So I got my 'cross season started last weekend, what fun! I may be able to post some pictures, if I can get them from my interweb friends.
I drove up to Biddeford, Maine on Friday evening with Stacey (now my wife!) and my friend Colin. We stayed at my friend and occasional MTB teammate Billy's house. Colin and I headed over to Rotary Park in Biddeford early Saturday after stopping for greasy breakfast sandwiches and coffee at the corner store. Given enough digestion time, I recommend this nutritional prerace strategy, but take a look at the weekend scoreboard and decide for yourself. We got to the venue with plenty of time to get our numbers and preride the course, which was an unusual circumstance for me. We met up with Josh and Sarah and Tom in the parking lot, who are teammates on my new team, HUP United. I won't go into a lengthy course description, but I'll summarize by saying it had fun grass twisties, a high-speed grassy descent, some technical sandy sections, and a log barrier before the final gravel climb. On our pre-ride, I hopped the log, making full use of my chainring. I heard a small "chk" from my handlebars, which I ignored (but must have filed away for some reason). I lined up for the 9am C race, and of course had some start-line repairs to effect. Colin helped me add some toe-in to my front brakes, and at the last minute I decided to tighten up the faceplate bolts on my stem. Hmmm, the bottom one felt a little funny, oh well . . . At the start, I got clipped in well but had not gone three pedal strokes when my bars gave me a subtle but unmistakable sign that all was not well. Sure enough, I had stripped one of the faceplate bolt holes and was left with a worthless stem. I watched wistfully as the field disappeared up the hill and around the bend. After fiddling and confirming that all was lost, I tried to be tranquil about not getting to suffer severely for the next thirty minutes. Of course it took very little urging from Colin and Josh to decide that I could probably get the bike fixed in time for the 12 o'clock 3/4 (B) race. I stuck around long enough to see Tom sail in to win the C race, and then off I went to find a new stem. I picked one up from the fine folks at Cape Able in Kennebunkport (where Billy used to work), and was back at the venue in time to get a number and line up behind Colin and Josh. Now you'll probably be disappointed because I can never remember the details of my races - they go by in a blur and I hardly even know what lap I'm on during the race, let alone recall correctly afterwards when anything happened. I started off in some sort of pack, and moved up and down in it for quite some time. I was hoping to keep Josh and/or Colin in my sights for a little while, but that was not to be - Colin ended up winning the race, and I saw Josh wheeling his bike off the course early in the race, victim of a broken chain (those 10speed chains seem pretty fragile for cyclocross, in my opinion). I realized I need to work on a few important technical skills, namely holding my line in a pack, laying off the brakes in fast corners, and getting my feet back in my pedals. My dismounts and remounts are fair, but it takes me forever to clip in! The sand pit gave me some trouble on a couple of laps, but mostly I was able to ride it smoothly. I made places on the gravel climb on a couple of occasions, but lost time where I had trouble clipping in. I ended up in 17th out of 39, which I was very happy with.
Sunday was a fun day too - Colin and I again arrived at the venue (New Gloucester, ME) with plenty of time, having stopped again for gut-bomb breakfast sandwiches and coffee, and were joined shortly by Josh and Sarah in the parking lot. Three of their Colby teammates showed up for their 'cross racing debuts, and judging from their post-race chatter, I think they'll be back for more. After picking up my number and warming up a bit, I lined up for the start, for once getting my choice of position on the front line. I chose the far-right side - the start section consisted of a 30-yard pavement climb to a 90degree right hand turn, whereupon we descended on pavement to join the main course at the start/finish. Owing to my one-speededness, I figured I'd have to give a pretty substantial effort on the climb in order to not get dropped on the downhill that followed. The officials gave us the race instructions - 30 minutes or 3 laps, whichever came first. So we'd be racing at most 3 laps, which seemed pretty short, but it was good to know this going into the race. At "Go", I had a good clip-in (to my surprise), and found myself rounding the corner in the front with a couple of other riders. Up front with me, I recognized Deke Andrew - he won the Saturday race last year at this venue. The first tricky section in the course was a wicked down-up sidehill with no really good line, and I knew that on the first lap it was going to be trouble. Sure enough, a rider came inside on me and promptly washed out, forcing me low so I had to dab and shuffle my way out of the corner, losing a couple of places. I made up a place or two on the fire-road section going into the woods, then employed a bit of "tactics" on the next off-camber section, coming to an abrupt halt as the path tipped upwards and I lost my momentum, causing the following riders to pile up behind me. Again I shuffled out of the trouble spot and called out my apologies to those behind, and stood up to catch #1 and #2. I caught #2 without too much trouble, and it was three of us heading into the pine-needle runup. We held our positions there through the grass twisties and over the barriers, but I got past #2 on the pavement climb to the start/finish. I began to work on closing the gap to Deke, who seemed pretty comfortable out in front. I rode the first off-camber fine, though awkwardly, though the second off-camber still gave me a little trouble. I closed the gap to Deke by the pine-needle runup, and held his wheel until a short pavement climb between sections of grass switchbacks, where I made a move that could be construed as an "attack." I got past him cleanly, and tried to concentrate on not riding stupidly. I knew my weak points were in the transitions (esp. clip-ins), so I knew I needed a buffer going into those parts. Finishing lap 2 in the lead, I felt comforted by the knowledge that I had only one more lap to go. Things seemed to come together for me technically that lap, and though I wasn't especially speedy through the tricky sections, I also didn't flub anything badly. Deke made up ground on me on the transition after the runup, but I held enough of a buffer to come across the line ten seconds up to take the win! I managed a two-arms-up finish to show the world that I dominate men's category 4 cross. The race seemed very short, as indeed it was - I finished in 21:32, which means that I could have done one more lap and still been well under 30 minutes. Who am I to complain, though. The result gains me 10 upgrade points for a total of 24, so I'll be moving up to category 3 - after Gloucester! I think the category 4 race, with a field of 125, will be plenty entertaining, thanks. Races being too short will never again be an issue for me.
After my race, it was awesome to watch my friends Colin and Josh battle in the 3/4 race at noon, and then see the elite races, the highlight of which was a wicked fast junior racer bunnyhopping the barriers on lap 1, at full speed, to rocket from 4th to 1st.
Cheers
Justin
