Your hero, resplendent in his new Hasyun-Weebike GRAPE CRUSH kit, rocking the Sucker Brook course.
How about a quick round of uncreative writing? It's been a while. I'll begin by saying this is NOT the year. I need to get my knee scoped really soon, so I'm operating on one cylinder for the moment. I can't run, I can't jump, I can't sing. In the meantime - bike racing!
Cross season should just be starting. But it's been going for over a month. Fucked up, but beyond my control. If you can't beat them, join them, so I raced the double up in Vermont in September. Hands down the best venue in New England, at least when the weather is nice, which it was for the second year in a row. Totally cool atmosphere, awesome courses, lots of fun. The racing kind of sucked for me, as I'd just torched my knee and could barely walk, but pedaling was OK. I took a bunch of Advil and did my best. Rob took a bunch of pictures. Monday was ugly.
I just had to go check crossresults.com because I couldn't remember what came next -- Sucker Brook! My knee was still totally f'd but this one went pretty well regardless. Since I can't run, I'm starting at the back to avoid getting trampled at the first barrier. This causes me to pace myself and actually ride the races negative split style. SB had a smaller than average field too, with the big gunners doing the 1/2/3 and others skipping out, so I ended up 11th in the 42 rider 45+ field.
Gloucester - I was pre-regged like six months ago, because you have to in order to get in. Sucker Brook had practically left me in a wheelchair, so my race-readiness was doubtful. But, with the promoter openly ridiculing his race participants on twitter for having the audacity to ask for a refund even though he had a huge waiting list, I was left with no choice but to pick up my numbers, just to keep him from reselling the spot and pocketing the extra $45/day. I'd rather take two DNFs, and the SAT-like crossresults scores that went with them.
Saturday's course was shitloads of running. I skipped it and hoped for better on Sunday. Which it was. At least there was some flow, as opposed to Saturday, which seemed thrown together. I started pretty far back, but the first lap went well, and I even got on the handlebar cam. But you've probably already seen it. However, just after riding away from bar cam guy, I railed the turn behind the backstop, rolled the front tire and dumped it.
This left me pretty upset. Until that moment, I'd never rolled a tire in 25 years of racing on tubulars. Hmmm. My faith in 3M Fasttack was shaken, even though this particular tire had been glued on two years ago. Upon investigation though, I realized/remembered that I hadn't used Fasttack for this set. These were the first Challenge tires I'd purchased, so I used the hallowed Vittoria Mastick instead. Raced on them in California a few times, but for the most part they just sat in storage out there. Until it rolled off, ending my 2011 G-ster campaign after a glorious half lap.
I sat Providence out. I wasn't going to preregister, just in case I got my surgery scheduled in time. We went down to watch and hang out, but I saved the $90 and did not race. BTW, I did not do either of the mid-week night races, not so much due to injury, but because I am too old for that shit.
That brings us up to this past weekend. Saturday I went bike riding. My knee felt good. So long as I don't run, jump, try to bend/straighten it fully. So I went to the MRC CX race on Sunday. Did the 1/2/3, as the masters race was early in the morning, and I'm getting really used to not getting up early. I also had a single speed bike with me, just in case I wanted to do that race.
This was my first time at this venue. Years ago there was a cross race right across the street, at the "snowmobile farm," which was hilly. The fairgrounds ? (appeared to be a vacant lot with a tent on it) where the race is now was mostly flat, except for one big hill that went up into some dude's yard. The course seemed OK at first glance, but after racing on it I have to give it the solobreak Seal of Disapproval (S.O.D.) Here is why. (or have a look for yourself. If you make it through this snooze-fest, you'll see that for some reason the 45+ race skipped the flyover, but it was back later in the day when I raced)
Somewhere in the rulebook that nobody reads, it says something like "cross courses shall be a mix of all kinds of shit, with shit sections alternating with OK sections in order to give the riders a chance to recuperate between more difficult shitty sections and less difficult shitty sections" The MRC course did not adhere to this rule. All of the more difficult shitty sections were strung together in one big lump. When you got to the bottom of the world's jankiest flyover (more on that in a minute), you were thrust into boggy/tacky SLOW muck. Cool right? Yes, pure power. It went for about 100 meters, then some barriers which were actually a rest area, a Twizzler feed zone, then another 200 meters of bog grass. That lead to the homestretch, which was flat and sort of paved, straight into the wind, i.e. a power section. At the end of said straightway, there was a fucking hill. On tacky grass. Into the wind. If you made it to the top of that, you descended for about three seconds before turning around and climbing the fucking hill again. This time, at the top, there was a weave back and forth section of tight turns. I was so sick of pedaling by then (and you know I LOVES me pedaling) I just jumped off and ran. Another nanosecond of descending, u-turn, back up the hill to the highest point on the course. End of more difficult shitty section.
From there the rest of the course was the "rest" of the course. About 80 slow-assed turns strung together one after another, sometimes with a few pedal strokes in between. Most of them were single-line, loose, and slow. Leading back to the flyover...
I am a pragmatic mofo. I can understand that having a flyover opens up a lot of possibilities to the course designer, perhaps making it worth the effort. But I have to give this one the Lamest Use of a Flyover Ever award. Having a cross course that can cross itself is kind of cool. You can have a modified figure-8, and an equal number of left hand and right hand turns. There were lots of places they could have put it and done just that. And broken up the more difficult shitty sections, interspersing them with some of the less difficult shitty sections while they were at it. But they didn't. For some reason, the flyover was tucked way over in the corner of the field. I can only imagine they were hiding it to avoid a surprise visit from Mr. Building Inspector. But upon descending, you just made tight loop, clockwise, same as the course, and rode under.
W.
T.
F.
???????
Anyway, I have no fitness, especially with only a half lap of racing in the past two weeks. So I sucked. After two laps, the onebigfuckingmoredifficultshittysection got to me, and I cracked and sat up. After the 75 slow-assed turn section, I was recovered, and started trying to focus again, but then I got lapped by the eventual winner, who I think was one of Reuter's two-hundred housemates.
If I'd any brains I'd have called it a day, but since I'd spent over an hour getting my single speed bike ready, I lined up for that too. They had a Lemans start, great for me now that I can't run. I went through the motions, but climbing the sucky hill on a 42x19 blew dogs. I didn't get lapped though, and finished a 40 minute race after finishing a 50 minute race, making for 90 minutes of cyclocross. Honest to god, I sat on the tailgate of my car motionless for fifteen minutes regaining my composure. So it had that going for it.
So, not too creative. Maybe tomorrow, or later in the week. I'm really tired of hearing all the whining about sandbagging BTW. And age groups. Last time I checked, everyone has exactly one age. Every sport has age groups. From Little League to pro golf. It is the most sensible way to handicap competitors. Categories on the other hand, are totally arbitrary. In case you didn't notice, we have them on the road not because riders have different physical abilities, but because road racing pack dynamics dictate that all participants adhere to group norms in order to keep the mess reasonably safe and orderly. Riders of a given category tend to behave more or less the same, making things predictable. Somewhere along the line someone got the idea that extending this concept to competitions like MTB and cyclocross, which do not have pack racing per se, was a good idea. Now you have totally arbitrary, largely self-assigned handicapping. Of course it's a shit show. Thanks for reading.
