Cap City and Leroy

Two cross races this weekend:

Saturday was the first Cap City Cross race of the year. It was held at the Alum Creek beach, right where they started the OMBC race earlier in the year.

I got down there with perhaps an hour to spare. After warming up, and all that good stuff, we lined up for a Lemans-style start. Mixed feelings about that, as I think that starts are one of my stronger suits, but Lemans was pretty damn fun. Fun's the name of the game so I took off like Usain Bolt.



Running isn't quite my thing, I wound my chicken legs through the labrynth of bikes, and I was off, probably in tenth place. I worked my way up for about a half a lap, and by the time we got to the off-camber grass stuff I was in first.



Pretty much immediately after the grass stuff, Rudy caught up with me, as the Masters started at the same time as us. We worked together the rest of the race and finshed first in Masters and U35 respectively. It was a treat riding with someone as good as he is, as following his lines and pacing and whatnot really was beneficial for my inexperienced self.



Lake Effect had a great precense at the race. Along with Rudy and I; Julie finished third in the Women's race, Robert rode well, and Matt Weeks won the A's.

After motoring on home. I fell asleep with my stuff all wet and my bike muddy. Crap! When I woke up at 10pm, I realized I had a ton of work to do, as I was racing the next day. Midnight bike washing time!

I rose nice and early to get my arse out to Painesville for the Chagrin River Cycling-organized Leroy race.

Got there, said hellos to everyone, prerode the course, warmed up, did the usual stuff. There was a huge turnout and thinking about it, the mix of people is really what I love about cross. From national champs to first-time racers, everyone there was crazy enough to race out in the mud instead of sitting at home watching football. Awesome.

The A race was calling my name, so I finally grew a set and signed up for it.

I wasn't paying attention to the start and was late to line up as per usual. Time management is something I need to work on.

Off we went. I ended up getting a halfway decent start, and was near the front of the pack for a little bit. Right when we got to the section before the singletrack it was sort of like everyone in the race decided to go, "Ok that was fun, time to actually go fast now." Poof, they were gone.

From then on it was pretty much me just trying to stay upright and ride my own race. The course was awesome, and I felt it was right up my alley. Singletrack is my sorta thing :-)



Staying upright for the mostpart, I found myself battling with Cameron from RGF and Ray Huang. They both rode a hell of a race, and it was cool to see how the race evolved with our respective strengths and weaknesses.

I'd gain some time in the singletrack and the muddy stuff and any power sections they would do their thing.



When all was said and done I was able to get my second (or third, or fourth...) wind during the last lap. I attacked and was able to hold Ray and Cameron off. I rode across the line having no idea where I ended up, turns out it was ninth place. Hot damn I'm happy about that. Must have been my lucky day.

Once again Lake Effect had a good showing, Matt Weeks and Shawn Adams doing what they do as per usual, Rudy turning in a fifth place finish, Robert in the B race, Julie in the Women's, our juniors, etc etc. Kudos to anyone who raced through the mud and had the tenacity to keep going.

Good Weekend

Two races for myself this weekend.

First, on Saturday we had the Stark Velo cross race. It was held at the Kent State Stark campus, and dang did the course rule. It was really wide open, long, with more fun off camber steep stuff than you can shake a stick at.

Rain seemed to be looming overhead all day, but luckily by the start of the B race, was nowhere to be found. That lasted for all of about 1 lap, and we were soon stuck in some sort of moonsoon type thing.


I ended up getting the holeshot and the legs were feeling good. I opened a gap on the second place dude of about 20 seconds and was feeling pretty good. Lo and behold all good things must come to an end. Someone in a Stark Velo kit rolled onto the course and called out, "This is the last lap guys, we're callin it!"

Well hot damn I better speed up.

I ended up finishing in first. It was my first 'cross win, and I'm absolutely thrilled, but it sucks it had to come in a 25 minute race. A lot can happen in 20 minutes for sure. Mother nature is a fickle mistress I do suppose. Big ups to Robert for finishing 5th too, he's been on fire lately.

Today was the OMBC race at West Branch. I got my start riding at WB, so it holds a pretty fond place in my heart. Rumors were that the rain that hit us at Stark didn't really affect WB much.


So off we were. I was first into the double track and ended up fighting off second place all the way into the singletrack. Lucky for me I had the home field advantage and was able to open up a gap on the Rock Gorge trail. It was pretty much smooth sailin' from there, as I tried to keep my pace up and make sure that I didn't make any dumb mistakes...

But we are talking about me here, so dumb mistakes were made. When totally gassed on the second lap, they included: falling on a bridge, crashing probably three times on roots, taking turns to hot and sliding out, etc etc.



Nonetheless the mistakes weren't too catastrophic and I was able to take first. Hopefully I can put some MTB snaps on here when they surface on the tubes.

Not a bad way to spend a weekend off...

CFR!!!

I saw this shirt on Richard Sachs' Flickr.It pretty much summarizes my current feelings in life.

Wendy Park was a couple o' weeks back. It was pretty awesome to see a lot of old faces from last year and a ton of new ones. I ended up getting a good start and avoided the bad bottlenecking the 70-person-deep B field seemed to suffer from. Ended up in second place. Pretty pumped about that. Kudos to Robert for kickin' ass in his first B race.

Also on the agenda was the Regan Park TT. Ended up getting shelled in the Expert class again. I've got some work to do for next year. That being said, I wanted to finish in less than 45 minutes. I had Brett starting after me, so it kept the fear in me to stay fast and not get caught.

I pushed it a bit too much, and ended up crashing in some loose stuff. That combined with a few other stupid mistakes and falls had me sit up about half way through and pretty much give up the fight when it came to riding at something that resembled race-pace. Brett went on to finish strong. Good job man!

So I ended up at 46:55. Oh well. Hopefully it worked as good training for more cross goodness and the end of the MTB season.

Besides that, I've been heading out to Tuesday 'Cross practice at Regan park. It's nice to have Shawn and Cameron kick my ass for an hour or two. Anyone who's remotely interested should come out and get some.

Cross Bike

All the cool kids are doing it, so I figured I'd get in on the action. This is what I'll be racing this year. Look for a rolled tubular at the first race, as I don't have much faith in my glue job.

Labor Day

Cruised down to Mohican State Park with Brent to enjoy my first day off in a while. 24 miles of slightly rainy singletrack ain't bad.

Wrapping up the MTB season soon, with 12 hours of Mohican, the OMBC stuff, and maybe Iceman.

And to say I'm excited about cross is an understatement. Tire gluing commences this week. The question is... do I build up a set of tubs for my pit bike? I definitely don't need them, and I've been pissing money away at an amazing rate, but building wheels and all that nonsense is pretty fun. Though impulse buying i've got a set of Grifos for the main wheels, and a set of Tufos that don't have a home. Hmmmm.

Yup. That's it. Fun stuff. Currently putting Aus Rotten onto my 14 year-old-brother's ipod. How awesome.

Losing End of a Photo Finish

When rolling through the parking lot of Ceasar's Creek this Sunday, I asked a local how the trails were.

"Well, if you're from Cleveland, a lot of the guys from the area don't like it too much," he replied.

Well hot damn his idea of a good trail and mine were completely different. As I had a pretty dang good time. The trail was rooty at parts, but generally was pretty wide and swoopy. Some steep punchy climbs followed by short downhills rounded out the rest of the 9 mile loop.

There was nowhere to hide, and I quickly realized that my heart was going to beating through my chest for the whole two hours of the race.

I was feeling good. Was aboard the new 2010 Giant 29er I decided to pick up. Riding with a suspension fork and gears is much different. Not better, just different. Not going to lie, around the end of the second lap, I was loving the ability to sit down and spin :-)

After getting the holeshot, I quickly was able to get a gap on the field, and as per usual, got into my groove all by my lonesome. My legs felt good, I was riding clean, all was well...

Three-fourths through the last lap, I heard someone's disc brakes squealing, and lo and behold, the second place guy showed up outta nowhere. I probably had a thirty second gap on him, but he was charging hard, so I kept up the pace to make sure he didn't catch me.

So all was well, and hitting the last climb out of the singletrack onto the road section, I attacked, hoping to gap him and ride to the win all by my lonesome.

This dude had other plans. After my attack on the last climb, I got onto the road and did my best time trialist impression. Aero tuck and all. I was able to hold about a 100-yard gap on him until the finish line was in sight. Quickly the gap dwindled to 50, then 20, then holy shit this dude is on my wheel.

As we made the left hand turn, diving to the finish line, he got me by a wheel. Shit.

Good race to whoever that was, you left me deep in the pain cave.

Quick Wilderness 101 Recap

This is the abridged version. As some pictures trickle in, I'll do a more detailed write-up.

Decided after the good time at Mohican that I wanted to do a hundred-miler. Wilderness 101 it was.

Man it was hard. Rigid fork was difficult proposition for the day, and as a result, my body got a workout after some 2 mile long descents at 20 miles-an-hour.

First half of the course was fast with a lot of road climbs and double track. After about 50 miles shit hit the fan. The trail was a lot more technical than this Ohio boy was used to. It was a trip trying to ride some of this stuff being as tired as I was.

When all was said and done I ended up 20th in Singlespeed, 77th Overall, at 9 hours 26 minutes. I'll take that.

I think I'm going to do Shenandoah in a month, who's in?