a midway bikelog

12th C1, 68 finishers in the C field

I was fighting off my first fall head cold all this past week, but by Saturday, i thought i was feeling pretty good. There’s nothing quite like a cyclocross race to test whether you’re truly over a cold, and in my case, i wasn’t.

This was my first time at the tree farm, and i like the course a lot. I understand that the switchback was a new feature, and i liked that too, a lot more than the excessive IUD-like twists at Boom Island. Overall, a good mix that demanded a good range of skills. I even like the run-up, but that’s probably because the quasi-stair steps in the dirt matched well with my long legs.

I got a decent start, no great holeshot or anything, but worked into the top 15 or so by the end of the first lap. I managed to pass another couple of riders on the second lap, but by the third it was all i could do to hang on (in fact i lost a place in there somewhere). The legs were fine, but the lungs were in worse shape than i knew, and by the finish line they were hurting a lot. I’ve had a couple of races this year when i would have been happy to tack on a couple more laps, but this was not one of them. Given the people around me in the pack, i’m pretty sure i would have finished 4-5 spots higher without the lung crud.

I felt fine after a few minutes’ recovery and stayed to watch the rest of the races, get a hot dog from Teddy Roosevelt, and help a bit with the results. It gave me a good appreciation for the work that goes in to cleaning up and posting CX results, it’s confusing stuff!

It was another beautiful day for ‘cross, hopefully i’m fully recovered for the next adventure in Blaine.

update: maybe not such a smart idea to race after all – i ended up with a nice case of pneumonia and in bed for a couple of days shivering. Looks like i’ll be taking a week off.

My dad mentioned the other day on the phone that his cardio rehab guide is also a cyclocross racer, and recently sent his name. On a lark, i looked him up online to see what the races out there (in Oregon) are like, and holy cow does the Oregon Bicycle Racing Association have a nice way of tracking races and results.

Click on that link, go ahead, open it in a new tab or window and weep at the beauty of the thing. You can click on a results link and see the results. You can click on a rider name and see their results for the year so far, and any other year they’ve raced. Excuse me for a moment, i need to wipe a tear away…

Somebody needs to get with these OBRA folks and figure out how they do it. Do the racers all get bar codes tattoo’d on their necks? OK! There oughta be plenty enough racing around Minnesota to support such a thing, and plenty of geek power to build it. Wouldn’t this sort of thing be nice for promoters and racers alike? I’ll be happy to pitch in some code to make this happen here.

14th place C1, 110 starters (from what i heard)

For the second week in a row, the threat of rain held off and it was near-perfect ‘cross weather. I rode to the race, which made for a nice warm-up and a good chance to fine-tune clothing layers for the race. I got to the park early and from the north, so i got a nice preview of some of the new course, including the oddball MORC-style bridges section over some construction dirt piles. The course was a lot different than last year, and a little disorienting at first because parts of the course were run backwards from last year, and some turns were hard to figure out on the first lap. Pre-riding was totally unnecessary for the gratuitous MFD-supplied mud section, of course, as it was obvious that there was little strategy there other than trying to not fall over.

Speaking of pre-riding, a registration holdup delayed the start of the Cs by about 10 minutes, and the officials sent everyone off for a practice lap. I, for one, was glad for the delay when i realized that my seat post clamp had somehow popped loose. With the delayed start, i was able to tighten it down and get back to the line in time. I hate to think how the race would have gone otherwise.

I got a good start, again in the mid-20s or so. The pack seemed to string out pretty quickly after the trip around the baseball diamond and the short stair runup. The little 2×4 bunny hops were annoying; on lap 2, a board jumped up and knocked my foot off the pedal. I liked the run around the construction area and plywood bridges, but i like any course that rewards my mountain bike skills.

In retrospect, i should have done some more testing to see if i could ride the long staircase runup. In practice, it looked like everyone was supposed to go on the left because of the way the tape ran at the top. Later i saw people riding up the smoother right side, so i might have been able to do that too, because i usually tend to ride those. I did pass one guy on the runup, but only because i rode up about 15 feet up before dismounting and managed to stay ahead the rest of the run/walk up.

By lap 4 everyone around me was so far apart that i couldn’t get closer than 50 feet to the guy ahead of me, so no sprint finish for me. I was happy with my finish and my effort. Unlike last weekend at Boom Island, i don’t think i had another 2 laps in me. I should have eaten before the race, and my right thigh started cramping up through the last 1/2 lap. I didn’t bonk, but didn’t leave much in reserve, which was good.

The main thing i realized in this race were the little things i’ve learned to do to conserve momentum and energy, increase efficiency, etc. I have reasonably good endurance, but little things like holding a good line and staying out of the rough makes a big difference in how much energy you can focus on going faster or holding someone off after a pass. In short, experience is good!

Thanks to my fellow rodents and to Ron and Marty from the shop for the cheering, and whoever it was (Ron?) who called out my position after lap 2, very helpful!

10th for C1, 11/73(?) overall in the C race

Me, showing reasonably good form on the runup. My bike carrying technique improved dramatically after some tutoring from fellow rodent Rich.
(photo from skinnyski.com, i’ve emailed to buy pictures before, and no response yet. Y’all let me know if you want me to take this down or buy it!)

Finally, a race with some real cyclocross weather after two races in the terrible heat. 50°F and drizzling rain sounds awful except when you’re racing all-out for 30 minutes (or more), then it’s great. If anything, i could have skipped the longsleeve wool shirt and just worn arm warmers with the jersey. I was glad when the rain stopped though, because it’s hard to see with water on my glasses. The early rain wasn’t enough to make much mud, but did make everything more slippery. The grassy straights got faster, if anything, over time and some of the corners were probably pretty muddy by the time the As were heading out.

I got a decent start, probably somewhere in the 20s after the first off-camber bottleneck turn (where the B race had a major pile-up, hope Charlie’s ok!). This is my 3rd year at this race, plus I’d had the luxury of 3 pre-race laps around the course, so i had worked out a pretty good idea of lines and gearing and felt like i was pretty well on top of the course from the start. I dropped the chain somehow on the first runup, but managed to get it back on reasonably well on the run and lost maybe 3 places because of it, but gained them back by the end of the lap.

The course was a little different this year; the first off-camber turn was in a different spot, one barrier dropped from the first 1/3 of the lap, and instead of a long sweeping turn on the back stretch it was a rather annoying maze (which they called the pyramid of pain). The maze was a little treacherous but mainly an exercise in not losing momentum or crashing. I had the toe spikes on my shoes which helped a lot with the runup this time. The new Mud2 tires were great, only slipping a little in the maze, which was all wet grass and mud, so no complaints. The couple of times that i could feel the tires start to slide it was very predictable and manageable.

After the first lap, i’ve usually burned through the initial burst of energy and need a lap to just hold my own and recover. Same thing this time, though i didn’t feel so drained through the second lap today, and managed to hang on to the end of the lead group all the way around. I started moving up through the pack with the 3rd lap, picking up a good 6-7 places on that lap (or was it the 4th? i think it was a 5-lap race) and feeling pretty good. I got another few places on the last lap, but couldn’t quite out-sprint the Freewheel guy after pulling even with him at the last barrier.

This is the 3rd race of the season for me, and by far the best. I felt strong and on top of my race and was better over the barriers though i still need to work on my form there. I feel ready for the extra laps of a B race after this one, and i’m still thinking of trying one or two races singlespeed.

16th place for C1, 19/66 in the race, i think 72 racers started.

The lesson learned at Lake Rebecca for me this year was ‘don’t take the small stuff for granted’. In particular, that *#&#(* log barrier. It was easily rideable, but ruled at the start line that the C racers must dismount for it. I understand that *some* C racers maybe shouldn’t have ridden it, but i think we should have had the option.

Anyway, so it was a tiny barrier, not even a big step over it, shouldn’t have been a big deal. On the first lap, i spun my cranks back and dropped the chain. I recovered practically on the fly, losing only 2-3 spots and getting a “nice recovery” from someone as they went by. Great! On the second lap, my left cleat didn’t come off the pedal fast enough, and i somehow got myself tangled up in the bike and ran for about 20 feet that way before going bum over teakettle, scraping up both legs, cutting my knee and hitting my ankle on something really really hard. After that, i was much more careful over that damn log.

Other than that, it was way too hot, but friend Benita helped with invaluable water handups. I have no idea how i placed, but was pretty happy with how i moved up through the pack after a start near the back (late warm-up lap). No other crashes, though it was a near thing at the end. I was really tired and eased off on the last long straightaway until 2 (two!) guys passed me with 100′ to go. I stood up and hammered and caught them both, though the second guy and i leaned on each other a bit (more like me muscling my way past, from his perspective) and i got a little out of shape right before the line but held it up ok. I think i got him by about 1/2 a wheel, but i didn’t get his name or race number to confirm. A gratifying finish to an otherwise tough race.

Here’s a link to a nice photo of me in action (looking fast for a change) from SkinnySki.com, whose photographers take shots at events around here year ’round.

Fellow teammate Lee finished in 2nd place for the women in her first ‘cross race ever!

After a couple of years of almost constant tinkering with various bikes and bike configurations, i took most of this year off. I was really quite happy with my fleet of 5, and none of them needed much more than basic maintenance. I was happy to just ride, and have a choice of ready-to-ride bikes. Then, as summer closed, the itch started. I haven’t had a fixed gear road bike since crashing the last one last fall. The winter bike was fixed, but it’s like driving the Sanford & Son truck around; useful, but not necessarily fun.

Being short on both money and shopping time, i put a couple of feelers out and my friend Tom found me a good candidate at a local thrift for $20. It was a 25″ low-end Ross, seemingly hardly ridden with some sort of overspray haze over the whole bike. It wasn’t beautiful, but it had potential. He even threw in a nice set of cranks from his stash and a couple of blinky tire valve caps. Tom’s a really nice guy, did i mention that?

In my usual fashion, i stripped the frame down and rebuilt everything worth saving. With apparently little use, the bearings were barely dirty, and the headset and bb were perfectly usable. The decals and overspray both came off with denatured alcohol and a lot of picking and peeling. I swapped in some already re-dished French wheels from the stash, installed the nicer cranks, picked up a new bar and tape from good friend Jim and a saddle from the box of saddles in the garage.

Here’s the result:

Here’s that nicer crank, a Sakae CR. I cut the teeth off of the 52t ring to make a chainguard. The small ring is a 42, and i’ve never had a crankset with a stock 42 before. Since my preferred fixed gearing is 42/16, it’s the perfect crank for this bike, and pretty too.

The bars are Redline 925 takeoffs, and they’re not bad. Brake levers are some Aero Compes from my parts box. The bars are half-taped partly for style, partly because i was too cheap to buy 2 rolls. A wind of twine on each side is just to keep the cables in place.

It rides nice, just like a bike. It’s stable enough to ride no-hands, not too heavy, and fits reasonably well with the longer reach bars (the top tube is a little short otherwise).

My youngest daughter just turned 4, but she still sometimes likes to have baby songs sung to her at bedtime. Last night i found myself rewriting lyrics on the fly from the papa’s perspective:

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word,
Papa’s going to buy you a mockingbird.

And if that mockingbird don’t sing,
Papa’s going to buy you a diamond ring.

And if that diamond ring turns brass,
Papa’s going to kick the jeweler’s ass.