Subaru Cup Day 1

warning: I wrote this in bits and pieces over the course of the road trip back to Omaha from WI, don't feel obligated to read any or all of it in one sitting :)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in years of training, racing, and coaching (not necessarily in cycling), it’s that sometimes despite the best preparation there are forces beyond your control whose confluence will derail even the best laid plans. This past weekend of racing was a nice reminder for me that the glory we seek in racing is both accentuated and tempered by occasional disappointment.

I went into this race weekend on a mission. I wanted a top 5 overall placing and an age group win in the massive cat. 2 Legacy XC field, and I was looking for a win in the Impreza short track as well. I’ve never had such a good base going into a competitive season for cycling, and I was ready to test my mettle against some of the top cat. 2 competition in the midwest. After a fairly successful early season campaign in the Nebraska Lottery Psycowpath Series, I figured I had enough fitness and experience that these were realistic goals.

Our travel to the race went smoothly, and we arrived at Mt. Morris (a bit of a misnomer, but Hill Morris doesn’t have the same ring to it) on Friday afternoon for a couple of pre-ride laps. The course was a nice mix of power climbs and semi-technical sections including some nice rock gardens, rooty sections, a few steep drops, and lots of twisty singletrack. The climbing was split between both single and doubletrack sections, so in some areas passing was easy, whereas in others it was pretty much impossible. I came away from the pre-ride feeling good. The course was favorable for strong climbers, and none of the technical sections were difficult or scary enough to force any kind of selection. I was confident I could stay reasonably close to the better descenders in the woods.

The Cat. 2 Legacy XC field was split into two races that were slated for early morning start times on Saturday. The juniors, women, single speeders, and 19-29 age groupers were in the first race, and the 30+ riders were in the second race. Since my racing roomie Tim was in the SS class we had to show up early to have him ready for the 8 a.m. start time. I bummed around for a while and walked the leadout to solidify my strategy for the first segment of the race. The leadout itself was a wide grassy doubletrack with two solid power climb segments separated by a winding grassy descent. I was relieved that there was ample space to allow me to get to the front before we dropped into the singletrack should the start not go as planned.

I got in a solid 30 minute warm up on some beautiful country roads and made sure that I got my ass to the start area early enough to secure a spot on the line. Because WORS races are so big, the sport and comp. races (both subsets of Cat. 2 ) are started in age-class specific waves. For the Subaru cup the normal sport or comp. distinction was discarded and all of the cat. 2 riders were combined and sent off by age group. Upon arriving at the start area I was dismayed to see that our age class was LAST in the starting order. We would have to sift through all of the slower riders in the waves preceding us as the faster riders in the other waves raced ahead with nothing but open trail ahead of them.

The start was the usual flurry of grunting and elbows. The lead group got out pretty hard, but I was able to work my way up to second wheel behind Kurt Schwiesow (Tower Clock Eye Center) by the time we hit the first section of singletrack. As soon as we rounded the corner and dropped in, we came to a screeching halt. I looked up to see a line of riders, many walking their bikes, extended before us for a long ways. I immediately realized that this would make winning the overall title for cat. 2 (based on time) pretty much impossible. Damn, I forgot about this aspect of WORS races! Things eventually got going again, and most of the rest of lap one was a sketchy game of cat and mouse as I tried to stay on Kurt’s wheel while we both made quick passes when an opening presented itself. At some point he got a little too hasty in his attempts at passing and crashed not far in front of me, vaulting me into the lead. Sweet, I’ll take that.

It wasn’t long before we were back together, and he eventually jumped around again with a tricky but well executed pass as we started to hit traffic from a previous wave. After coming around a sharp blind turn I found myself in alarming proximity to a slower moving rider. I feathered the brakes and leaned inside to pass. Unfortunately the rider behind me chose to follow my line…without the slowing down part. He ran directly into me taking us both down in a tangled mess. In most crash situations you can get up quickly and get your bike rolling again within about 30 seconds assuming there is no damage to you or your bike. In this case though, the overtaking rider had managed to nicely wedge my pedal into his spokes. It was a major pain in the ass to get the two bikes untangled and cost us not only a couple minutes time wise but also a loss of many positions. All of those hard won passes earlier in the race were effectively erased.

This unexpected handicap kind of took the wind out of my sails for a bit, but I quickly decided to claw back as many positions as I could. After all I didn’t come all this way to DNF or mail it in. After re-combobulating my bike, I re-mounted and proceeded to scrap for every place I could get. After a valiant but ultimately futile effort, I finished 5^th in my race (~2.5 min down on the winner) and about 40^th (out of ~220 total) overall in cat. 2. I know there wasn’t much I could do to change how things turned out, but I was still really disappointed. I’ve been looking forward to this race for a year, and this was not the way I envisioned things playing out. I know that’s how racing goes sometimes, but it was still a bitter pill to swallow.

We spent the rest of the day “superfanning” for the cat. 1 and pro races. It was awesome seeing the stars of the sport duke it out on a tough course, and I was able to put off the boo-hooing for a while and just have fun. That evening in our hotel room I got back to some proper moping as I rolled my 5^th place medal over and over in my hands. After a thorough self-pity session I made a firm resolution to kick some ass in the short track race the next day and retired for the night.

(to be continued...)