UCI Weekend Wrapup / OMBC

Arriving in Cincy Friday morning. I started the routine of getting ready, warming up, and filling my body with barely inedible stuff that resembles food.

Friday's race was at Devou Park in the lovely Covington, Kentucky.

As predicted, the area took a hard hit of rain, and was pretty dang wet. Seeing the course get progressively worse as the cat 4 field started finishing up, I knew I was in for trouble.

Staging was pretty surreal, and I realized that I had by far the worst position possible... last row. Now I know I need to register as soon as I can.

So off we were in a stacked Men's Cat 2/3 field.

After a surge up the starting road section, I may have been about half way into the 50-person field. We were abruptly dumped into some sloppy peanut butter mud.



It looked like a scene from a war movie, bodies flying left and right, yelling and cursing coming from all sides. I'm not too phased by riding mud, so I was able to pick my lines well enough to stay upright.

That lasted for about 2 minutes, as the mud caused the first of many falls as I washed out. I went to put my foot down to save it, and what do you know... that slid out too. I was promptly ran over by the guy behind me. Sorry dude :-)

Quickly getting up and riding with a crooked seatpost, I knew it wouldn't work out too well for the rest of the race so I had to stop and straighten it out. A few well placed whacks with the fist and I was back in business.

This was plain and simple cross suffering at its finest. My game plan consisted of working as hard as I could to bridge the gap up to the lead group who weren't bottlenecked by the shitstorm that happened in the first few laps. Slowly but surely I ended up working my way up to a respectable seventh place. I'll take it. Hopefully I can snag some pictures of the random areas of suffering and elaborate a bit more on my technique for riding them, which mostly consisted of riding as far as I could, falling then getting up and running the rest of the section.

Great job to Tony Marut teammate extraordinaire who was able to kick some ass and end up with a fourth place finish. mustache extraordinaire Scott was also able to work his way up from a lousy start and finish in the top half.


Phew okay on to Saturday.

Scott and I showed up with maybe an hour to spare in Middletown. The course was fast, excluding the back-to-back sandpits and one quick muddy section. It really suited a guy who was able to put down some power. I am not able to put down too much power, so I had to bury myself deep in the pain cave to be able to hang.

Once again the last row start was pretty terrible, but I was able to work my way up to probably the top 15 or 20 by the first turn. After that it was pretty much keeping myself at the edge of barfing for 45 minutes.

The quote of the weekend goes a little something like this, "You know Johnny wasn't having a good time because he wasn't smiling."

Generally I have a bit of a grin on my face when I ride just because, hell, riding a bike is awesome and I'm having a great time. Not this time, I had my mean face on.


So mean face intact, I busted my butt the entire race. Greg Fletcher and I settled into a groove and rode together from about lap 3 on. That is until he attacked on the uphill start area on the last lap. I saw him go and I just didn't have the juice in my legs to grab onto his wheel. Man he is strong. So after all is said and done I finished up strong a spot or two behind Greg, nice and comfy somewhere in the top ten, mayyyyyyybe close to the top five.

Here's where the fun starts...

One thing I know about racing, is that before you leave it's always a good idea to check the results, just incase things get a little wacky and a protest needs to be filed.

Lo-and-behold, I stuck around until about 5 o'clock and the 2/3 results still weren't posted.

He what do you know, the results still aren't posted online and I learn from Scott that the results got all sorts of fucked up. I was marked as a DNF, and everyone else's results were all screwed up.

I don't really care too much about finishing and placing, and I understand that mistakes happen, but man that's a rough thing to hear. I spent a shit ton of money this weekend on travel and registration, and worked like a dog to do well in my race. Somewhere down the line some wires got short circuited in the officiating and I got marked as a DNF. Bleh... I guess it happens.

On a more positive note, good job to everyone that raced this weekend. Julie, Rudy, Robert (who kicked ass in men's 2/3!), Bill, Scott x 2, Nate x 2, Matt Weeks, Brett Davis, etc etc. Everyone that raced further reiterates that Northeast Ohio is a cycling powerhouse ;-)

So after all that shitstorm occurs, I've got a mountain bike race on Sunday at Mohican State Park. Wooo!

I roll down in typical last minute fashion and get to the line about 5 minutes before the gun with no warm up and stressed because of my last-minuteness. That's something I may need to work on.

Off we went. I lucked out and was able to win the race with a time of 2:18, in spite of myself. I raced pretty stupidly dropping my bottles a couple of times, a few dumb crashes, and somehow had the mechanical problem of my wheel coming loose a few times and my piece of shit multitool (Serfas Zipper; never buy one) imploding in my bag. My legs also felt pretty much like blocks of wood the entire time, and they never really got too loose. Oh well.



Congrats to Steve Twining, who was able to beat the seemingly unbeatable Dave Walker in a sprint finish for first. Hell yes Steve!

Phew that's about it. I've got to stay busy even as the weather gets crappier to stay up with cross and get ready for Iceman.

UCI Cincy Weekend

Heading down now.

Seems to be a wet one, which is pretty much my style.

I'll be racing 2/3 Friday and Saturday. Either driving home Saturday to race the OMBC on Sunday, or staying in Cincy if the mood strikes me.

Woooooo!

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.