CX Nationals: Collegiate Race

Sunday morning was the collegiate race, and the course was much different than the first two days. Mud had frozen into thick unmovable ruts, and a dusting of snow covered parts of the course.

I got a good warmup in, and was ready on the start line in about 5th row back.... so not great, but I was more than half-way up the huge field. The start, and the first lap, didn't go too badly at all. I worked my way up into the top ~30ish in the first loop around a small lake, somehow handling the completely foreign frozen tundra quite well. I tried to pick a line, and ride it out, and only jump out of the rut if I really need to. Brushing shoulders time and again became normal, and I only had to run a few times around people who had fallen down in front of me.

The second lap was quite different. I came out onto the pavement, and just felt like a piece of shit. I think its unfair for the pavement section to be uphill... I was waiting for that for a while, and it hits, and I'm just like.... whhhhaat-no legs. So I lost a few spots, that interestingly I would make up once we hit the nasty ruts again. My first crash came trying to avoid people sprawled out in a particularly nasty section... I unclipped and was looking to tripod it around the guys getting up, when my front wheel caught more than I thought it would, and over I went, toppling into the snow. A bunch of drunk guys enjoyed it, and I scored a high five for good measure before continuing on. It was either that crash, or some other tumble to the hard mud that screwed up either my caliper or lever for my rear brake. I was pulling the lever all the way to the bar, and no stopping power. Combine using only the front brake with my already less than ideal handling skills in such conditions, and more spills were going to happen. And they did. I think three or four times. Bummer!! Not to say I would have had the sort of top 30 finish I was aiming for, but I would have finished at least.

Anyway, after one more spectacular endo after I was already out of the top 50, I decided I'd rather not kill myself, and called it quits.







All and all, it was a fun trip out to Kansas, but I'm not sure if I'll go out next year. Maybe if I'm riding top 10s in the elites in SoCal I'll give it another tussle. It's definitely gotten me hooked for cross though, and I'm already looking forward to winding down the road season early to put some hard training in for cross next year...maybe learn how to mount correctly would help too.

If you want to see what the course was like (on Saturday, but basically same as Sunday) check out this guys videos of the first lap of the 50+ race:
1st half
2nd half

CX Nationals: Day2

Wasn't racing today, but JP was. We made the discovery before heading off to Kansas that we were roughly the same size, and ran the same pedals. Sahweet, instant pit bike. So today I worked the pit for the first time. I was not prepared at all. Didn't have any brushes or buckets or any of that. Friendly dude in a Pedros jumpsuit next to me in the pits helped me find the water sprayer, and let me borrow one of his brushes to get all the mud and grass out of the chainrings and der pulleys.

I think JP switched up the ride at least 3 times, maybe 4- had to be an even number now that I think about it because he finished on his bike, so probably 4 times. Certainly saved him a lot of time. If nothing else I cleaned off about 5 or 6 pounds of mud off the bikes each time. Also cleared off the drivetrain and made it that much easier to get around. It was pretty sweet to work the pit and experience the craziness that goes on in there.

Jim did awesome in his race- he got the start of his life. Starting off in the 2nd row, he was top 10 coming off the pavement, and muscled and handled his way up to 3rd the first time through the pits. At that point I was thinking, fuck!!! I hope I don't screw anything up for him. The power riders had bided their time, however, and JP lost time on alot of the uphill sloppy muddy sections, spinning through mud whereas other riders were able to sneak by. Still ended up in the 20's I think, which is an awesome result in such a strong field of over 120.

Making the big time...

Tonight the snow is descending upon Kansas, and hopefully won't screw with the schedule of the races too much. I'm slated to start my last race on Sunday, at 10AM, when the temperature is supposed to be 24 deg F, with a windchill of about 13. Schwell.

CX Nationals: Day1 in pictures

My roomate Jim snapped some pictures of the first day of racing...


Warmup in the tent... there was a big space heater blowing in behind me that they got turned on just before my start. It was a pretty nice place to hang out later in the day though... all this snow/ice would melt real quick. After Jim's race, we were hanging out in the tent and realized we were all from SoCal... just drawn by the heat I guess. We tossed around the idea of having our own race with a course completely inside the warmed tent....

Getting called up. The kid over my right shoulder is 14, and led for laps 2 and 3. Ummmm check that name, and buy his baseball- er- cyclo-cross rookie card now.

Good shot of what most of the course was like. Stay in the brown and you were allright. Many places had deeper/wetter mud.... but the above captures what most of the course was like.

The first flight of stairs. These got harder and harder as my bike got heavier and heavier throughout the race. DAMN mud! I passed this dude on the stairs, one of the 4 or so that I beat. Boo-yeah.

The mess of a bike directly after my race. Click on it to enlarge, and check out the crank / rear der area. Can't see it really well in the overall shot, but they are absolutely covered in junk. Only my three or four largest gears worked, as the other ones were junked up with mud and ice.

CX Nationals: Day1

Day one was pretty epic, but should be nothing compared to Sunday, which should feature 3-6" of snow. Anyway, course was still pretty iced over for my race. There was a mud "singletrack" around the whole course, which everyone took, but you could pass by riding over the crusted ice.... though you had to be more careful.

Got a good warmup in at the warmup tent, which featured trainers in BOXES that we needed to assemble before using. So... that sucked, but I was able to stay warm, and felt like I was relatively ready to go. No where near the numbers were there at the start than I thought. I thought there were 140 registered riders, but I think there were only about 40 starters.

I started off allright, didn't quite hold my position through the opening road section, probably got passed more than I passed people... but I could see the front, and felt like I could make efforts to at least get towards it. This plan started to unravel once I fell once going up a little bit of an off-camber uphill. I took the line off the mud, and went into the ice to try and pass people, but ended up sliding out. That cost me a few spots, and a shout-out from the announcer. I made a few efforts then to get back up to some groups in front of me, but after those efforts, I didn't have the gas to get around them or work to the next one. After a while I just wanted to learn the course and ride the hard sections smoothly, thinking ahead to Sunday's Collegiate race. I guess I finished 26th, which might sound respectable being at nationals, but there weren't that many people... and most of them were in front of me.

I had a lot of fun though, and I'll throw up a picture later of my bike, which was TOTALLY full of grassy mud after the race. Seriously, never seen my bike look anything like that. Thankfully they had a spray booth set up, which will lead into a funny story I'll put up once I get the photographic evidence later on.

The So-Cal roomate, Jim, had a great race to finish a very respectable 16th of 79 in the 40+ B race. He'll be racing tomorrow in the age-graded national championships, then transferring solely to super-fan and taxi-cab duties.

Do YOU know your birthday?

A while back I needed to bring my birth certificate to the DMV. I misplaced it after the trip, and eventually had to order a new one, which cost me 10 bucks. However, THE DAY I get the replacement birth certificate, I'm sitting at my desk, move something I guess I hadn't moved for a while, and out pops the original birth certificate. Swell. Well I opened the new one to see what it looked like... and noticed something surprising.

First of all my birthdate is really hard to read on the new certificate, so... that is kind of silly. It's handwritten, whereas it was type written on the original. Come on... we've progressed since '84 haven't we? Besides being almost illegible, I'm also pretty sure it has the WRONG DAY. Now, ordinarily this wouldn't be a huge deal... but this is my BIRTH CERTIFICATE, and it has my wrong birthday!??! So... what day should I choose?

I think I'll just stick with the original date... just has a ring to it by now.

Oh Kansas...

At least cross nats aren't going on right now. The weather looks horrid in Kansas today and tomorrow, hopefully those 40 degree days they are predicting for the weekend will still hold true....

Maybe I should re-glue those 34's instead of studying for my finals.....

What not to do before a cross race...

ride 80 miles. Also probably not the best idea before going to Cross Nats either, but I have another week to recover for my main race on Sunday. Certainly lots of feet up in the air time this week, though.

On Saturday I rode steady for about 5 hours with some of the new team mates for the road season, and that was probably a bit too much before this particular cross race especially. I had done 80 mile days before placing in the top 5 the next day before, but this course was made for sapping power out, and only had a few, though tough, technical sections to it. So my preparation for it was pretty poor, but I still had fun. I'll definitely get some pictures up when they're online... it's not called "Storm the Beach" for nothing. End result, finished up 8th, which given my tired legs and lacking motivation, was just fine with me. I hope that will be enough to lock up 3rd overall for the series.

Got home and cleaned the cross bike completely. Took most everything apart, regreased, relubed.... she's all set to go, minus pedals.... getting ready to put her in a box for the trek to Kansas. I gots two finals coming up... Tuesday and Wednesday, then I'm speeding down to San Diego, and flying out to Kansas City for a few days of pain.

Planet Earth

I've been watching a lot of Netflix recently. Have lots of movies I want to watch, but I've been doing tv shows on there, as I can usually watch an episode or two (or a whole disc or two) each night.

First up was Entourage, which was an excellent show but made me depressed about how I have to actually do something with myself in order to make a buck. If you've seen it... Ari, the agent, is probably my favorite character. The shit that comes out of his mouth is hilarious. His assistant Lloyd is pretty funny too. Drama wears on me after a while, his role is pretty predictably pathetic, but it's all good. I'm waiting anxiously for season 4 to come up on Netflix. I don't think its even been on HBO yet though.

However, the show at the moment is BBC's miniseries "Planet Earth". Spectacular. Each episode features at least one tidbit, where I think to myself... that is bullshit, you are making this crap up. A monkey that swims? Global climate change? (some things are more stretches than others). If you happen to see this on TV, WATCH IT, or if you have Netflix, add it. I think it's on TV on the Discovery channel? or National Geographic maybe? You have google on your computer too, find out for yourself. Good show though, with excellent visuals. I really like how for most episodes you never see a human, it's as if you're there by yourself, with a pretty well educated and deep-toned subconscious providing narration. Five stars.

Districts

This past weekend saw some racing action up in Bakersfield, Ca... about a 3 hour haul up North, so my teammate Ted and I snagged a hotel room up there to avoid copious amounts of driving.

Saturday was the sand-bag race for the Bear jersey. I was hoping to snag the win, but ended up 3rd, after a good hard fought battle that came right down to the wire with another guy. We went head to head on the last big runup, knowing whoever was in front would win... I almost pushed him over a cliff, but hey, I was barrrrely in front of him, so I had the slot.

Sunday was a Prestige series race, and I started off allright, then a yellow blur went by me about 1 minute in, whilst I was sitting in 2nd place. The leader had just buzzed by, and shot by Ted on the downhill. Ted only lost contact with him later on in the race when he skidded out around a corner, but finished strong in 2nd. I meanwhile, continued to go gradually slower, sitting in 4th, and racing negatively- looking back at the same guy who sloooowly brought me back at Turkey Trot. Well the guy catches me on the last 1/3 of the last lap, and finally is right with me right when we get onto the long downhill finishing straight. Now I should have realized that if he JUST got up to me, he's got to be a bit gassed, and should have punched it ASAP. But thinking like a roadie, I lead out the sprint slowly, not wanting to let lead him out... so I jumped when I thought I could get a gap and hold until the line, but he came through right at the end and nipped me... DAMN. So I ended up 5th.

Fall quarter is coming to an end already, though, and I'm finishing my last homework, and looking over things for my shortened 2-day finals week before I head out to Kansas City for cross nats. Before that, though, is the last prestige race I'll be doing... Storm the Beach. Literally on the beach at Camp Pendleton. I will definitely have some pictures from this sweet venue...