rather large stereo system, and at the top I vowed I would be walking that hill the next time I saw her (that year we did two laps over a 32 mile course and faced the three sisters twice). I held true to those words, as I was completely spent by that point in my first race. <br />
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This year we sprinted up so hard and fast, that I remember only that the slush of Friday was completely frozen solid. Everything else was a blur as all of my concentration was focused on climbing, and staying upright in the pack of riders around me. There was no time for anything else. At the top of the 3rd Sister I felt like I still had a chance to do well. I tried to be very smart on the downhills, coasting as much as possible, because another big climb awaited us. I tried to catch my breath as we hit our first tantalizing bit of pavement on Hwy 43, but there was no time to recover before we hit more gravel, and turned left onto Hubble Rd, and up the climb without a name.<br />
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The year before this hill came as a complete surprise. Even though we climbed it twice my first year, when we came to Hubble Rd in 2012 I had no memory of struggling up this long steep grade, until we got over the top and saw the cows grazing along the west side the road. The suffering I forgot about, but the bovines I remembered.<br />
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This year I remembered both the climb and the cows. Given that we were still so early in the race, I knew it was a bad sign at how much that climb was hurting. My legs filled up with lead, and I had to stand up hammering on the pedals with all of my weight to get to the top. When I crested the top of that fourth climb and saw those familiar cows, I could also see the lead pack already making the turn at the bottom of hill and streaking down the Goodwill road out of sight. The long slide backwards had begun. <br />
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The next section of Goodell Road was some of the worst terrain we saw all day. This was the section we drove over the day before with potholes the size of basketballs except that the water in all the holes had frozen over, adding an additional layer of treachery. By the time I arrived there were already dozens of water bottles spread across the road. Later waves encountered hundreds of water bottles. Thankfully mine remained firmly in place. They weren't doing me much good. The rough course made it very difficult to actually get a drink, and my stomach was as full as my legs were heavy. I needed to take in more calories, but there was no where to put them. <br />
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One good thing happened on this stretch of road as three of my teammates, Chernoh, Sean, and Joe all coalesced into a group during this section, and we started to work together to make the riding easier. We tried to grab onto groups that were passing, but the difficult terrain made it hard to ride in close proximity. At one point, Sean and I were following another rider on a downhill at fairly close spacing when the rider in front suddenly lost control and went down hard. Sean and I swerved to the left as our hearts jumping into our throats, and miraculously avoided the piling into the downed rider and also avoided losing control during our evasive maneuvers. We slowed our cadence for a few beats to let the wave of adrenaline that was crashing through our bodies receded. It was a very close call for us both. I wondered again about how bad must have been the roads that were not good enough to ride, because I saw dozens of riders with dirty and torn kits as we made our way forward.<br />
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The next section was "the easy part" of the course. As we turned left onto Gun Lake Road we found a few miles of smooth pavement to savor and enjoy. In past years this was the home stretch. If you made it here, you knew you were almost home. There was one significant climb, but the pavement, favorable wind conditions, and teamwork made it bearable. This year it was just a hiccup. A confusing inhale that was not long enough to recover, and offered pleasant distraction from the suffering ahead. It was during this section that the four of us got caught up in a large peloton. The leaders of the second wave had already made up the 3 minute gap on us by 15 miles, and we tried to attach ourselves to this new group of fast riders for as long as possible. It was as we made the turn onto Mullen Rd that the 40plus riders (and the lead woman) started to work their way around and through the 30 plus riders they had picked up on the asphalt. I remember cheering on my friend Newt Cole as he passed. I ran into him in the shop two days earlier, and he said he was going to just go out and have fun. No heart rate monitor, no worries. He ended up finishing 6th in the 40+ race, so apparently his laid-back strategy worked. Also? He's a beast. <br />
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It's here, after about 20 miles of riding that memory starts to fade into cold and icy gray. I remember riding alongside Mackenzie Woodring for a bit, marveling at how severely she was crushing it. I remember tackling the Killer as we caught up and passed riders from the 23 mile race, it was here that we lost Sean Kennedy off the front of our little group, as he was able to maintain contact with the larger group on the climb, as Chernoh and I fell off a bit. We passed Tom K from Triple X standing on the bend of the road cheering us on, and I found out later from Facebook that he had actually been hit by a deer (something which I am paranoid of happening to me). I remember making it over the Killer and watching the group we had been riding with pulling away, and not being able to do anything about it. Chernoh who was obviously having a better day than me, held back, opting to hang out with me rather than follow Sean and the pack he was with. Joe B said a couple of times that we would see Sean again, but I was pretty certain at that point at least I would not be seeing Sean again until the finish. <br />
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It was at about mile 30, on a relatively small climb out of of Cloverdale that it hit me that I was done. I fell off a group with Chernoh, and found myself in no-man's land with more than half the race to go. I clicked the lap counter on my Garmin and was happy that I had been riding at an average speed of 19mph for the first 30 miles, but I knew it was going to be downhill from there as my legs had just given out. They were like a elastic band that has been stretched one too many times and no matter how long I waited they were not going to snap back into place. I had completely blown up. I thought about quitting, and setting my Garmin to take me back to the start, but I have never been much of a quitter. I dusted off my mantra from year one "Just finish" and started repeating it to myself as I pushed onward. <br />
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By mile 40 if I stood up to put any pressure on the pedals both quads started to cramp. I knew it was a lack of nutrition, but my stomach was still heavy from breakfast, and water bottles were so cold I could hardly stand to drink from them. My hands were starting to get cold at this point, and my clothes were soaked through. Ice was forming on my sleeves where water dripped into my jacket. <br />
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At about mile 42, I caught back up to Chernoh who had pulled over to relieve himself of some extra water weight. He was at the crest of a hill so I rode down the hill, and on the uphill on the other side decided to pull over and wait for him. I took the opportunity to relieve myself of a little water weight, and he caught up with me, and soft-pedaled until I caught back up with him. He pulled me a few more miles and I told him that I was done and he should go on ahead. He waited a few more miles and then grabbed onto another group of passing riders. <br />
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Somewhere after mile 50, in the middle of no-man's land Mike Palmer of Half-Acre passed me. He was just plugging away all by himself. I would have liked to be able to hold his wheel, but he was doing much better than I was at that point. So I cheered him on, and watched him pull away. I was lost at this point in the race. I had the course loaded on my garmin calling out turns for me, but I couldn't really visualize myself on my mental map. I knew I was in the southwest corner of the course, and hoped that I was heading north on the final leg into town. I imagined it as a straight line from SE to NE, but it wound back and forth. Jogging east, and then west, and then north again. I lost all sense of time as my pace slowed even further. <br />
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Somewhere in this last 10th of the course I committed the ultimate sin, I got off my bike and pushed it up a hill. It wasn't a particularly long climb, but it was muddy and steep, and my legs were simply done pedaling. It wasn't even a conscious decision. Should I get off or should I not? It was just time.<br />
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My first year I had to walk up part of the Killer and the Third Sister, but my second year I rode the entire course. Dismounting as a three year veteran was a humbling reminder that this race is a cruel and unforgiving mistress. <br />
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The short walk (maybe 100 yds) did refresh my legs somewhat, and I was able to attach myself to the next group (including Jostein Alvestad on his single speed and two ladies) that passed me and rode with them for a few miles. <br />
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Just after mile 57, I had lost Jostein, but found hope that I was closing in on the finish. That hope came in the form of fat bikes and mountain bikes whose riders were struggling to make it back into Hastings too. I knew that I had done worse than the year before, but I still took some solace in knowing I was finishing 62 miles in shorter time than these riders were finishing 36 miles. I drank some of my nutrients and hardened myself for one final push. I managed to attach myself onto the wheel of two other 62 milers as we made it back to the paved spur leading to the finish. I followed them into town, and told myself I was not going to try to sprint them for the finish, just try to hang on to them as long as possible and be grateful for the tow. A half mile from the finish the rider I was following made it clear that he was not going to be towing me to the finish, he pulled over and sat up. I did the honorable thing and put my head down and pedaled as hard as I could. As we made the final turn into the home straight he pulled ahead again, and I did not contest him for I had nothing with which to contest. As I rolled over the finish line I stopped my garmin and held the reset button. I did not look at my finishing time, or any of my stats. I figured I would sort through the details later. I looked up and found my girlfriend in her bright red coat waiting just beside the finish line. I pulled up to her and stopped. She was grinning from ear to ear and started to tell me how proud of me she was, and behind my ski goggles and <a href="http://talusoutdoor.com/coldavenger" target="_blank">Cold Avenger Pro</a>, I broke down and started sobbing. <br />
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Only a few sobs escaped before I pulled myself together. I could see Chernoh ahead moving to cool down, and I wanted to go tell him how awesome he did. I didn't catch up with him right away because of lights and traffic. But it didn't take long for us to cool down, and we circled back to the finish line. My hands were wet and frozen, and after a few minutes I wanted only to be dry and warm. We congratulated all of our teammates for their great finishes. I found Morleigh and rode along side her as she made her way to the car. <br />
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I can not express just how good Morleigh is at post-race support. I'm generally an idiot post-race, and she keeps me focused and moving forward. She continually asks "what's next?" and help guide me when I am still unable to think straight. When I couldn't get my gloves off because my hands were so cold she rolled up her sleeves and pealed them off. As she pulled the second one off I started to sob again. I was just so happy she was there, I couldn't imagine how much longer it would have taken me to just get undressed if she wasn't there to peal off the wet layers. A few more sobs, and I pulled myself together. She helped peal off the wet jacket and jersey, and I wrapped one of my Mom's felt blankets around my shoulders. I used it as a changing tent and got into some dry clothes. <br />
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We loaded up the car, and decided to skip the post-race party and make for home. As we were pulling out of town, Morleigh passed our camera up to Chernoh to show off the photos that she had taken. I glanced over at a stoplight, I saw an amazing shot that demanded an explanation. How did she get ABOVE the staging area? With a grin and twinkle in her eye Morleigh explained how she had introduced herself to the Mayor of Hasting, Morleigh from <a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/" target="_blank">SnowyMountain Photography,</a> and asked him very nicely if she could borrow his cherry picker for a moment to take a few photos of the racers lined up in the fine streets of Hastings. He of course swayed by her charm, said Yes.<br />
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But that was only the beginning. She continued to make conversation with the Mayor, noting that she would like to go out and shoot photos at the race, but as an out-of-towner-with-poor-map-skills, she wasn't certain about the best way to go and view. The Mayor called out to one of the local law enforcement officers, and next thing you know Morleigh was in the back of a squad car, heading out to shoot on the course with a police escort. She found two different locations to cheer racers, and found Paolo from the Bonebell both times. Some of the gentlemen he was riding with lamented that he brought his own mobile cheering squad. As she cheered the dozens of Chicago racers by name and or team, her escort marveled aloud, "You really do know everyone." Her mission really was to find me and my other teammates earlier in the 62 mile field, but before she could get ahead of us her trip came to an abrupt end. They came across some walking wounded, two gentlemen who had serious crashes, and her escort turned into an ambulence, headed back into town to the hospital. So Morleigh had quite the little adventure while we were out playing bikes. <br />
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We stopped at a gas station in Hastings to fill up, and then I drove us out of gravel country and to our post-race tradition, the nearest Culvers. I really do try to eat healthy, but after a race I want nothing more than buttery-greasy-burgery-goodness. We stopped in Kalamzoo at the same Culvers where we ate the two years prior, and I finally started to feel human again as we refueled with high-calorie foods. Morleigh took the next shift behind the wheel, until Chernoh and I forced an emergency exit at the Bass-Pro Shop. Chernoh had never been to one and wanted to check out the camping gear. <br />
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I forget sometimes how much I know about the kind of things that Bass Pro Shop sells, and was happy as a clam giving Chernoh a tour and showing him the difference between shot guns and rifles, compound and recurve bows. We didn't end up purchasing anything, but had a good time immersing ourselves in the Bass Pro experience. Morleigh was pretty tired after our unplanned stop, so I took the wheel and got us home. We dropped Chernoh off at his place, and then headed back south to my apartment where we unloaded all of the post race stuff, and settled in for the night. It took the better part of three days to clean up and put everything away. <br />
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Later that night I tried to load my garmin file and somehow ended up corrupting the file. Gone was all the data I would normally use to perform a post-mortem on my race. heart rate, cadence, and temperature were all gone for ever. I was then left waiting for the official results to be posted to the internet. Sometime after 9PM we found a link. I finished in 101st place in my wave in 3:30:30. <br />
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It was a much different feeling than the year before. There was some "at least I beat that person" and "I can't believe I got beat by that person"but for the most part I just felt numb. The cold had left my body but not my heart. I finished. Sometimes that's enough. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-71887035783606076062013-03-17T17:00:00.001-05:002013-03-17T17:00:18.952-05:00The long darkThe last words I wrote in this blog were:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">Lots of cold hard miles between now and then. Time to HTFU and start over again for next year. "You don't wrestle until you get tired, you wrestle until the Gorilla gets tired."</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span>
I held mostly true to that commitment. 299.72 miles in December, 375.85 miles in January, 254.99 in February, and <strike>214</strike> 269 miles so far in March. Only 10 of those miles were completed indoor on a trainer. The rest were outside in mostly sub freezing temperatures. My February and March totals have been below plan, and below last year because of a respiratory infection followed up a week later by a heavy dose of the common cold. <br />
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I rode many of those miles in the far Northwest suburbs and beyond, where Christmas-lighted neighborhoods gave way to snow-blown tracts of dormant corn and soybean fields. I rode almost all of them alone. I spent my evenings chasing an oval of white light across a sea of blackness. The cold wind was bitter and piercing. I wanted to write and tell you all about how hard I was working, and how tough I was for braving hypothermia and pushing onward. But aside from a few Facebook updates, a few icy photos, I remained silent. I did my intervals and went home. <br />
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I was not a unique and beautiful snowflake. I was just another person wrestling with his demons, fighting to maintain contact with this sport. Every time I went out in 30 degree weather, guys like <a href="http://www.usacycling.org/results/?compid=342514" target="_blank">Marcus Steele</a> and the Titletown Fliers were going out in 15 degree weather and three times as much snow. Every time I rode 40 miles, <a href="http://www.wc-studio.com/2012/12/19/festive-500/" target="_blank">these guys</a> were doing another metric century. The fenders I was carrying for protection and resistance hardly seemed small and insignificant when compared to the labors of other. <br />
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Karen Horney's<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Horney#Theory_of_the_self" target="_blank"> "tyranny of the should</a>" plagued me. I osculated between her fallacious perfection ("I work SO hard.") and manifested self-loathing ("I am a terrible person for not riding today"). My girlfriend worked hard to stabilize those extremes in pressure, pumping me up when I was flat, and letting some air out when I was risking a blow out. Thanks to her for keeping me tires to the pavement. <br />
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It is now time to see where all this training has taken me. Have I pushed my body to be faster and stronger, or have I just been fooling myself? This week brings a reckoning against which I have been bracing myself since I wrote my last post. This week it is time for the <a href="http://www.barry-roubaix.com/" target="_blank">Barry-Roubaix.</a><br />
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I have done this race not <a href="http://mythoughtsracing.blogspot.com/2012/03/barry-roubaix-2011-part-1.html" target="_blank">once</a>, but <a href="http://mythoughtsracing.blogspot.com/2012/03/barry-redeux.html" target="_blank">twice</a> before. It is not an easy journey. My first race was the first time I had ever ridden more than 60 miles, my first race longer than 10 miles. I learned a lot about suffering that day. Before that ride I almost always had headphones and music in my ears when I was riding. I have not listened to music while I was riding since. I will never forget standing at the top of the hill at mile 44.1 and wondered aloud if I would be able get back on my bike and finish. I honestly didn't know. I tried not to think about last year's divine gift of 55 degree temps, and just enough rain to keep the roads from being dusty. I only thought about the freezing temps that were likely to occur in central Michigan on March 23rd. <br />
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Last year I hoped to improve on my freshman effort. I told my girlfriend that I had hoped to shave off 20 minutes or so. I secretly hoped to finish 30 minutes faster. I actually finished 56 minutes faster than my first year. It was an amazing rush. However, the stars that aligned for that moment of glory are already looking dim and disheveled. I haven't been able to get in as many miles. The course preview and the weather forecast look like it will be cold. The course preview from today looks <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/slingshotjack/sets/72157633019932902/" target="_blank">terrible</a>. It would be nice to see 3:20 again. It would be nice to finish in the top half of the field again. It will be interesting to see how that field, the massive 3,000 person field, does in what looks to be an icy muddy mess. Will the leaders still average 21.7mph? Will I be able to break 19? <br />
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The one area of "my game" that I have been working on a great deal this winter is nutrition. I've been reading and learning about race-performance nutrition. I have always been a "home-brew" kind of guy, and I have been working on the balance of hydration, nutrition, and micro-nutrient intake in the competition. I have mostly abandoned the gel recipe I relied on last year (although I will have a batch made up for Barry) in favor of adding nutrients to water for more consistent delivery over time, ease of digestion, and better glycolysis. Last night I worked out a the math so I could figure out how much corn syrup and agave syrup I needed to mix together to hit the magic ratio of 2:1 glucose/fructose, and have 90g total carbs in a standard size water bottle. <br />
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I even too my bike, the Falcon, into the shop on Thursday to get it tuned up. Everything was in good working order when I got it back, and she lasted 55 miles today before the rear-deraileur broke into two pieces and snapped a few spokes. I consider this a blessing because it didn't happen in six days from now. It didn't happen in five days from now. The shop has all week to get in parts and get everything in good working order again before it is time to head south then east then north and beat myself against the frozen gravel yet again. It is time to step out into the light. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-68533619662623031812012-12-08T00:34:00.001-06:002012-12-10T23:53:52.400-06:00The end of the roadMy cyclocross season had been a struggle. It almost felt as if the tribulations (#firstworldproblems) of my cross season were karmatic retribution for how smoothly my Mountain bike season went. I fully admit that one of the biggest issues was my own inability to let go of my goals when I was plagued with injury and illness and jest have fun riding. I couldn't let go of how I would have preferred doing and enjoy what I was actually doing. But after Woodstock I was actually looking forward to Indian Lakes. I had done well enough, felt strong enough, that I thought maybe I could handle the challenge of a double-race weekend and have some fun. Use that weekend as a building block to some hard training and try to make a good showing at the State Championship. <br />
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Then on Monday night everything shifted again. I was hanging out on Facebook and a relative posted an unambiguous status update that let me know my grandmother was no longer with us. <br />
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A bell that has been rung cannot be unrung. I had just learned of my grandmother's passing through Facebook. <br />
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My Mom called me about 15 minutes later to offically share the news with me. The visitation was scheduled for Friday, the Funeral on Saturday. I cancelled the room I had reserved at Indian Lakes, and Morleigh and I spent the weekend in Wisconsin with family. The following weekend (Nov 17th) was the kick-off of the 9 day gun deer season, and I felt an obligation to make sure my father was not sitting alone on grandma's farm on the opening day of deer season. So I spent that Saturday and six of the next nine days chasing deer with my father.<br />
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Last March I had purchased a pair of tickets for my Mom to see one of her favorite singers, Andreas Bochelli, on Sun Dec 2nd. I bought the tickets without even thinking about cross, but even when I learned of the conflicting date it seemed like there would be time to do both, but as December approached and we started to work out the logistics, it seemed like it would be very hard to show my Mom a good time and also make it to Montrose to race. It was a confluence of familial responsibilities, if not a storm of them. I perhaps I could have squeezed space for myself to continue racing cross around those responsibilities, but it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. So in the days leading up to my Grandma's visitation I decided the right thing to do was to hang up my Cross shoes for the season, spend November focusing on my family, and start riding again in December. <br />
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In addition, I was just burnt out. I did some Google mapping a few days ago and confirmed that Morleigh and I drove more than 3,000 miles to race about 100 miles in the WORS series this summer. This were addition to the local race at Palos, a pair of gravel metric centuries, and seven cross races. It felt like I just needed some time out of the saddle. So between the last race in Woodstock and November 27th I rode less than 10 miles in total, one day of commuting in the city to the loop and back. I started back up again on the 27th with a 20 miles outing in the blackness of rural McHenry County<br />
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Riding in the dark, after some time off the saddle, on a chilly night, in an area with hills, was disorienting. I did not know those roads well enough to feel totally comfortable being out there in the dark. It felt like I was going up hill and into the wind the whole way.<br />
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I did go to Montrose with my camera on Sunday. I was able to shoot from the first race until the middle of what would have been my race before leaving to head out to the burbs. I needed to get cleaned up and ready to be a good host for my Mom. I wanted to make it a special night. I know I missed an exciting finish in the Men's 1/2/3 race and the spectacle of the 4bs, but when my Mom said she had the experience of a lifetime it was a no-brainer. I made the right choice. <br />
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So my next race is going to be the Barry Roubaix. Lots of cold hard miles between now and then. Time to HTFU and start over again for next year. "You don't wrestle until you get tired, you wrestle until the Gorilla gets tired." Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-84817364280410334912012-12-08T00:08:00.001-06:002012-12-08T00:08:46.623-06:00CCC#8 WoodstockIt’s been a long time since I have raced, a long time since I have written about racing. For those of you who have been keeping up with my season, you know it’s been at times challenging.
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The next race in the CCC series was in Woodstock, which is where Morleigh grew up, and where her daughter went to high school. She had been looking forward to seeing me race in her “hometown” since the year before when medical issues kept her from coming to watch. <br />
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We spent the night in LITH, and went to a diner on the Square in Woodstock (where they filmed Groundhog’s Day), and had breakfast at a little diner on the town square. We then headed to the park. <br />
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We arrived during the middle of the men’s 40+, and while we were unloading the car I realized that I had forgotten my helmet. Under normal circumstances this would be a very bad thing, but given our proximity to the home Morleigh generously offered to run back and get it. I wasn’t too worried about not having a helmet, figuring I could borrow one from a teammate, but it’s always good to have one’s own equipment so I took her up on her offer and went about to take some photos of the men’s 30+. <br />
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I took photos of the men’s 30+, and by the time that race was done Morleigh was back with my helmet so I shifted into full race mode. Morleigh grabbed my camera and took a few photos of the women’s 1-2-3 while I was out warming up and trying to get into the groove. The field was relatively small and with my 3 points from the first race, I had a good starting position in the fourth or fifth row. When the whistle sounded I pushed forward, and as is typical moved up into the top 30 of the field. I was able to hold that position through the climbs in the woods, but once we were out on the flats behind the tennis court the long slow fall started once again. But this time it was a slower and more gradual slide towards the back of the field. Morleigh was there by the tent every lap with camera in hand capturing photos of me , my teammates, and our compatriots in the Men’s 3 who have been under-represented @SnowyMtnPhotos because I’ve “been busy”. I remember thinking on my first 2 laps that she was in a bad spot shooting into the sun, but I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want to mess with her creative process by arm-chair photographing. She did get some great shots from that spot despite my fears, and moved around the corner and got even more great shots. <br />
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The race itself, removed from my expectations and desires for a top 20 finish, went well. I was stronger and rode faster than I had the week before, and finished about 10 places higher. On the last lap I was able to do something I had not done in a long time, I was actually able to make up a spot and reel in someone who had passed me earlier in the race. I don’t feel bad that was a junior who may very well have been in his first race longer than 30 minutes, because hey…It’s cross. It was touch and go after the last barrier because he was trying to close the gap, but I left it all on the course with a strong push down the hill, around our tent to the finish. <br />
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Morleigh was really excited about how well I did, I was pretty happy with how the race went, and it felt like I was starting to finally recover from the flu. We stayed around for two more races, the Men’s 1-2-3 and the women’s 4+/juniors races, and then we both ran out of steam. We love watching and photographing the 4s (it’s Morleigh’s favorite), but did not have the required energy. We returned home, napped, and then I spent the night and most of the next night editing. There were a lot of photos to go through, some of them very good. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-55835550411782101322012-11-01T01:14:00.002-05:002012-11-01T01:14:31.886-05:00CCC#7 Campton Cross (It's Halloween!)When we walked out of the house, there were snow flakes fluttering down from on high. They sparkled like diamonds in the rays of early morning light, but they did not even last long enough for us to get to the car before winter ceded the day back to fall. The temperatures climbed into the 40s as we headed south along Randall Rd, stopping for breakfast at a place called Burnt Toast.
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Part of our “night-before-a-race” ritual is to plan out our morning together. Morleigh usually opens the discussion by asking me what time I want to arrive at the venue, and we work backwards allotting time for all the things we need to do in the morning. We account for travel time, loading the car, packing our stuff so we can load it in the car, any bike maintenance that needs to happen, breakfast, getting dressed, and the ever foreboding actually getting out of bed. We’ve done this so many times together in the last 10 months that it’s become a science. If we want to get to the venue between 9:10am and 9:15am, we arrive at the venue between 9:10am and 9:15am.
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So we arrived at the park at about 9:13 AM, and coming over the hill we could see the Master’s 40+ racers winding their way about the course. We made our way into the parking lot, and then I loaded with our gear and we made our way to the team tent. I pulled out my camera first thing and snapped some photos of the master’s riders. As I watched the field go by, I became really confused. I couldn’t figure out who was leading because this man:
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Cyclocross/Campton/26226290_xPjbxr#!i=2182572362&k=NNHHDv4&lb=1&s=A" title=""><img alt="" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Cyclocross/Campton/i-NNHHDv4/0/M/Campton%2018-M.jpg" title="" /></a>
was absent. I found out later that he had a mechanical and DNF’d his race, so being the badass that he is, he got his bike fixed and just hopped into the next race with the young guns.
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I took a pre-ride lap between races, and was feeling marginally better than the week before, but still a long way from where I felt at Jackson Park. During the 30+ race I went to registration, picked up my number, and started to get ready for my race. The last few races I have taken lots of pictures during the 30+ race, and waited until the Women’s 123s to start getting ready for my race. While this has provided an abundance of great photos of Matt Silva, John Gotto, and company, I wanted to push for greater gender equity in my photo library. So I front-loaded my prep in the early race. Thankfully I have a wonderful and capable assistant, and together we captured some fine moments from the 30+ race despite my desire to focus on the women’s races.
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After the 30+ finished it was time for another pre-lap with my Cat 3 teammates. Alas, I remember a time when I could keep up with them and not get dropped pre-riding.
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After returning to the tent, it was time for the mish-mash race. I headed over to the starting area to try and capture some of the women’s 1-2-3, Master’s Men 50+, and Single Speed category race. The women definitely brought their A game when it came to costumes. There were a handful of men who were willing to dress up, but it was mostly skin-suits and race cut jerseys.
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Before I knew it, the bell was ringing for their final lap, and I was scrambling to get ready for my race. Don’t forget to take off those commuter lights! As we were circling the soccer field, I would be lying if I said I did not contemplate trading my number and 45 minutes of suffering in for another 45 minutes of taking pictures. But I was there to race, I had a number pinned on, and I was on my bike. My three early season points were still enough to get me in a decent place in the starting grid, and while waiting for our race to start we were treated to a wonderful monologue by Jostein Alvestad dressed as Thor.
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<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Cyclocross/Campton/26226290_xPjbxr#!i=2182591960&k=gprSwWm&lb=1&s=A" title="MORE HAMMER!"><img alt="MORE HAMMER!" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Cyclocross/Campton/i-gprSwWm/0/M/Campton%20235-M.jpg" title="MORE HAMMER!" /></a>
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The whistle blew, and we were off. I had enough gas in the tank to move up in the starting grid, to avoid the charlie foxtrot at the railroad ties, but as the course continued to wind up hill, the rest of the field accelerated and I stood still. I could not push my pedals hard enough, spin my legs fast enough, to hold onto my early gains.
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It felt like the entire field swam by on my first two laps. It was hard to keep riding, but I kept telling myself the only way to get back to where I wanted to be was to keep riding. There is no other way, so I pressed forward.
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I had no mechanicals, took my corners clean, had good remounts, kept my heart rate above 160, and just got destroyed on the hill climb and the straight aways. To paraphrase a line from a Python movie: I sailed as fast I as could without any sails.
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The bell lap was the most exciting lap of my race. I had a lead of about 50 yds on another rider, and watched helplessly as he chewed away the gap on the hill climb and the long power straight away. I was standing up, in my big-ring, and could not preserve the gap. He closed in before we hit the double barriers. He passed me going in to the double barriers, and I passed him again on the remount, he passed me back on the straight away, and I passed him back climbing the hill after the end of the off-camber chicane. I was able to hold him off as we wound back down the hill, and back up around the rock piles where Katie was throwing out twizzlers like they were going out of style. As we neared the top of the hill my body started to warn me that if I kept it up, I was going to start puking. I tried to keep pushing but it didn’t matter, he passed me just at the top again. I fought to maintain contact on the way down the hill, and around the 180 degree corner as we went through the woods. I closed the gap on the final off-camber S-turns by the tent, but as we hit the final two straight aways he had the lead and I was out of chips. He looked back, and started to stand up. I waved him off. I told him that he had it. I wasn’t going to kill myself to try and out sprint him at the line for whatever place we were at in the race. There was no one behind us, everyone else had been pulled.
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We didn’t stop riding by any means, we kept on at about the same pace. He looked back at one more time at final corner, and I waved him off again. I had made my move, and I couldn’t hold onto it. He beat me fair and square, and I wasn’t going to puke over what turned out to be 56th place. I was kind of happy that I didn’t get pulled. I was really happy that my back did not cramp up or otherwise give out. I had some side-stitches during the middle, but nothing like the suffering that I was dealing with during mid-late September. I was actually able to enjoy the rest of the day hanging out with my friends and girlfriend.
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I changed into warm dry clothes, took more photos (450+ on the day), ate a pulled rib sandwich, and had a great time hanging out. I am blessed to be a part of a creative vibrant community of people, and I promise next year I will try my best to come up with a good idea for a costume far enough in advance to actually race in said costume. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-21464572770553287272012-10-27T12:33:00.002-05:002012-10-27T12:33:22.443-05:00CCC#6 Hopkins ParkSo Thursday (Oct 18) night I rode 2 miles, the next day I commuted 4miles each way to and from work. Those were the first 10 miles I had ridden since racing at Dan Ryan Woods just shy of two weeks earlier. In the mean time I had been completely beaten down by the stomach flu. Friday night I swung by the shop to pick up my team order and get some bar end caps put into the Falcon (one popped out at DRW and I had to steal a cap from my road bike). So Saturday I did something completely unadvisable and the day before a race. I rode 30 miles in the morning nice and easy, and then switched from tubes to tubeless tires in the afternoon. I was pretty happy that I was able to do it all myself with only a hand-pump, but this information is clearly provided as foreshadowing. <br />
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Sunday morning my girlfriend drove into the city to pick me up, and we went out for breakfast at a local diner converted to...a diner. The Golden Pancake House redecorated, changed it's name to "The Edge" and opened a bar inside the pancake house. The food is still great but the concept is a little bit of a hot mess. <br />
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We drove to Sunset Park and found parking on the North side of the pond, where we could see most of the course. After the storms of the weekend before, it was a beautiful fall day, sunny with temperatures approaching the high 60s in the afternoon. We arrived during the 40+ race, and I had time to pick up my number, change, and get onto the course for the first pre-ride. It was bad. I could feel there was just nothing in my legs. The tires felt good, I didn't have any problems other than having a little bit too much air in them to start, but it's easy to let air out of a tire. <br />
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I made it back to the tent, got out my camera and snapped some photos of the 30+ racers heading around the course. Morleigh took some photos too while I was tinkering and getting ready. I got my number situated so I could spend a little time during the women's 1/2/3 race taking pictures, and went out for my second pre-ride at the end of the 30+. It was cool because most of my teammates are also 3s and we rolled out together for our second preride as a big group. The were sitting up and taking it easy, I was head down and pushing hard. I could not keep up with them. I got dropped by my teammates during a warm-up lap. <br />
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I had a conversation with my teammate Phil about my flu. <br />
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Me: I was pretty sick. I lost 8lbs in about 4 days. <br />
Phil: 8 lbs? That's a lot. Was it just water? <br />
Me: No, I think it was all power. <br />
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You can watch part of my race here.
<iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4JJ_k3Ubnqs" width="560"></iframe><br />
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For reference the cameraman is Omar. The guy directly in front of Omar is my friend Bryan Lee. I am directly in front of Bryan (and high-five him at .09). At 4:05 Omar passes my teammate Joe B who had an unfortunate incident with course tape getting wrapped up around his rear cassette. It cost him a few minutes at least. <br />
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Omar catches up to me heading up a hill at about 7:20. I am in the Sprockets kit just ahead of Omar until he passes me to "help" at 12:40. He helped me for a few seconds, but I could not hold on. I was pretty much out of gas at that point. I continued to slide backwards in the pack for another two or three laps in which I had two "hiccups" or burps rather. The first happened when I was making a 180 degree right turn off the pavement into the grass at the bottom of the hill just after the lone barrier. As I reached the apex on the asphalt my wheel "slipped" a little bit, but I don't think it slipped, I think I twisted the bead and let some air out. I almost lost control, had to alter my line and almost took out Derek. The second, and fatal burp happened coming off of heckle hill with two laps to go. I was rounding the course on the off camber (where Newt rolled a tubular 2 year earlier) and had a full loss of pressure. I was 100yds short of the wheel pit so I ran my bike over there and found a pump to see if I could re-inflate my wheel and keep going. When I could not get the bead to catch, I decided to throw in the towel. By the time I made it to our tent and back with a new wheel, the leaders would be by with one to go, and I would most likely have been in DFL with less than a lap to try and get back up into the pack. I told the official I was done, and walked back to the tent to get cleaned up. It was my first ever DNF in any race, but I think I'm okay with that. Had I not had the mechanical, based on the guys I was riding with at the time of my exit, I estimate I would have been somewhere between 60-65th place. <br />
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Earlier this week I was comparing the 34 minutes of that race to some of the other races I have done this year. Despite Sunset Park being a fast and relatively flat course my average speed was slower (12.7 vs 12.8mph) than Day 2 at Sun Prairie where I crashed twice and injured my back. <br />
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It looks like all the hard work and training that I put in during the winter, spring, summer and fall have now evaporated. It's time to crawl out of my pity pool and start over for next year. <br />
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<a href="http://www.velominati.com/the-rules/#10" target="_blank">"Training is like wrestling with a gorilla. You don't wrestle until you get tired, you wrestle until the gorilla gets tired."</a> - Greg Lemond<br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-11903701186425503412012-10-27T11:23:00.000-05:002012-10-27T11:27:09.955-05:00Delinquent: CCC#3 Dan Ryan WoodsI've been a more than a little bit delinquent in writing about my races. The last races I wrote about were more than a month ago, and I have taped three more numbers to my wall since then. I will try to be quick about it. <br />
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But as I sat down to try to somehow catch up with my season, I immediately started to procrastinate by re-reading the post I wrote in early September about my last WORS race. I found this quote: </div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"I hope my cross season goes half as well (as my WORS season)."</blockquote>
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So far, my cyclocross season has lived up to that mark. It's been about 50% as good as my mtb season. <br />
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The week after the USGP I was in so much pain that I couldn't even get on a bike. My back went from being in hurt to being injured. I pulled a muscle on the lower left side in one of my falls. I seriously considered going to the Doctor. My girlfriend was pushing for it, but I knew that the Doctor would only tell me to give it a few days. So I RICE'd the shit out of my back and hung out in the suburbs with my girlfriend all week. Before we left the city I dropped the Falcon off at the shop. At the beginning of the season I ordered a new AL Crux elite frame as an upgrade for my Tricross. I got word that it had shipped, so I left my bike in anticipation of it arriving sometime that week. I didn't make it back into the city to pick up my rebuilt bike until Saturday. Even though it was only a new frame, everything felt new. The shifting was amazing. Sunday we drove to Hopkin's Park, and I registered to race. <br />
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I had a decent enough start, but by the time we hit the first turn, my race started to take a turn. I think it was a six lap race. I don't know because I totally messed up my garmin by stopping instead of hitting the lap counter, so I pretty much was stopped for the entire race, and then started again at the end. Which, by the way, was pretty much how my actual race went. <br />
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It is a common story for the season. The first two-three laps were "okay" but the last two-three laps my back started to give out and I could not put out any power. I remember John from Half Acre heckling me: "You know Phil is in front of you" and me thinking, "Yes, yes he is, and there is nothing I can do about it." Him and 36 other Cat 3s. I finished 37th. <br />
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After Dekalb we came back into the city. I practiced twice on Tuesday, once on Thursday, rode my bike to work on Friday, and did nothing on Saturday. Sunday it was time to race again. <br />
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Dan Ryan Woods is a long flat course with a ridge that has to be climbed 3 times per lap. The Elevation chart for my race looks like an EKG. <br />
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http://connect.garmin.com/activity/236388803<br />
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The race started rough, with a crash right in front of me. I did not get tangled up in it, but it was more than a little harry to track stand and swerve around, and rebuild momentum. One of my teammates, Joe B, got caught up in it and got bit on the arm by someone's front chainring. I was back out in the pack by the time we finished the brief prologue and started to wind through the trees along the parking lot. <br />
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The "technical" feature of the course were a series of three obstacles spaced evenly apart on a straight away. I wrote my thoughts about those mini-barriers here (<a href="http://chicrosscup.com/2012/10/07/2012-dan-ryan-woods-pix-and-vids-and-race-reports/#comment-5799" target="_blank">at chicrosscup.com</a>) so will not repeat myself. Regardless, on my first lap I DID accidentally unclip on the landing between the first and second barriers and did almost endo over the second. Jumping a barrier with one foot clipped in was not fun. I thought for sure I pinch-flatted given how hard my rear wheel slammed into the barrier. <br />
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On subsequent laps though I found my rhythm, the front-rear pull-tuck with two pedal strokes between barriers. I didn't make much time, but nor did I lose it. I continued to race solidly mid-pack. Finished three places ahead of the week before, but felt nothing but exhausted at the end of the race. There was no post-race rush of "that was awesome." I felt worn out. <br />
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Then everything fell apart. My girlfriend and I left the race as the 4bs were finishing, and headed back to my apartment. She took a nap, while I did the laundry, dishes, and straightened up my apartment, and packed to spend a day or two out with her in the suburbs. I woke her up at about 9PM and I drove us out to LITH. When we arrived at her house, I was exhausted, and had a breakdown. I started to shiver uncontrollably. She put a thermometer in my ear and it read 103.9F. <br />
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I spent the next four days with a fever, and stomach flu. I was too sick to watch TV, too sick to eat or drink, too sick to do much of anything but lay on the couch and shiver and sweat.
My fever peaked on Tuesday while my girlfriend was out running errands at 106F. That was the highlight of the week, and the next day my fever receeded down into the 103-105 range. Thursday I woke up and felt human again despite the fact that my temperature was at 101F. Friday I was at a normal temperature and could start the process of healing. <br />
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We skipped the races in Wacaunda and Carpentersville that weekend, despite their proximity (the latter was 15minutes away) as the rain and cold and mud did not seem conducive to a continued recovery. I stayed off the bike for another four days, and did pedal anywhere until Morleigh dropped me off at the train station on Thursday night so I could head into the office for a meeting on Friday. The two miles I pedaled home, and the 8 miles to and from the office on Friday was the first I had ridden in almost two weeks. During that time off the bike I was seriously contemplating bagging the rest of cross season. Between the back injuries and the flu, it has been a miserable year. But after a pep-talk from Morleigh about not quitting for the wrong reasons, I registered for Sunset Park. More misery awaits. <br />
<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-19212389700532823702012-10-02T22:17:00.002-05:002012-10-26T21:16:09.163-05:00USGP Day 1I generally like to write things in chronological order, but as the time spent on <a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/" target="_blank">photography</a> has increased my time for writing has decreased. Somehow I missed writing anything about the first day of the USGP race. <br />
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We arrived in Sun Prairie on Friday night later than we had planned (traffic), but still with enough time to check into the hotel, and head to SP for a few loops around the course. The course started out virtually identical as to what I remember from last year, but the back half was more than a little bit different. The approach to the Hillside Strangler involved an extra trip from the bottom to the top before dropping back down and in for a run-up with three railroad ties as opposed to the two of the previous year. <br />
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Honestly at this point I don't remember much about the race. Because I registered a few days before close, I was solidly at the back of the pack starting in 99th place. I got into the starting grid on the left side, so I could make a move around the outside, but when the time came for an all-out sprint to move up I opted to move up a little bit, but not completely burn a match and just move with the flow of the group. There were some back-ups and slow-downs that can be expected from being in the back 25% of a pack, but when things started to clear up it left me with some gas in the tank and some opportunities to move up. <br />
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I ran a clean race, and even rode the strangler one or two times. My back tightened up on me after the first lap making it very difficult to dismount, remount, and run. Granted that CX makes it difficult to dismount, remount, and run in general, but the back pain took away the high end speed. I was also working with a pretty significant side-stitch during the middle of the race. But I rode pretty well, didn't crash, had only one mechanical. As I was coming up the Strangler the final time I shouldered my bike to run it, and as I was setting it down the rear brake got caught on my speedsuit, and I ended up hitting my bike with my thigh dropping the chain. As I paused to fix it, I was passed by a single rider, who I then set in my mind to try to get back before the finish. I tried to make a move on the inside and beat him to the last corner before the home straight, but he felt me coming and took an early apex pinching me into the fence. It was by no means a dirty move, it was no dirtier than the pass I was attempting. But I ended up slamming on my brakes and having to let him go buy before I could finish. I could have tried to hammer it and out sprint him, but seriously, did I really want to try to out sprint a guy for 67th place on day one of a two day race? Had I not dropped my chain, the spot would have been mine to lose, but he passed me fair and square, and took a good line into the last corner. He could have 67th place. I was happy that I was able to move up 32 spots in the field. An accomplishment I certainly did not take for granted the next day. <br />
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<br />Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-44006299039404280522012-09-25T12:18:00.002-05:002012-09-25T12:18:58.136-05:00Chicrosscup #1: Jackson Park - The GrindThe Chicrosscup season started on a Saturday this year because of a scheduling conflict in the park. It was really different having to get ready on Friday for a Saturday AM Chicross race. I had to bake my traditional sandwich bread in the evening, and get the Falcon cleaned and tuned up to the best of my ability after commuting home from work.<br />
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My girlfriend Morleigh had made other plans that Saturday, so I was expecting to strap on a heavy backpack and make my way south by CTA bus and by pedal. My morning did not start out well, having awoke before my alarm to troubling dreams. But as I was eating breakfast on Saturday morning I got a text from my girlfriend.<br />
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Morleigh: You are not going to believe who I found?<br />
Me: Who?<br />
Morleigh: Look out into the courtyard!!!!<br />
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So I looked out into the courtyard, and there she sat, holding one of my pillows that had ended up at her house after the WORS race the weekend before. She had teased me about it being absorbed into her Borg-like collection of pillows all week. Her plans had fallen through that morning so she decided to surprise me with a ride to my race.<br />
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We loaded up her car, strapping a trunk rack onto her trunk, and headed south. We had more trouble finding parking this time than we did at the Relay, but we found parking by the golden statue, and made our way back to the venue. <br />
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We arrived in the middle of the Master's 40+ race and saw Newt crushing the field, and shortly there-after hopped onto the course for a quick pre-ride. The course was different, with the short-back and forth section being greatly improved by being rotated 90 degrees and filling the same space with longer straights, wider corners, and more opportunity for passing. <br />
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Chernoh and I took off for an extended warm-up, making the same loop we had two weeks before but in reverse. We returned to the starting area and waited for our time to roll into the starting grid. Based on my cross-results points I was being loaded in 51st out of about 90 riders. I chose a position on the inside fence in the seventh row, in what felt like a very narrow lane. My strategy was to sprint out in the clear as people pushed to the outside of the course to get a good line on the first turn. The whistle blew, the field surged and I sprinted to the best of my ability. Clearly there wasn't time to count, but it felt like I had moved up from the 50s into the 20s. <br />
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From there on it was just a grind around the course, working on standing up on each of the corners and pushing it on the straights. I tried to hold off faster riders, and maintain contact and reel in the rider who was in front of me. The race was smooth and blurry with vibrant greens and blue skies replacing the dreary gray rainy memories from the relays. <br />
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There were only two moments moments of note. On my second lap, as I was navigating the steep off-camber hairpin turn on the far south end of the course I pedalled too soon and ended up pedaling into the ground and lifting my rear wheel off the ground. I didn't wash out, but did lose all momentum and was standing there on the uphill straddling my bike. It was too steep to put a foot on the pedal and try to ride, so I had that momentary pause as I wondered how to extricate myself. Do I dismount or waddle? I waddled a few steps up this hill, and hopped back up on my saddle and kept going. <br />
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The second moment was on the final lap, I was about 3 seconds behind a teammate, and was wondering whether or not I could close the gap before the finish. When he washed out in the long grass I had my answer. I continued to push the pace around the corner, and just as he was getting back up to speed I coming out of the final corner and building up a head of steam. I did have a moment of guilt passing a teammate after a moment of misfortune, but it passed as I hammered down the home straight and crossed the finish line. <br />
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My goal for the race was to get into the top 30 and earn some ChiCrossCup points so I could get better staging. I finished 28th, and transitioned into photography mode very happy with my performance. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-74767098758272895702012-09-25T11:39:00.001-05:002012-09-25T12:46:43.078-05:00USGP Planet Bike Cup Day 2: Worst. Race. Ever.The second day of the Planet Bike Cup started off well. Morleigh and I slept in a few extra minutes before getting up for breakfast, and starting our day. This compressed our time at the park before my race started so we did not see the beginning of the first race. We arrived in the middle of the Cat 4 race, but instead of rushing to get ready to pre-ride I decided that I wasn't going to go out for a pre-ride and get warm-and-then-cold. So it hit me rather suddenly after the lady's first lap that my race was up next and felt a moment of panic. I put my pre-race prep into high gear getting my layers sorted out, heading out around the block for a long slow warm-up, and then making my way back to the staging area to line up at the back of the field. <br />
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My strategy was going to be similar to the day before, work my way to the outside, and power past as many as I could around the first turn. But I had already made a tactical mistake, in that I picked a spot in the center of the starting grid. The whistle blew and the mass of men and bikes surged forward, I tried to work my way to the outside. It wsa then that I discovered my second tactical mistake. I had forgotten to shift from my small to large front chain ring while I was waiting for the race to start. I had not been having any problems shifting so I decided to sacrifice a little speed on the pavement and power-down to shift up. However, I couldn't get it to grab on the top ring. It was skipping and jumping. After about 5 pedal strokes I decided to give up, and just drop back down on the small ring, but in doing so my chain fell off to the inside. As we rolled over the starting line the field pulled away as I was spinning my cranks trying to get a tooth to catch. As we turned the corner I dismounted, fixed my chain, and then remounted now 100 yds back in DFL.<br />
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I shook my head and thought about the nice training ride I had before me.<br />
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Because I didn't pre-ride I was taken completely surprise by the changes in the course from Day 1 to Day 2. I was expecting to gain some ground winding through the pine-trees and instead turned sharp left and had yet another straight-away to deal with. Once I made it through the modified sections though, it didn't actually take all that long to re-attach to the field. I caught back up to the first riders as we headed back down through the long straight-away that went past the wheel pit and the starting area. I could see my friend Mike half-a-dozen riders ahead. As we made our way down to the bottom of the hill by the playground equipment, I started to catch and pass riders. On the way up past the playground equipment I got ahead of Mike and in the middle of four or five riders moving together. As we speed back down along the edge of the parking lot and around the final curve before the big uphill I was on the inside line surrounded by riders.<br />
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I was aggressively leaning into the corner, at the edge of friction when the worst possible thing happened.<br />
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I hit a bump.<br />
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I did not have enough weight forward and my front wheel bounced off the bump and went airborne, and my bike went all Newtonian mechanics on me. It flew out sideways and I piled straight into the ground.<br />
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Kudos to those riding around me that my wash-out did not turn into a huge pile up. Somehow neither I nor my bike were ridden over, which I considered to be somewhat of a miracle. As I stood up and dusted myself off, checking myself and then my bike for damage, I passed the initial flight check, got on the correct side of my bike, and then remounted.<br />
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I tried to pedal and looked down. My chain had dropped again. I dismounted, fixed my chain, and then remounted again. I was once again DFL.<br />
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I scrambled to the top of the hill, and saw my girlfriend taking pictures of me. I got off the main line, rolled close to her and tried to, without screaming at her, ask her to stop documenting this, the worst race ever, with photos.<br />
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I made it down to the bottom of the hill and decided to spite the course by riding up the hillside strangler. I almost lost it, having to put a foot down after the second railroad tie, but I was able to put down enough power to get moving, clipped in, and make it up to the top. It was one small personal victory on what was shaping up to be a very bad day.<br />
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Once I made it to the top of the hill and rolled out past the starting line, I started the difficult task of trying to mentally reengage in a race that had gone horribly wrong, and reconnecting with a pack that was long gone. It was as I started to try and put down power on the "roadie-friendly" straights and the initial adrenaline of crashing had worn off that I discovered a host of "engine" problems. I had a big painful charlie-horse on my right calf that was preventing me from putting down power, and my back was knotted up with spasms which was also making it difficult to pedal. Of the 10 units of suffering I had available for pushing my bike forward, I was now using about six units coping with the physical pain I was in. To put it in more concrete terms, on a flat straight away a tail wind I was struggling to get over 15mph.<br />
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On my second lap, as I looped back around the top of the strangler I saw the lens of my camera pointed at me again. Once again, I pulled off the well worn line, over to the fence and asked my girlfriend as politely as I could muster to please put the camera down. I needed no photos of myself remind me of this fiasco. <br />
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The pain was too much and I was unable to ride the strangler a second time. Instead I dismounted, and pushed my bike up the hill. Running felt oddly better than walking, so I sprinted up the hill to the best of my ability. Over the next two laps I pushed forward trying to reconnect with the end of the field, and it felt like I was able to shrink the gap on the shaded "low" technical section of the course, but I would lose those gains on the sunny roadie-friendly "high" plains.<br />
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There was another 8 minutes of suffering alone, as I wondered if I would be able to finish the race. I kept picturing my name at the bottom of the list of results and wondered in the back corners of my mind what the difference was between DNF and DFL, and if it mattered whether or not it was one or the other. I kept working to shake those images from my head, and self-talk myself through the course one straight away at a time. I also thought about next week, and whether or not I would even be able to ride again in seven days. I made the decision that I was not going to preregister for Hopkin's Park in the middle of my third lap.<br />
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When I got to the backside of the strangler I saw my girlfriend standing there, and instead of being obscured by a camera lens, I saw her face, and she had a big smile on her face as she cheered "Let's goooooo Gra! I'm so proud of you!" <br />
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I took a mental picture of that smile, and seeing that smile again became my motivation for riding another lap. That smile was definitely worth another 8 minutes of suffering. I dismounted and ran the strangler again, and pressed on committed now to finishing another lap. <br />
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The fourth lap, I had finally closed the gap to the point where it felt like I might be able to reconnect with the end of the field, and get out of DFL. As I was rounding the final curve to head on the long straightaway that ran out to the pine-trees, I put my head down and started to block out the pain so I could hammer as hard as I could, and instead of hammering I got hammered. Somehow I swerved inward just enough to catch one of 2-inch square wooden stakes that was holding up course tape. I hit it hard enough that it twisted my handlebars out of alignment with my fork. I hit it hard enough to rip it out of the ground. Needless to say I crashed in epic fashion. I heard a collective groan from the mechanics in the pit, and Rosanna yelled at me...asking if I was okay. I picked myself up, picked my bike up, and looked down to see that my chain had fallen off again. I reached down, and put my chain back little ring yet again. As I started to ride away and one of the mechanics yelled that I should not leave the stake at an angle like it was so I looped back, and ripped it out completely and threw it on the ground. I then pushed off again. I wanted to see that smile one more time.<br />
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I swung through the pit and had the SRAM neutral support re-align my handlebars, and talked with Roseanna a bit. The mechanic finished his adjustment and said "This should be good enough to finish the race" and I laughed to myself because I knew my race was kind of over before it started. When I made it down to the bottom of the hill by the playground equipment the leaders lapped me, and I knew from the starting instructions they were going to pull people who were lapped to make the last lap clean for the leaders. I figure this meant it was my last lap, so as I circled the top of the hill above the strangler, I soaked in my girlfriend's smile, and passed a single rider with a flat tubular before heading back down to tackle the Strangler one last time. I decided as a matter of principle to ride it, and without even so much as a foot down I burned my final match getting to the top. I wound my way down the hill to the pavement as before rounding the final corner I made eye contact with the official, and she whistled me off the course after just 34 minutes. It was by all accounts the worst race ever. It was the most physically painful, mentally draining, and emotionally disheartening race of my short career as a bike racer. But my girlfriend still kissed me, she still told me she was proud of the fact that I finished, she told me was amazed that I was able to finish with my head held high and she was proud that I displayed nothing but class in the face of so much pain and adversity. Yeah, I guess I did. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-38544973500010959302012-09-14T01:25:00.002-05:002012-10-26T21:25:56.455-05:00WORS#10-TreadfestIn March I sat down with my girlfriend and explained that I wanted to register for the WORS series, and see what I could do about maybe trying to win my category. I pulled out the new WORS handbook and we looked at what it would take. For sport racers the series was scored as a best of seven series. Last year I made it to four WORS races, so my goal was to race seven races, and see how I did. <br />
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I was surprised when her response to my idea was "Okay, let's do it." </div>
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I was like "Do what?" </div>
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She told me that she would go with me to the WORS races, all seven of them. We could make weekends out of it, driving up on Saturday to pre-ride and racing on Sunday. She'd take care of transportation and I could take care of lodging. So we made plans and I drew seven circles around seven numbers on the back of the handbook. The last of which was the number 10. Although there are 12 races in the WORS series, my MTB season ends when the <a href="http://www.chicrosscup.com/" target="_blank">Chicrosscup</a> begins. It was a risky plan, I would have to race well at every race to hit my goal, and cross my fingers there were no bad mechanicals. </div>
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The last race on the calendar was Treadfest. When I explained that Treadfest took place at the Grand Geneva lodge, she jumped on the opportunity and asked me if a stay at a nice resort, could be her treat for being good race support all season. I told her it was a deal. </div>
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If you've been reading any of my entries you know that she has been amazing race support all season long, so our trip to Lake Geneva started with a day off of work on Friday, and a quick drive up I-94N to Hwy 50W. We spent two night at the resort enjoying the amenities and taking advantage of the proximity to get a pre-ride in much earlier in the day than normal. On Saturday I was done riding by 2PM whereas many WORS weekends we haven't even arrived at the venue until after 3PM. The extra time to recover definitely seemed to help on Sunday. Our room had a patio off the back, and so as it rained early on Saturday night we went and sat on the patio and enjoyed the sounds of guitar music wafting over from the bar. It was very relaxing and tranquil looking over the lake with the lit fountain in the lake, and the sound of gentle rain washing over the world. The rain clouds broke at 11PM and I couldn't help but sneak down by the water and capture some images from the wild. </div>
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Art/NightShots/24968819_hXQSBf#!i=2081612224&k=zS9t2KR&lb=1&s=A" title=""><img alt="" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Art/NightShots/i-zS9t2KR/0/M/Treadfest-13-M.jpg" title="" /></a>
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The proximity also helped on Sunday morning. The resort offered a trolley service so guests could get around the resort. We hatched a plan to use this to our advantage. I woke up early on Sunday (at 6AM) and drove our minivan up to ski-lodge and got the best parking spot in the house. It was literally the only car in the lot. I then rode my bike back to our room, and found Morleigh waiting for me on the veranda. We went to the resort's Cafe and enjoyed a nice buffet breakfast, and went back to bed for a little nap. At 9AM we woke again, this time for real, and I packed up the remaining belongings into my Mission Workshop bag, and I rode my bike back up the road. Morleigh took the shuttle to the ski lodge. Of course in all of my planning for our long weekend, I forgot to pre-reg and had to borrow a check from Morleigh to pay for registration. </div>
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From there it was a pretty normal race day. I helped Morleigh get her spectating gear to the best spot in the house, the top of the ski hill, and she camped out up there all day with my parents. I returned to the parking lot to get ready, but there wasn't much left to do. The weather was cool enough that I was not planning on carrying a Camelpak, in fact I didn't even fill my nutrient bottles all the way. I figured I would take half a bottle with nutrients to start, and then if I needed I would grab water from the aid station, and a second half-bottle of nutrients from my race-support on a latter lap. I did put a tube and CO2 into my jersey pocket, just in case. </div>
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For my pre-ride I headed back down the road leading to the resort, and got to do something I had never done before which was ride a bicycle down a runway. The runway at the Resort was closed this year, and riders were streaming up and down both sides. It was an "I wish I had my camera" moment, but I had not taken any photos that morning, as I was solely focused on getting myself ready to race. I had already cut it a little close before getting out to warm up. By the time I made it back to the starting area I had time for one quick burn up the hill to get my legs ready, and then returned to the starting line to wait for my race to begin. </div>
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I was relieved at the starting line when Don announced there would be only two laps. I had spent the day before mentally girding myself for three laps and nine times up the hill, and I am not ashamed to admit I was happy that I did not have to face those demons. The leaders of the age groups get their call-ups ahead of the leaders for the clydesdales, so a clydesdale call-up is almost always worth a spot on the second row. Its a little bit of a guessing game as to which of the riders in the front is going to get a good shot off the line, or where the best place is to be to get an opportunity to squeeze out or around someone. I lined up behind Todd because I knew he was generally one of the fastest in my wave, but it turned out to be a bit of a mistake because he was in the middle. Starting on an edge opens up an opportunity to go out and around, but it I chanced the middle. I kept reminding myself to stay calm. It wasn't the first time up the hill that mattered, it was the third. </div>
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I love that Don reminds us "to treat each other kind" before he screams "GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!"</div>
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As the pack surged forward I found myself kind of trapped in the middle as we went up and over the first ridge. As we hit the second and more significant slope, a break opened up and I pushed my way up to maintain contact with the leaders. My girlfriend took these photos of the start of the first lap:<br />
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<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/Treadfest/25321805_S2rrmD#!i=2081679773&k=HrcbpLX&lb=1&s=A" title=""><img alt="" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/Treadfest/i-HrcbpLX/2/M/Treadfest-32-M.jpg" title="" /></a>
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/Treadfest/25321805_S2rrmD#!i=2081679871&k=HxrnRW8&lb=1&s=A" title=""><img alt="" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/Treadfest/i-HxrnRW8/1/M/Treadfest-33-M.jpg" title="" /></a>
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/Treadfest/25321805_S2rrmD#!i=2081679964&k=mt465D3&lb=1&s=A" title=""><img alt="" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/Treadfest/i-mt465D3/2/M/Treadfest-34-M.jpg" title="" /></a><br />
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I was right where I wanted to be, and in pretty much the same position as I was in at Cam Rock, following Aaron and Todd up the hill (I pushed the pace to keep ahead of Marcus before we made the corner at the top). Despite my attempts to not over do it on the first climb, the cool air was very hard on my throat and I was breathing heavy, panting as we made the 90 degree turn onto the level before the first descent. At the top of the first hill I was third in my wave, but Aaron and Todd were already at the bottom of the hill again before I really started to descend. Thankfully I'm very good at going downhills and was able to carry momentum around the corner, and caught up to both of them at the base of the second climb. <br />
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When we hit the second climb we were already running into stragglers from the prior wave. I pushed it a little harder up the second climb to make certain to get clear of the riders from my wave, and to get around some riders from the next wave. I was concerned about getting stuck behind slower riders on the downhill single track. So I got into the clear at the top of the second hill and zoomed down the single track shoot again, and immediately went to work on the third climb. I had not shaken the competition. I could hear gears and pedals and heavy breathing right behind me, so I kept pushing it to the top. We passed another bunch of riders from earlier waves before we hit the top of the third climb. When we hit the single track at the top I needed to pause for a moment because my throat was raw. Cycling competitively for the last few years has made me acutely aware of how much of a challenge it is for my body to transition from warm weather adaptation to cold. My throat and lungs were rubbed raw from sucking in the relatively cool air. But there was no time to rest. <br />
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Todd was right on my tail, and anxious to keep going. In the first few sections of single track, when we would come up on slower riders I would pause behind them for a moment trying to catch enough of a breath to announce "leader of next wave" or "when you find a spot I'd like to pass", but before I could Todd would already have announced our presence. It was then up to me to find a place to squeeze by. On the "Son of a Butch" climb I finally asked him if he wanted to pass me, because I needed to catch my breath, but he said I was doing just fine so we continued on, riding behind some slower riders up the hill and down through the rockless garden (they took all the rocks out of the sport section this year) into "Heartbreak canyon". We hit some double track and we were able to jump that group of riders before getting into the next section of single track which happened to be where I was stung by a bee and crashed the year before. By the time we hit the next pile up of riders, the course opened into a long section of double track. I stood up and hammered, and was so happy to have taken the week off because in doing so I found my high-gear again. I passed another handful of riders from an earlier wave. Todd stayed right with me. The trails were in incredible condition. They were damp but not muddy, tacky without being slippery, and compared to the dry dusty mess they could have been (i.e., think Subaru Cup) it was really great conditions for a race. <br />
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We continued working together like this, me in front doing the pulling, and him on my wheel calling out our presence and helping to push me forward. It felt like we were making really great time. As we were approaching the end of the first lap, I started to hit my first wall. Todd made a move to pass me when we hit the first climb of the second lap. <br />
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<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/Treadfest/25321805_S2rrmD#!i=2081680048&k=M235Kn6&lb=1&s=A" title=""><img alt="" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/Treadfest/i-M235Kn6/1/M/Treadfest-40-M.jpg" title="" /></a><br />
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Todd made his move, and I got a really bad "side-stitch" (i.e., cramping in my abdomen). This was of course not a good sign for me. Todd also started to play good chess, putting slower riders between us, but the course was still open as I struggled up the second hill. The side-stitch had abated by the time I reached to top of the third climb, and I had only lost a few spots. Fortunately for me, the gentlemen between us were uber-courteous and made plenty of room for me to squeeze by. I think I was on Todd's wheel again before the "Son of a Butch" climb or shortly there after. I followed Todd's wheel for maybe half of the second lap or a little bit longer, and all along the way we found either open space to ride at our own speed, or courteous riders who made space for us to pass in the single track. I was a little surprised at how much the some parts of the course had dried between our first lap and our second lap. There were places where the color of the single track changed from dark moist chocolate brown to dry ash already. In another few hours they might even start to get dusty and slippery again. But that was someone else's worry. My race was "almost" over. As we were approaching the "Roller Coaster" I had a thought that I wanted to ride that section of trail at least one time without anyone in front of me. I called out to Todd that I was ready to take the lead and surged by him as we were transition from double to single track. <br />
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My first thought was that I just wanted to take that descent as fast as I could knowing the uphill was steeper and longer and would absorb any extra speed. I wanted the Roller Coaster all to myself. After enjoying that little thrill ride, my second thought was of Alterra and how I caught up to Todd at the bottom of the hill and then watched him surge away from me up the hill while I bonked. He had a great finishing kick, and I thought I had better open up some space between us in the single track. It felt like when I was behind him that I could ride faster than him through the technical stuff, so I took off. It took a while for a gap to open up, and I was once again aided by the kindness of my competitors who went out of their way to work with me on tight single track to allow me to sneak by them. I'm sure they did the same for Todd, but it seemed like I never had to wait much for an opening, and there were not that many people in the single track. For most of the second lap it was just Todd and I riding together at our own pace, and not being slowed down by anyone. <br />
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As the course opened up into the final double-track section leading to the finish I did not look back. I stood up and hammered up the hill passing at least four riders who were huffing and puffing their way to the finish. As I rolled down the hill and around the last corner towards the finish my speed hit 25mph and I crossed the line ahead of everyone from my wave. I could tell from the running time which was at 1h11min that I had a phenomenal race. It was the perfect icing on a great WORS season. <br />
<br />
I knew from Excel work earlier in the week that I already clinched the Series lead and the title as the "Fastest fat-kid in the 3rd grade". This was my 8th win in my category, and my overall time of 1:03:29.3 gave me the highest finish I have ever had in a WORS race which was 16th place in the Sport category, and for the first time I came in ahead of every other rider in my age category. This means that I met all of my goals for my MTB season (Series championship, breaking into the top 20 of sport, qualifying for Nationals next year, and taking some incredible photographs). I hope my cross season goes half as well. <br />
<br />
It took me a while to make it back up the hill to greet Morleigh and my family as I stopped and chatted with other riders I knew from Chicago about the races they had just had and the races they were about to have. <br />
<br />
This season has been truly blessed and I am grateful for the hard work of WORS staffers and volunteers for making the races possible. I would like to extend thanks to all the riders who start before and after I do in different category and the same. You are an incredible bunch of people, gifted and beautiful, and it is the generous and kind spirit of WORS racers that keeps me coming back for more. The vibe of road racing and crits in Chicago is uber-competitive and even a causal weeknight group road-ride here can get more tense than the most serious WORS race. As I waited to step on the podium and watch the top 60+ riders accept their medals, I can only hope that I am fortunate enough to still be racing WORS in another 25 years. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-74673652122111963372012-09-01T18:44:00.001-05:002012-09-05T21:31:10.845-05:00So it begins. xXx Relay CrossThe choice was pretty easy to make. Drive to Green Bay and race in
the lone "marathon-style" WORS race, or partner up with my friend
Chernoh and take on Chicago at the first cross-race in the Midwest.
With my solid performance at the Subaru Cup, my goals for the WORS
series which I committed to last winter were wrapped up. The cost of
driving to Northern WI week after week was taking it's toll, and I was
very much looking forward to a nice little race against friends near
home.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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.<br />
<br />
<br />
That was really the last memory I have from the first lap. It may have had something to do with <a href="http://connect.garmin.com/activity/215513705" target="_blank">this.</a> Or the part of <a href="http://connect.garmin.com/activity/215513705" target="_blank">this</a>
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. <br />
<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://morningbirdchicago.com/" target="_blank"> this man was coming out of the transition area.</a> <br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Cyclocross/CX2010-2011/23087402_t82FVd#%21i=1858316349&k=6kNtT8P&lb=1&s=A" title=""><img alt="" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Cyclocross/CX2010-2011/i-6kNtT8P/3/M/CycloCrossRelay-3-M.jpg" title="" /></a>
<br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
"Oh no...not again." <br />
<br />
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. <br />
<br />
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. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-784527924410287611.post-5526295896170126392012-09-01T11:02:00.000-05:002012-09-01T11:02:52.652-05:00WORS #8: PostludeAfter finishing my race, I started the slow transition between racer and photographer. It's not easy to think about taking pictures, or anything really, when the blood is deprived of oxygen and glycogen. So I made it back to our tent, sat down for a while, ate some food, and started to feel human again. The Cat 1 race started, and I had my camera out shooting some of <a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupCat1-2/24910385_StZWkg#%21i=2040090135&k=rVrQg8S&lb=1&s=A" title="">my friends</a> as they screamed by.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupCat1-2/i-rVrQg8S/0/L/SubaruCup-144-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupCat1-2/i-rVrQg8S/0/L/SubaruCup-144-L.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I also washed off the dust and dirt off of myself, and off of my bike.<br />
<br />
By the time I was really ready and able to shoot, the Cat 1 race was over, and the Pro women had started. <br />
<br />
I got some great photos of the pro women coming down through "Roots Rocks" (the section of single track immediately above the hill from our tent) including a series of photos of the series winner going up and over her handlebars on the first lap.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupPros/i-RQWsfGT/2/L/SubaruCup-205-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupPros/i-RQWsfGT/2/L/SubaruCup-205-L.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
My girlfriend wanted to take the ski-lift up to the top at least once, so we did this during the women's race, and then worked our way back down. Morleigh had a great time (my parents came up in the lift a few minutes after us) and she hung out with them while I ran back and forth across the slopes ambushing riders on various climbs and descents. I learned a valuable lesson the previous year at the second cyclcross race. If you stand next to another photographer while you take pictures, your pictures will indistinguishable from one another. So I avoided the crowded places, and sought to find places where no one else would go.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupPros/i-S8WrwDQ/2/L/SubaruCup-284-L.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupPros/i-S8WrwDQ/2/L/SubaruCup-284-L.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I got more beat up and scratched up running through the woods taking photos than I did racing.<br />
<br />
We made it back down by the time the women finished, and my parents were ready to leave. I escorted them to the parking lot, and brought our van back to the top near our tent so it would be easier to break down. Morleigh was pretty tired at that point, so she stayed in the tent while I went to shoot the start of the men's race.<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupPros/24865885_kTQxGB#%21i=2035724799&k=bzz4L4P&lb=1&s=A" title="Sam Schultz (Subaru Trek) scans the course ahead as he waits for the starter's pistol."><img alt="Sam Schultz (Subaru Trek) scans the course ahead as he waits for the starter's pistol." src="http://snowymountain.smugmug.com/Sports/Mountain-Biking/SubaruCupPros/i-bzz4L4P/2/M/SubaruCup-357-M.jpg" title="Sam Schultz (Subaru Trek) scans the course ahead as he waits for the starter's pistol." /></a>
<br />
<br />
I got some great shots of the men racing, again focusing on the places that others were not going. The one regret I have was never making it back over to Fern Gully as I think there were some amazing shots waiting to be captured. But even before the men were done racing, I reached a point where I felt like I had captured enough images, and put my camera away so I could pack up the tent. <br />
<br />
I had more than 600+ shots to sort through and edit already, so my week ahead was going to be a full one. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0