Farmed Out

Saturday started when the alarm went off at 3:48 am. For some reason, I though Farmington was at least a 2.5 hour drive, and I wanted to be early in order to get a good warmup. Well, I still didn't get out the door until 6:15, but I had my bike lubed, checked, and ready to go. Driving was fast and easy. With the end of summer "travel season" the Mass Pike was rather deserted at that hour. Around 7:30, rolling toward Hartford, I looked at my watch and realized Bold, Kahuna and others were just beginning their day long odyssey at the Florida Ironman Triathlon. You go girls!

I arrived at the Winding Trails Recreation Center/Buffy and Chip Mercedes Park right around 8:15, only two hours from home. Farmington is one wierd-assed town, in a wierd-assed state, with wierd-assed people, and this venue is pretty wierd-assed. It's some kind of planned community of mega-priced condo type homes for the insurance executives and other Connecticuttites that live around there, and how the hell anyone convinced them to allow an annual cross race is beyond me. Snagging a prime spot right next to the Cronoman and Tim-mee!, I was also adjacent to staging. Garabed was there behind Tim-meee's! van riding the trainer with a full cast on his lower leg, giving an interview to a reporter from the Hartford Courant who was apparently gullible enough to believe that a 54 year old dude with an 18 year old attitude was going to do a cross race with a broken leg. I wish I could pick up a copy of the paper to see that story.

I was able to do a record two full preview laps of the course before the C-monkeys and the B Masters herd rolled off. Feltslave ran away and hid from the field, winning handily. Time to move up to the B's sandbagster! Zoo man took a few minutes from his busy schedule of chick pleasuring to also complete the race, a couple of ticks of the clock behind the flying fruit buyer. On to the masters. I'd pre-regged pretty early, and I had been assigned number 31, just one row behind the seeded riders. Seemed sweet, as the field numbered 97 starters. The start went OK, I held my spot on the long paved stretch, but chaos ensued after we hopped the curb onto the double-track, and all hell broke loose when we hit the first sandpit. I did not fare too well, as at first I thought I was going to be able to ride it, then I got taken down rather clumsily, but the worst part was that after running out with everyone else, I was in WAY too big of a gear. Going up the hill into the chicane, I lost about ten spots lugging it over.

The Chainbiter course has always been excellent, but this year they pulled out all the stops and made it about ten feet wide all the way around. On the long grind hill out of the chicane, I thought I was doing OK, but I was very close to blowing up. Once we descended back down and looped through the fields and playgrounds, I still hadn't recovered much. The second lap was even worse. Fast guys had already gone around me, but I'd also moved past some who got good starts before chunking it early. At the completion of the second lap, I was still fighting, but totally gassed. When I saw laps cards that said four to go, that may have been my last second as a real bike racer this year. I'd been expecting a five lap race, as the C-men only did four. Four more laps? Fuck! There was no way I could hang on, and unable to withstand the pain, I caved. At least ten riders flew by me on the climb. I was still going hard enough to be suffering, but it wasn't enough. The next lap, I found myself with the same backmarkers I'm used to duking it out with. My good starting spot had meant nothing. Later on, I would see that the winner of the race wore bib 86, meaning he started in the back row. So there you go. On this course, you could move up if you had to, and had the legs...

The fifth time up the long grind, I had the sense to put the bike in the little ring. I'd been staying in the big ring all the way around in order to avoid my recurring front derailleur overshifting problems. We'd tried making some adjustments pre-race, but even with the limiter screw turned in all the way I could throw the chain if I were careless. Last year on this course I figured out the little ring was way better, but didn't remember this tidbit until late in the race this year. Not only was spinning up it faster, it left me way less extended, and thus able to make some real power over the flats on the rest of the course. On the last lap, once again I spun, holding off Paul Weiss (Portland Velo) and Wayne Cunningham (NEBC). On the long grade, I could see a group of about six riders not too far up. I knew if I dug deep, I could probably catch the group, but I also knew how much that would hurt, and doubted whether I could capitalize on the move and actually pass any of them during the final half lap. A real racer would have gone for it, but like a wounded animal, I pussied out and stayed within my limits on the climb.

Once we got down on the flats, I gassed it hard, putting some distance on those behinds me, but the group ahead accelerated and shattered and I caught nobody. I just rolled it in for a not so stellar 63rd out of 84 finishers (97 starters), also 2/3 of the way down in the 45+ standings.

The drive home was not bad, and I was back on the couch by 1:50 pm, surely a record. Saturday night my knee was sore, and as I lay there with an ice pack, I had to consider ending my season right then and there. I've already had two knee surgeries, and they were the reason I gave up on cyclocross the first time ten years ago. I love the road too much to mess things up just doing this for a winter pasttime. The gains I've made in overall fitness and conditioning, along with preventive massage, and not to mention the modern, kinder, gentler cross courses have made it a lot less risky to compete, but maybe I've had enough for this year. My road season started in early April, and I've competed over 30 times since then, not including training races.

Sunday morning I got up at 4 am, as I was already preregistered for Northampton. I got ready, but when it was time to go, I realized I was not motivated and was also unsure about my knee. I bagged it, instead heading up to the KL north training center to spend the day with my sweet frauline. We went mountain biking at Gunstock, where she dropped me on every climb. My knee was OK, but I still realized that not racing was the correct decision, as my body had nothing to offer. I'm not sure why I'm so dead, maybe it's long term burnout, or maybe last Sunday's double-duty 10K and cross race spanked me so hard that I'm done in. Either way, this week I'm not training. I'll see how I feel on Friday, and maybe dabble in a race next week just so I might have an ounce of fitness for Lowell, because I like the course and it is a nice lower profile race. After that, I'm done. Thanks for reading.