Bier en modder

Timber Park (Estacata)
November 11, 2007

Pre-Race

With my parents in town, my schedule has been a little off, plus the fact that we’re usually on the go from 7 am to 10 pm means that I’m getting a little worn down. I was able to sneak a quick hill sprint session in Friday but it was short and my mind was wandering a lot.
We got there in plenty of time and got set up. I took a quick look around at the course, particularly the bowl area, which is where any tricky sections or obstacles would likely be. The same loop around the big pine was there plus a nice sweeping off-camber downhill-uphill to the finish. The back sections near the power lines and the treatment plant would probably have some tight, slick turns through the trees but nothing too surprising. It looked like a fast course with little place to rest.
I got to the line late and ended up with a lousy position pretty far back. I tried to remember that it’s a 45 minute race. Keeping the leaders in sight for the first couple laps would be a reasonable goal. I didn’t want to repeat Rainier where I went out way too fast for the first couple laps and then spent the next 30 minutes recovering.

The Race

The gun goes off and it takes a few seconds for the lag to catch up to me. As I thought, the corners were a little slick. I weighted the front tire and took the outside on a number of them to keep momentum and gain a spot or two. It looked like people were using the pavement uphill as a little rest so I resisted sitting up and sprinted to move up a few more spots. The back stretch around the fields was far bumpier than it looked. It took a little more energy to get through there than I anticipated. I wasn’t able to find a good line to ride up the bowl so I resigned myself to running it. By the time I got up the hill, through the slop and over the barriers, my HR was in the low to mid 170’s. I felt cooked. I shouldn’t be able to sustain this pace for a whole race.
By the end of lap one, I figured I’d moved up into the top 15. I cut that in half by lap 2. Based on how my heart and lungs felt, I thought that this was about it. The leader, Geoff Standish, opened up a pretty sizeable gap with one chaser (Hugh Gapay maybe), and a group of 3 or 4 a little bit behind him. I was riding solo trying to bridge the gap up to the chasing group.
With 2 and a half laps to go, I was holding 5th and very slowly gaining on Bob Jacobs and another rider in the 3-4 spots. Bob and I gradually dropped the other rider and we swapped the 3-4 spot until the last lap.
I took the lead going by the start line and kept it until we went into the trees. I took one of the corners too hot and while I recovered, Bob moved ahead. I grabbed his wheel and we took off to chase 2nd place. Rounding the big pine in the bowl, we were maybe 10-15 seconds back. I decided to use the pavement to make up time by shifting up in the big ring. I didn’t look back but Bob must have stayed on. We caught 2nd place behind the now very ripe Honey Buckets. I stayed on his wheel by the parking lot and started to build speed when we made the turn back in along the fence.

The Finish

With maybe 1-2 minutes left in the race, I committed to the attack on 2nd place. I didn’t see him respond but I knew Bob would be on my rear wheel. Heading over the bridge, I was concentrating on keeping momentum up the hill. It wasn’t until I swung wide and dismounted that I remember seeing Bob take the inside corner up the hill and riding it each lap.
Remounting at the top, I probably had a bike length at most. I didn’t bother trying to clip in for the last 10 yards. I just put my head down and started pedaling fast.
For 10 yards at a conservative 10 mph, you cover it in 2 seconds. But it feels like slow motion, especially in the mud. First you see the wheel in the bottom corner of your eye for a fraction of a second, just long enough that you know it’s gaining. Then you look up at the finish line, comparing that wheel’s rate of speed to yours. Finally, your brain figures out it’s going to be close. Very close. But it’s too late. You stomp on the pedals as hard and fast as you can but you simply can’t change your rate of speed that fast. The other bike crosses the line first by 3 inches at most (ok, maybe it was a foot or two.  Candi said the camera timed it at -0.14 seconds).

Crap.

Post-Race

After swallowing my lungs, dropped my bike to head over to the Kiddie Cross race with Owen & Ingrid. Owen took off fast and nearly lost it on the final turn. He recovered nicely and finished.
Ingrid, on the other hand, was being pushed around by my dad. She started off happy but tipped over once. That was the end of that.
Got a PBR to re-hydrate and then stumbled on one of the kegs of Snow Cap. Much tastier.

The Summary

I can’t recall being quite so miserable for a long period of time. As I thought, there really wasn’t much room to rest and hide during the race. You were either moving up or you were moving down.
The corners were slick at first but I felt they dried out a bit during the race. I ran about 36-38 psi on both tubulars and was bottoming out a lot. Traction was probably as good as it was going to get. The glue jobs held, especially on the transition from the downhill to the pavement. I love the Challenge Grifo’s but felt the soft sidewall of the rear wheel give a lot there. I’m glad they stayed on.
No real damage to either myself or the bike.
Today’s post-race beer was brought to you by…Hair of the Dog 2007 Fred from the Wood. Smoky. Lots of oak character present with tobacco and dried fruit flavor and aroma. This beer needs many, many years to settle down. It’s a little too intense for me right now.

My parents are in town visiting from CT which has kept me busy.  It’s a good visit but with I have a growing list of junk to take care of which has added to the stress level.  Luckily, a lot of the stuff I have going on will be over soon.

Spent the morning in line at the Hair of the Dog dock sale.  Got there 5 minutes early only to find a line winding around the block.  Took about 80 minutes to get up to the front.  90 seconds later I’m out the door $210 poorer but 2 cases of beer richer.  Got the usual case of Doggie Claws to throw in the cellar plus a last-minute addition of case of Fred from the Wood.  $130 a case.  F___, that’s expensive.  I’ll need to s-l-o-w-l-y drink these.

The rain was a delightful sound last night.  I was hoping it would continue through the day to loosen up the race course tomorrow but no luck.  On the other hand, I’d be a fool to complain about upper 50’s and sunny in mid-November.  I need to remind myself of the pre-school rule: “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit”.

Picked up some Barge Cement and fixed the rear wheel.  Looks good.  I hope it holds together but I have no reason to think it won’t so far.  I also took a few minutes to straighten out a chainring tooth that probably got bent out during the chainsuck I had at Barton.  A final re-toe of the front pads finished out the pre-race tune.

I’d also mentioned recently that the sandbagger discussions had been heating up which, having a win, I wasn’t immune to.  Historically, I have a fairly consistent pattern of progressing up through a category and then self-upgrading.  I made the same goal this year even before the season started.  I’ll admit it bothers me a little because I’ve always tried to have some reasonable moral standards when it comes to self-placement.  You should have some gut feeling deep down inside when you know you’re done with a category so I don’t believe in sticking around in a category after you’ve had some success.  But the grey area is – what defines success?  One win?  Two 2nd places?  7 or 8 top 10’s over a couple years?  I don’t know.  OBRA has tried to address this with their “3 top 3’s and/or 5 top 5’s”.  To me that seems reasonable.

Anyway, I’ve written more about this than I’d planned.  I hope to give it more thought after tomorrow – perhaps Tuesday after my parents leave.  I’m off to Russel St. BBQ for a Meatapalooza.

My Grifo Challenge tires that came with the Guerciotti have been slowly coming apart.

I’ll be using a suggestion from the Cross Crusade Forum and picking up some barge cement to hopefully repair them later this week. That should go well. What can possibly go wrong with using strong cement on the sidewalls of glued-on tubulars?

First, the Smack Talk forum has been getting downright frisky lately.  I’m not sure if it’s the weather or just that we’re coming up to the end of the season and people are feeling they won’t get a win without pushing out the top riders.  Whatever.  There’s just been a lot of shit flying, particularly in the Master C’s.  Deserved or not, Kurt Robinson seems to have a bullseye on his back.  Personally I think he should have moved up long ago but it’s more or less too late now.

I mentioned in my race report that some wash-outs claimed a number of riders in the paceline we had going.  Shane at OregonVelo caught a fantastic sequence that occurred right at the finish line of lap 2 here, here, here, and here.  It looks like Johnny Vergis from CyclePath that went down.  Nasty.

Week and a half until the finals at Hillsboro.  I’m hoping to finish my training schedule strong this week and go easy next week before the race.  I feel good and strong. 

Obviously before that is my own personal Waterloo: Timber Park.  For whatever reason, I have done nothing but suck ass at that race.  Believe me, I have a whole bag of excuses I can pull out but I’m thinking this year will be different.

Barton Park
04-Nov-2007

It sounded like Barton was initially presented as a new course.  Like Alpenrose, there’s always been a finite amount of space to work with so the course looked pretty similar year to year.

The course from previous years stayed largely within the gravel pit area, was usually incredibly muddy, and was notoriously hard on riders and equipment.  Having raced on my mountain bike for the first 3 years, I always looked forward to Barton because the rough terrain leveled the playing field so to speak.  While I empathize with people not wanting to break equipment, it is after all a cross race and in my opinion, anything goes.

It wasn’t too long ago when the Cross directors announced that the course wouldn’t be all that different due to a last minute conflict or change of mind.  They did promise to try and mix it up as much as they could.

Loaded up the minivan with my junk and the kids bikes.  Rach wasn’t feeling all the hot and Ingrid had a pretty good cold going.  We got there with time to get registered and the kids a Belgian waffle.  Rach took the kids while I dropped my wheels off at the pit and watched the back area for a couple minutes.  We made our way up to the old finish line near the garage at the top of the 1st run-up.  With about 20 minutes to go, people were already starting to line up.

By the time I left the kids with Rach, I lined up somewhere in the middle.  Bob Jacobs offered me a tight spot up in the front but I didn’t think it mattered.  From what I saw, there was plenty of open space to move up.  As long as I could keep the front group within 20 yards, it would all work out.

Starting cold (as usual), I was a little concerned about getting psyched enough to race all-out.  Usually I’m mentally ready but today I felt a little mellower than usual.  I tried reminding myself how much I’d worked this year for the cross season and that seemed to help out.

The race started and I made some strong moves to see about 15 in front of me swinging right around the first big gravel pile.  Crap, that stuff was loose.  Not only that but it felt like I was maybe a pound or two low in the back.  Felt a little mushy.

We would our way though the pit area and up the first run-up where Rach, the kids, her mom and Dan were watching.  Zak and Ami showed up later along with Rudin and Hunter.  It was my biggest crowd yet and was really motivating.

I picked off a few on the run-up (usually a strength of mine) while mishandling my bike and dropping it on my forearm.  Ow.  We headed out along the berm and by then, the top group had maybe 6 or 7 plus about 3 or 4 of us chasing 10 yards or so back.  Going down hill and through the muddy bumps knocked off one or two more.  By the time we made it through the pavement, I closed the gap to the lead group.  We had a pretty decent paceline of 7 with Bob Jacobs, 2 Half Fast guys; Wade Goff and Kevin Thompson, plus Ben Johnson from Portland Velo (I think), 2 others, and myself riding caboose.

The paceline slowly shrunk with riders washing out on some of the corners.  The corner near the back run-up claimed one.  The tight corner near the finish line claimed another.  One of the corners on the pavement got a 3rd, which in my opinion was pure karma from the guy taking the corner way too hot with a couple junior riders swinging wide to give us the inside track.  He tried to cut back in hard and it looked like he rolled his rear wheel.

On a side note – there’s few simple rules with riding with juniors.  1. Call out that you’re behind them and tell them what YOU’RE doing, not what you want them to do.  Don’t order them around.  2. Don’t make any dumb moves that will endanger or even scare the crap out of them.  No race is ever worth hurting a kid over.  Lastly, 3. No f-bombs please.

By the middle of the 2nd lap heading off the pavement, there were 3 ahead of me; Bob, Wade and Kevin.  I passed Bob who looked like he was maxing out and told him to grab a wheel.  I’m not sure if he did or not.

On the final gravel straightaway of the 2nd lap, it was down to me and the two HFV guys.  I was thinking, crap – if they work together to drop me, I’m toast.  I wasn’t maxing out but was definitely working to hold on to the back.

Somewhere in that 2nd or 3rd lap, we dropped Kevin and it was just Wade and I.  He said we should work together and I agreed.  For the next 2 laps, we took turns pulling but he stayed in front a lot longer.  I never looked back but it felt as long as we rode clean and strong, we had the 1-2 locked up.

Last lap.  If I was going to make a move, it was going to come here…but where and when?  I figured I had one last match to burn that would last a minute, maybe 2 at most.  From the other laps, one of the run-ups or the short mud stretch after the bridge would be it.  Attack early on the 1st run-up?  No.  He’d been opening a small gap on the off-camber downhill.  Any gap I’d open would get closed there.  The bumpy mud?  Too short to make a move.  I decided to wait until the last run-up.

Hitting the last run-up, Wade looked like he slowed down a bit and I used my leg length to sprint up the hill on the right.  I got up to the top, remounted and took off all out to the end.  I remember thinking on the gravel straightaway, if he can catch up and pass here, he’ll totally deserve the win.  But he didn’t.  I never looked back until the finish, taking the win.

Aside from one PIR race, this was my first win.  Pretty sweet.  My legs and lungs felt good, the bike handled beautifully, and the tires held out.  I ran the Grifos around 40 psi, bottoming out about 2 or 3 times.  I thought that the rear was a  little low during the race but in retrospect, it was probably just about right.  I’m a touch over 200# so I probably run a little higher than most.

The celebration was short lived as I parked the bike and ran over the Kiddie Cross with Ingrid and Owen.  Owen is 6 and can go on his own.  I ended up pushing Ingrid through most of the kiddie course.  She seemed mildly interested and was just fine turning back early.

Got home & cleaned up.  The frame is a little dinged up from a chain suck and the tread on the Grifos is slowly coming off the casing.  Not good.  My forearm hurts like hell where I must have bruised a muscle or tendon.  Some Arnica helped but not as much as the ‘05 Hair of the Dog Doggie Claws from the beer cellar.  That’s good stuff.