Jingle Cross Mud

Peanut butter mud was the rule of the day at Jingle Cross. Friday night was wild. 25 lined up in my 45+ race at dusk. By the end of the race, it was completely dark and we were racing under the lights. I didn't preview the course because I would have had to wash my bike before the race-I figured that it wouldn't make that much difference anyway. Had a decent warmup, though.

The 3.5 km course consisted of a lot of flat riding, with some muddy stretches mixed in, and two nasty freaking climbs, both unridable. The first was the climb up Mt. Krumpet, which was really difficult-100 ft elevation change running through sticky, gooey mud to the top, then a greasy off-camber descent with two hairpins. The other was a short rise that turned into an unpleasant greasy run-up, with an equally greasy descent into the area between the bluffs and the livestock pens, which was wet sticky mud.

We lined up in the grid and they said we'll start in 30 seconds. I reached down to adjust my shoe buckle, and the start bell rang, so I was in 20th place instantly. Marvelous. I though it was disaster. I chased hard, but didn't seem to make up much ground. Then we got to the run-up to the top of Krumpet. I must have passed 10-12 guys on that climb-it helps to have some natural running talent. I ran the descent as well. With the fading light, finding your line was really difficult. If I had a chance to spend a bit of time practicing it, I probably could have ridden it, but that didn't happen. So I ran it every time and ended up passing people riding their bikes. Every time up the hill I made up huge amounts of time, so that by the last lap I had worked myself back to 7th, then passed Scott Fleming and Dan Hansen on the climb to move into 5th. I almost caught John Meehan for 4th, only a couple of seconds ahead of me; if I had an average start, I would have definitely been 4th and been in the running for the podium.

No such luck Saturday. Bottom of my shoes got wet, so I slipped and could not clip in at the start, thus relegated to the back of the pack again. The Krumpet run-up took a different path and was a freaking mess. The descent was through the crappy mud we ran up on Friday. Dropped a chain on first lap, and stopped three times to clean out my brakes/fork/seat stays so that the wheels would actually rotate-mud would be mixed with grass on the run-up and create an adobe brick in two places on your bike. Lost at least 1.5 minutes with the stops to fix the bike. Horrible day, ended up 9th out of 20 starters.

Deanna and I managed to get a case of bad food poisoning from Chipotle burritos that evening, so no racing on Sunday. That's it, I'm done for the year. For the 14 races this fall: 1 DNF, 3 firsts, 2 seconds, 2 thirds, 3 fourths, 1 fifth and 2 ninth places. A very good season, to say the least.

Some excellent photos here, in particular, the womens 4 race, which was the highlight of the weekend for the male racers.

The end is nigh...

...if this exists.

Lincoln CX

As the only racer from the team, I tried to give us decent representation. Both days I was racing master's 40+ (having upgraded to cat 2 last week, I didn't see much point in racing the open class-maybe next year). Day 1 went well. It was a very strong field, with half of the racers from KC, and many of the better ones making the trip. Had the best start I've ever had in a cross race, and stayed with the leaders. After 2 laps, things started shaking out. Tom Price started to pull away from the field (how shocking-he only just won the 45+ at the USGP Mercer Cup in NJ last weekend), Steve Songer was about 15 seconds behind, and I was another 5-10 behind Steve, with his teammate Andy Lucas sitting on my wheel (Andy's been injured and had a sub-par fall, which is why I could keep up). Team tactics normally don't play a role in cx, but occasionally they do, and this was one of those times. I got no help from Andy to catch Steve, so I tried mightily to do it on my own. Got closer a couple of times, but never quite close enough to close it. As I expected, Andy jumped me at the beginning of the bell lap, got a 3-5 second gap, and stayed away for third, while I ended up fourth. Nonetheless, I was happy with the result-it showed that I can hang with the fast masters and compete for podium spots in KC.

Today was just as much fun. Troy, Craig and company came up with another great variant of the course-quite hard, but really fun to ride, flowing beautifully. Another excellent start, I slotted into the front, and had only one person jump ahead, Josh Taylor up from KC. Jim Winklepleck, Dan Hansen and Kevin Burke were on my tail. After the third lap, I dropped the three behind me and yo-yoed between 1 second and 5 seconds behind Josh. Finally with two to go, I saw that he was tiring, so I made a significant effort to latch on at the beginning of the bell lap, and caught his wheel. Just as we were moving off the pavement, I surged and dropped him, opening a 5 second gap. To make it more interesting, with about 1/3 of a lap to go, I had my back tire wash out on a technical section and lost my momentum, so he closed the gap. I didn't feel too bad, so I was pretty sure that I could take him in a sprint. On a tight off-camber S, he tried a risky pass, got by me, but went in too hot and ended up in the tape. I took off and won by about 5 seconds. I hate winning that way, but we both had bobbles in the end taking chances, so things evened out, I guess. BTW, Josh is a real class act and it was great racing against him (see his account here). So a 1st and a 4th this weekend against pretty good competition, and the masters state cx championship. It was a good weekend.

Altoona Cross

Had a math conference in DM today, so I figured I would kill two birds with one stone-IA CX Championships were just 20 minutes away in Altoona (what a great name for a town-you couldn't make one up that good). Cut out of the last talk in time to head over and race the cat 3 men.

The course was really nice-90 % grass, with gravel, pavement, a couple of nice climbs, plenty of turns for accelerations-just what a cross course should be. The only thing missing was a little sand or mud. I think that some courses, especially in KC, tend to get too cute or mountain-bikey--it would be nice if a few promoters would take lessons from the Altoona guys. Anyway, got off to a decent start, then proceeded to struggle badly for the first two laps. I figured out that I was too cold, both from the weather and from insufficient warm-up, so bringing a trainer is critical for some of these late season races. After the first lap and a half, I was in 8th (out of 10-a very disappointing turnout for a state championship). Once I got warm, things started to go well. Over the last two laps of the race I went from 6th to 3rd, which was pretty sweet, especially picking off the guy in 3rd during the last half lap, who had a 10-15 second lead on me beginning the last lap. The crowd at the top of the boarded run-up was loud and really plastered, doing beer hand-ups and setting out dollar primes sticking out of empties on the ground (I tried to grab one but missed). Looked and sounded like they had been knocking them back since the first race 3 hours earlier.

I was pleased with the race, since I beat some of the guys that beat me at Spooky Cross, and felt quite comfortable during the last half. If the race had gone on for a couple more laps, it would have been interesting to see how I would have placed, but I'm not complaining. Ten races so far this fall, on the podium in 6 of them (2x1st, 2x2nd, 2x3rd), in the money for 8 of them (previous plus 2x4th), one DNF because of a rolled tire, and the other was an open race for training after my main event. Good times.