American Birkebeiner Race Report

Want more factual, less-seizure-prone Birkie vids?  Check out 2010 and 2011.

So, last year, I showed up to the Birkie with super-questionable fitness having barely ski raced all year.  I ended up having the best race of my life and qualifying for the elite wave in 2012, reminding me for the hundredth time that predicting and controlling one's fitness is way, way harder than it seems.

The obvious next step was to ski EVEN LESS and race EVEN LESS this year.  I got back from 'cross nationals in mid-january, looked at the calendar, and realized that I had 6 weeks to the Birkie.  Five years ago, I would've said there was no hope to get 50k fitness in 40 days, but now I know that ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.  Let's do this!

...and six weeks later, I was in line at the airport with 10 ski days under my belt, with Cary and Lauren, who were on similar training plans -- and we suddenly had a problem even bigger than limited time on snow.

Our plane tickets were booked for the wrong day.

"Tickets for the wrong day," it turns out, is actually just "not having tickets at all," but with the added excitement of a sunk cost skewing your judgement.   The Delta lady said we could put our initial ticket price toward the cost of buying a ticket one hour before the plane took off... so it was "only" $500 to go to Wisconsin in an hour!

Between entry fee, lodging, transport and ticket I was already committed to $700 for the weekend... so I could pay $700 to sit at home get drunk wonder what I was missing, or $1200 to go race the biggest ski race in America.

Dammit.

You'd have done the same thing.

Fast forward to the finish line, where I've just had a totally abysmal 50k, finishing 401st overall (I was 200th last year).  You know what makes that really hurt?  Knowing you could've taken $500 to stay home.

Oh, elite wave, why can't I quit you?  Oh wait, I just did.

When a ski race goes badly, and it's a 2.5 hour one, you get a lot of time to think about what went wrong.  I have a thrillingly lengthy of list excuses in my head, and if there's anything people love reading, it's a blog full of excuses!  Right??

Let me just give you good one.

I had to poop.

It all started as soon as I paid $500 for a plane ticket.  I realized that if I was dropping that coin for a race, then I needed to make it count.  And to make it count, you need fuel.

You ever try to FUEL UP in an airport?  YEAH.

So that's why I ate at Sbarro, your honor.

Unbeknownst to me, that was also roughly the last time I would be moving my bowels until many hours after the race.

Friday afternoon, I thought to myself, "that's odd, I haven't needed to use the bathroom yet today."  Ordinarily, thoughts like this never cross my mind, but it was THE BIRKIE and it NEEDED TO COUNT.  So a little extra weight loss is worth fretting over, right?

Protip:  the #1 way to "not poop" is "fretting about pooping."

Which takes us to race morning, where I was now up to 36 hours without a poop, and kinda had a tummy ache.  NOT OPTIMAL.

Promise I will stop typing "poop" soon.  Don't let your kids read this.  No, wait, kids love pooping.  Don't let your adults read this.

Back to the race.  At the 40k mark, my stomach ache increased a bit... and suddenly, for the first time in several days, I had a strong urge to visit the men's room.  Unfortunately, at this moment I was ahead of a grand total of four other skiers from the elite wave (which was roughly 200 people), and the one last shred of dignity I was clinging to was "not last in the elite wave!"

And you know what they say -- poopin' guys finish last.

So, a pit stop was not made, and my body protested this decision by sealing things back off for six more hours.  Fair enough.

After the race, I was in "never again" mode about the Birkie.  It's been a week, and I've upgraded to "we'll see."  Such is the lure of the potential of a non-constipated Birkie.

One final note:  Last year, I won the ultimate roommate grudge match by getting into the elite wave, while Cary languished in wave one.  This year, he made up the ten minute gap between those waves in 36k of skiing and eventually beat me by over 200 places, to crushingly avenge last year's defeat.  I would be remiss to sweep this fact entirely under the table in my race report, but I can at least try to hide it in a final paragraph that maybe no one will read.

Return of Tuesday Night

Last year's weird winter of training made for such a good result at the Birkie that the only logical progression was to get even weirder THIS winter... by getting on xc skis a grand total of four times in January.  I mean, I still have 26 days until I have to line up against people who get paid to ski race at the biggest race in North America, so I don't see how this could be a problem.  Not like my ego is fragile enough that I could already be losing sleep over getting dropped out the back of the elite wave 5k into the race, no, not at all...

ANYWAY the first step to True Nordic Fitness (tm) is throwing down on Tuesday nights at Weston, for 15 minutes of PAIN on a magical mixture of SLUSH and ICE.  The daytime high was a mere 42, aka "normal Boston winter," aka "one of the colder days we've had this year," so the conditions were relatively good... wet enough to not be piles of granular sugar on top of ice, but cold enough to not be puddles of slush.  It was fast, and fast skiing means drafting, and drafting means FAKING IT.  Yes!

They are doing a new "rolling start" at Weston with seeding positions and all kinds of complexity in an attempt to keep clowns from breaking each others poles (protip:  a "clown" is anyone who steps on someone else's pole, unless it was you, in which case it was just an honest misstep and everyone should chill out).  It meant that we had 300% more yelling and getting-talked-down-to during the preamble and staging, but it did seem to more-or-less work.  So there's that.  In any case, we puttered around for 60 seconds and then the race "went live."

I slipped into the draft around 8th and noticed that Cary was right behind me, so that made things pretty simple -- hang onto the draft as long as possible, and hope that's longer than he hangs.  CROSS CLASH!  Or something.

For two laps the pace was more or less reasonable.  The ticking time-bomb that was EVERY MUSCLE ASSOCIATED WITH LATERAL MOVEMENT IN MY BODY was quietly tick-tocking away in the background, but it wasn't until the final lap that the fuse started to get short.

By that point the front group was down to nine, and I was more-or-less tailgunning in eighth.  I remember thinking that this was a crappy position to be in, and that I had absolutely no ability to do anything about it.  Sure, there was a high school girl drafting me, but I mean, I'm sure she feels the same way.  Right?

Then we hit Mt Weston for the last time and she rocketed off the back, past three of us, and slotted into sixth right as the group broke in half, with the back three of us missing the split.  My brain asked "did that really just happen?" and my legs answered, "OH GOD SO MUCH LACTIC SHUT UP SHUP UPPPP."

So Julia Kern is pretty good at skiing, and Cary and I are washed up old men.  Glad we got that settled.

Anyway, Cary, Dave Currie and I went out the back with a few minutes to go, and then we had our own little smackdown.  I got excited and attacked my way to the front on the second-to-last hill, and then realized that was totally unsustainable and went right to the back.  I can pretend it was part of the plan, though, because the finish comes on a downhill and I totally slingshotted off the draft to win the sprint for seventh with a possibly-frivolous ski throw over Cary!

Then I coughed up a lung and went home, because that was WICKED HARD.

Nationals Road Trip Report

In 2010, Nationals were in Bend, and I had three great reasons not to go:

1) Bend is a plane flight away, and I hate flying with bikes and renting cars and all that crap.
2) My racing age was 29, so the only race I could do at Nats was the Elite Men's race.
3) Nationals was on the same day as THE BEST RACE IN THE WORLD.

Well, wouldn't you know it, all three of these reasons were off the table for the 2011/12 season, so I made the decision waaaay back in September to drive to Nationals in Madison in January, because it would be crazy hardcore snow/ice cross and that sounded RAD.

Through twitter chatter, and Meg/Steve being way too excited, I ended up heading out a week early to race the Chicago Cross Cup New Year's Resolution UCI races before Nats... giving me a four-race cx road trip in January! Awesome?

The tardiness of this blog entry should probably tell you how fast I rode, but that's not to say there was nothing to talk about.

CCC NYR Day 1

One thing I failed to anticipate was that when you leave New England, the number of mediocre Cat 2's (aka "dudes my speed") in a UCI race drops precipitously, because scrubs in Chicago don't buy a UCI license for JUST ONE RACE. The field was shallow but STACKED, headlined by Trebon and Powers, who went on to get first and second the next weekend...



I drew a crappy start spot, but with tractor-pull conditions on the course I wasn't really worried. I decided to start steady (aka slow) and just ride into the best TT I could manage before getting lapped. The turns on the course were ludicrously easy, but that didn't stop me from blowing the tape on the first one and going straight out the back. I chased back on, nearly blew the tape again, and went off the back again. All in the first minute of racing.

LUCKILY it didn't matter, because, you know, mud slogging and all that. So I slogged my little face off for the next 40 minutes, passed like 15 dudes, and then got aggressively 80-percented by some officials that were a little too stoked to apply some UCI justice to the field, which was down to all of 20 dudes at that point, and that was that! Given the abuse that my bike was receiving, and my lack of a pit bike, I wasn't actually as cranky about it as that last paragraph makes it seem.

I ended up 19th, my best UCI placing of the year, but 34 starters will do that for ya...

CCC NYR Day 2

After getting my ass kicked around the middle/back of elite UCI races for the last 3 years, I decided to drink heavily on New Year's Eve, and take advantage of the B race in Chicago being a 2/3 race. THAT'S RIGHT! B racer for a day. With Austin Vincent in the field, I didn't think I could win anyway, but I did have this funny idea I could give him a run for his money.

They staged by crossresults points (thank you, Jason!) so I got a front row start, where I could conspicuously be "that dude that raced elite the day before" and feel like a sandbagger.

Then I got the holeshot into a raging headwind, because HOLY CRAP I HAVEN'T SEEN THE FRONT ROW IN YEARS. Wheee!!

I got off the front quickly, but then accidentally back on the front after the lone downhill on the course, because B RACING! It's 3 minutes into the race and I am DICTATING! It was so novel!

Of course there were like 10 dudes glued to my wheel, but whatever. Austin pulled through and I was like LET'S DO THIS, CHILD! and latched on to his draft as we turned back into the ripping headwind.

We headed past the pit, and the good line was right next to snow fence, and I was right on his wheel, and did I mention how windy it was? So Austin got eaten by the snow fence, and I had exactly enough time to think "I should've seen that coming" before I plowed into his bike and went flying into the air. I assume the guy behind me thought the exact same thing...

So the time I rolled to a stop, I was 10 feet past my bike, which was underneath a pile of dudes. My motivation blew away in the next gust of wind and I glumly walked back to my bike to see how much stuff was broken on it.

Somehow, my bike was alive! My motivation had still been strewn across a windy Chicago golf course, so that was still a problem. I got rolling again in the 30s and slogged up to 5th place by the end... which might sound good, except that Austin took just as long as me to get going again and he went on to win anyway. Freaking 15-year-old honey badgers.

Masters 30-34 National Championship

The epic snow/ice/cold cross I had been dreaming of never materialized. It's 2012, so we don't have winter anymore (I named my blog after this!), so the closest thing to "excitement" that the Nationals course could conjure up was the gnarly frozen ruts every morning, that melted into a mud slog throughout the day. Guess when I got to race? 3:45 pm. Crap.

I was already bummed about the course conditions, but then I attempted to roll to the start line and an overzealous official (notice a trend here?) told me I had to take my GoPro off my handlebars. I said "but it's not a UCI race?" and she said "it's run under UCI rules."

I really, really wanted to get into a debate with her about selective rule enforcement, and how the UCI rule is based on media rights, and seriously, half of the course isn't even freaking TAPED, I'm pretty sure we have rules about that, right?? However I also did not want to get ejected from the race before it started, so I glumly took my camera off and lined up.

THEN THE NEXT WEEK CHRISTIAN HEULE RAN A GOPRO ON HIS BARS IN A FUCKING WORLD CUP, so if they aren't enforcing the rule there, can I PLEASE play with my electronics next time, USAC? Here, I have an idea, I'll make a website that you can copy as many features from as you want, and in exchange, you'll enforce UCI rules in your age-graded national championships no more stringently than they are enforced at World Cups. Deal?

See now I'm so cranky I'm not sure I can keep blogging safely. DAMMIT.

So.. uh.. 30+ race. Right. My start was a little too good, but I slid back to where I should be pretty efficiently. I had Sally's bike in the pit and Ryan pitting for me, so I took a bike after a few laps, and expedited the murdering of my back via the ole "pit bike that don't really fit."

Here I am complaining about that on cyclingdirt.

I got my bike back and rallied somewhat to catch Richard Bardwell (NEW ENGLAND SCRUBS UNITE!) with one to go. A fan told me I sucked and I should take a beer feed, and he was right, so I did. This gave the illegal/psychological boost of REMEMBERING TO HAVE FUN, which inspired me to attack Richard going into the final downhill and hold him off for a glorious 18th place.

Chilling deep in the mediocre zone with the man behind @ChiCrossCup, Jason Knauff [via cxhairs]

Men's National Championship

So, I had no business being in this race, but neither did the 25 guys who finished behind me! The course turned into velcro-dirt right before the race, after a morning of gnar, and I was sad. I made it four laps before I got pulled, took two dollar handups, and successfully hopped the barriers once, hereby making a mockery of the sport of cyclocross in as many ways as possible.

Then I got pulled and watched Jeremy Powers FINALLY bag a National Championship, which was pretty sweet.

The next day I drove from Madison, WI to Boston MA (1200 miles in 18 hours) which was more badass than any of my race results.

I decided that next year, I'm flipping the whole Nats plan on its head: stalling as long as possible to enter, waiting to see if there's snow in the forecast, and only buying a plane ticket then. I have ZERO interest in another 36-hour round trip drive to race on a boring dirt hillclimb course.

Oh, and I also might want to try training or something, because getting your ass kicked sucks.

Postmortem

So what now? Looking back on the season, I felt like I had something approaching decent form until Night Weasels, but then I ran myself into the ground putting that on and spent the rest of the year trying to find my legs. With the exception of my traditional good ride at Northampton, I didn't have much to show for the latter half of the season.

One of the reason I write these things is so that I have to read to my own whining after the emotions behind said whining have passed. Right now, I don't know what to change for the 2012 race season, except that something needs to change. Maybe I should quit coffee, right? Feels like a nice, drastic step.

More pressingly, I have elite-wave start at the Birkie in just over a month, and my six-week plan for faking my way to nordic fitness is already derailed by illness. Possibly related, I tried a "week without coffee" last week. Conclusion: My immune system is powered by caffeine.

I dunno, man. I think it's like I've always said: when in doubt, put GoPros on things.

Ice Weasels Cometh Promotion Report

I've figured out the progession, now, every year Ice Weasels gets bigger, and every year I ride slower. This year, there was almost no point to lining up -- I was on 5 hours sleep, sick, and barely ate all morning.

Luckily there's more to bike racing than what place you finish in -- like the fact that this year's course was AWESOME. I really didn't care how I did, I just wanted to do some hot laps. Kevin is part badger and had dug out an entirely new back section; we had a new tree section; we had hoppable barriers; and we had as much flow as you can possibly squeeze out of the house section without killing your lap length. The flyover allowed for the figure-eight course layout, which means tons of HEY BUDDY sections. Hell yes!

So much fun!

Seconds before this photo I told Sally I was putting her in the tape

As predicted, I didn't have any legs, so I hunted down a few (illegal) beer feeds, cornered as hard as I dared, messed with as many other racers as I could, and then rode the last lap UCI-race-hard to catch my tenant Andrew.  Lapped traffic bailed me out, slowing him down just a tad into the last few turns, and then I did my THANG on the last straight to win the sprint.

Then I rode directly back to the start line, put the promoter hat back on, and staged the singlespeed race.   Then I got chewed out by the officials for the amount of debauchery that the "fans" at the barriers had gotten into.  Then went inside and dealt with results and other crises until the sun went down.

I hear there was a sweet party outside, though.

The future of Ice Weasels is pretty hazy right now -- for all of us promoting it, it felt like "Crisis Weasels Cometh."  Throughout the day we had the Wrentham Police, the Wrentham Health Inspector, and USA Cycling threatening to shut things down in one way or another.  While everything worked out in the end, it's not something we're looking to repeat.

When the race started in 2008, we were like "wouldn't it be fun to put on a cross race?"  150 people showed up and we were thrilled and amazed.  I raced Matt Myette on the last lap for a beer feed (there was only 1 cup), and it was all good.

Since then it's been bigger and crazier each year.  In 2009, it snowed, and Kevin's Harpoon schmoozing got us two kegs -- which we promptly finished off in under two hours, with 250 racers.  In 2010, the scene exploded, with almost 400 racers, and a whole new level of handups, heckling and ridiculousness.

If we keep following this trajectory, in 2015 we'll have to call it Burning Man Weasels.

And there's a reason Burning Man is in the middle of the desert, and not the Town of Wrentham.

In related news, if anyone owns property in the middle of the desert, yet close to Boston, that we could run a cross race on -- let me know!

NBX GP of Cross Day 1 Race Report

I have never been so pleasantly surprised by a race course in my life as I was at NBX Day 1.

I prerode, and it was basically the fastest, easiest cross course in the history of bikes.  As someone who needs accelerations and technical sections to be respectable in the elite race, this sent me into immediate WHINE MODE.

It also sent me into find-a-file-tread mode, because if there aren't any damn corners on the course then I have no intention of having any traction.

So in between whining about how it was a stupid power course and I was going to get crushed and this is lame, bike racing shouldn't have that much pedaling... I got some file treads from Matt Myette.   Which was cool.

Then I spent the rest of my warmup complaining about the course anyway.  Just to open the lungs, dontcha know.

The Day 1 start is the weirdest holeshot in all of cross, because we ride literally a quarter mile straightaway before the first turn.  Everyone accelerates to 28 mph...and then... sits in.  So we blast up the hill and then stop blasting and start compressing into as tight a ball of cross racers as we can acheive.

As you might imagine, this makes the first turn especially spicy because we aren't anywhere approaching strung out.  And thus the inevitable FREAK OUT took out four or five guys.  I saw it coming in time to get a foot down and then sneak by the inside... I think most of the victims were newly-upgraded Cat 3's, who had yet to experience the "joy" of riding in Anthony Clark's blind spot.  Hey, now you know!

Then we came out of the turn and it was ON!

My lame-o attitude prevented me from being aggressive at any point in the first 5 minutes, and I ended up with a fairly miserable position.  On the plus side, the utter lack of braking on the course meant that I could cruise really, really comfortably around other people's wheels.   Especially because was in the even-scrubbier-than-myself zone.

So after two laps of thinking "ride conservatively" I realized that I was actually feeling pretty good, probably because I wasn't doing any work.  And it turns out that feeling good is exactly correlated to having fun.  Doesn't matter how bland the course is, if you FEEL GOOD it's FUN.  Why did it take me so long to realize this?

Of course, I then bobbled the rideup, stepped on John Burns' bike, got gapped off my train of buddies, and that was not fun at all!

However, the chase back on felt strangely... good.  Like my body was thrilled to finally give 100%.  WHAT IS GOING ON??

So when I made it to the group, I started pushing my way through.  Mike Wissell joined me, and next thing I know, the two of us are OFF DA FRONT.

Well, off the front of the 25th-place-group, but still, OFF DA FRONT!  Woooooo!

Mike is a very useful engine, and thus we started gaining ground on Evan Huff and some unknown mid Atlantic dudes.  I even contributed to the chase, because I work with Evan and I knew we were going to talk about the race instead of working on Monday.

We caught Evan.

Huff is a powerhouse on the road so I started sitting behind him mercilessly, like the useless coworker who takes credit after the project is done.

Then I realized that I did not want Evan bitching at me about sitting on his wheel for all of Monday, so tactics would have to be ignored.  I could tell he was feeling cranky for two reasons:  1) he attacked me on the road with the fury of a thousand suns, and then flicked his elbow for me to pull through the second he realized I'd covered it, and 2) cranky is his natural state.

Soooo I enacted plan "pretend to be useful" so that Evan would still be friends with me.

"Being useful" for me generally meant taking my lone pull right before the one twisty section, drilling it in the turns, getting a gap, and then losing said gap AND the lead on the next power section.  But hey, I was in front!  For like a minute per lap!  

At some point Mike and I got away from Evan, I think because of a crash.  And Mike is the chattiest bike racer ever!  So while I was having significant issues breathing, he was talking about catching Keoughs, and who was behind us, and all manner of exciting things that I was aware of but not able to vocalize.

With one lap to go there were two dudes just up the road, and between Mike's enthusiasm and my bizarrely effective legs, we closed the gap just in time for a FINAL LAP SHOWDOWN, which is my favorite thing in cross, because it means I get to "strategically" sit on wheels and then win sprints.

I snuck into second wheel in our group of four in the sand pit.  The guy in front was from Texas, and way better than me, which meant he had traveled a long way and was in save-it-for-tomorrow mode.  Thus when I attacked on the penultimate straightaway, he was like "meh" and didn't really react, other than accidentally closing the door on Mike, leaving me with a huge gap to roll in for 21st place.

Thanks Texas guy!

The only thing I learned from this is that I should stop complaining about grass/dirt crits and start trying to make it into a faster group at the start.  

Oh, and I totally forgot to mention this, but my tenant and buddy Andrew was in his first elite race and RODE HIS FACE OFF chasing my group.  It took 45 minutes for me to stop being worried he was going to catch us.  So... nice ride, dude.  Don't get any faster, please.

BRC Shedd Park Race Report

So, the plus side of having a terrible weekend of racing at Sterling is that I don't really want to write about it, so I can roll back the clock to TEN WHOLE DAYS AGO and talk about the most epic cyclocross grudge match in the world, instead.

Quick Sterling recap -- Day one was one of those days where you ride around and think about how NEXT YEAR I'M GONNA TRAIN BETTER.  My legs were flatter than Iowa.  Cary smashed me in our Cross Clash, and with two laps to go Richard Bardwell and JP T-R attacked me so hard I thought about downgrading to Cat 3.  I beat all of five people.

Day two was totally different, the course was technical and I felt great!  So of course I had a SRAM shifter malfunction on lap three, disengaging the cable and leaving me with a 34x13 singlespeed.  For the first time in my life I threw my bike in disgust.

(I already talked to SRAM about it, and it turns out there was some kind of defect in the shifter they sent me, as it has a gap that allows the cable to slip out that no one else's 2011 Red shifter has.  I'm getting a new one. Doesn't get me a finish, though)

Sooo anyway.  Pictures!

Hoppers gonna hop

Tasha makes me look so much better than I am.

 So a few weeks ago, it was announced that the BRC Shedd Park 1/2/3 field would be racing at NOON for $750, which I thought was pretty cool.  I tweeted about how into it I was, and Chanbagger agreed, and then I said something like "oh shit, Chandler, it is SO ON."

Chandler is a Cat 3, so we never get to hang out, and he's obnoxious on the internet, so I want to beat him.

Then he started talking trash for two weeks straight, because he's obnoxious on the internet, so I wanted to beat him.

It got to the point where "everyone" knew about it, and I had random people texting me, emailing me, and direct messaging me their encouragement to beat him.  My favorite quote came from Mike Golay:  "Colin, if you don't win this, I might have to quit social media."

I suppose I should admit at this point that I don't race well under pressure.  This is why I have my best rides when I screw around and reverse-holeshot mountain bike races.

When we lined up at Shedd Park, I was *definitely* feeling the pressure.  And I did not like it.

The gun went off, I had a mediocre start, and I started playing a game called "where's Chandler?"

The answer to the game, at first, was "a few riders ahead of me," and all was well.

Soon it was "a few groups ahead of me," and all was no longer well.  Shedd Park is a fast, power course with plenty of drafting.  I was terrified that Chandler would end up in a group with enough horsepower I could never catch it.  So I panicked.

I was pushing too hard on the turn back onto the track, that I'd neglected to preride, and BAM!  I got way off the racing line and went sideways through a wood stake, breaking it in half and ending up on my ass.  Panic factor:  doubled.

Surprisingly, panic does not motivate the legs to give 110% like desire does.  I felt sick, tight, and weak.  Chandler's lead got larger.

Stephen Pierce rolled past and said "I have a vested interest in helping you beat Chandler, get on my wheel."  I lasted all of 10 pedal strokes before he dropped me.  Things looked grim.  I made sad faces at people who cheered for me.  I made extra-sad faces if they exhorted me to "beat Chandler."  Oh, if they only knew how bad I felt....

Thank god 'cross races are LONG.  I rode a few laps while feeling bad for myself.  Either everyone else slowed down, or I started to feel better, and while I never figured out how to "go hard" I was at least now "going."

Chandler crashed on the lone technical spot on course (duh), dropped his chain, and suddenly his 25-second lead was down to 10 seconds and his group was gone.  My spirits rose from the ashes like a phoenix.  I've got a chance!

I made contact a lap later.

Since Chandler and I are both wheelsucking sprinters with embarassing power numbers, we now had a problem.

No one wanted to work, but no one could make an attack stick.  He barnacled himself to my hull the same way I do the Wilcox.  I tried hitting the ride-ups with four-figure wattage, but it didn't matter.  You think you're gonna drop a guy who wins 1/2/3 crits with a 5-second burst?  Riiiiiight.

When I wasn't attacking, I was softpedaling, going so far as to take my hands off the bars and move over on the track.  Of course, he didn't pull through.

Finally John Burns (and some other guys!) caught us, so now we could both follow a wheel.  The pace picked up markedly.

All aboard the Burns Express!

While my track record of sprint finishes in cross races is really good, I was afraid of riding around for another half hour with Chandler. Like I said, the dude wins 1/2/3 field sprints on the road, which is more than I can say.  Weird stuff happens at the end of 'cross races.  Don't wait until the last lap unless you have to, right?

I realized I only had one tactic I'd yet to try:  hopping the barriers.  I did it a bunch warming up, and it was a tiny bit faster, and I figured it would give him something else to worry about.  If I pulled out the hop after five laps of racing, maybe I had other tricks up my sleeve, right?  (spoiler: no, I don't)

Since he was staying directly on my wheel at all times, it was pretty straightforward to bust THE HOPS straight in his face.  And apparently, this psychological warfare was the straw that broke the barnacle's grip, because when we crested the rideup thirty seconds later he was GONE.

This motivated me in a way that panic had utterly failed to motivate me half an hour prior!

So then I went really hard for a lap, and he dropped out, and that was that.

Then Burns and I rode around for the rest of the race with a junior and a 45+ guy.  The 45+ guy crashed, and the junior made the mistake of taking a pull, and then it was just me an' Burns.  Obviously, I drafted him for most of the race, and then dropped the hammer when he bobbled, to roll in for a totally mediocre 16th place!

Due to the magic of Chandler talking trash on the internet, people seemed to think I rode really well, even though all the elite scrubs I usually hang out with were minutes ahead of me.

Thanks Chan!

Northeast Velo Cross Race Report

I think my GoPro is starting to show its age.  Today's course was super fun, the racing was great, the field was large, and I wanted SOOOO BAD to make a sweet video of it.

And then... on the start line... ye olde bar cam inexplicably keeps turning off instead of recording DAT FOOTAGE.  Nooooo!

Anyway.  Text it is!

People kept calling the VeloCross course "mountain bikey," but I like to think it was "euro."  Steep drops, sharp ups, velodrome section, whoops, and not much grass?  EUROPE.  Or as close as we get in New England.

We staged by crossresults.com points (gosh, what an awesome website!) and I got #9, which shows you how leeeeegit this race was.  Eight guys in one place who are better than me on a bike, that's preposterous!

Because the course was fun I may have preridden my face off and felt very not-snappy on the start line.  Which is not a good feeling, especially when Anthony Clark is next to you.  The gun went off and I chiiiiiilled into a very casual 30th-position start.  The only way I knew everything was going to be ok is that Mark McCormack was next to me, and if a diesel like him can start at the back then a snappy sprinter with no endurance like me can... wait.

Leaving the track I had an awesome bar-to-bar corner with Mark where I showed absolutely no respect for his seniority and he, in return, let me live.

I spent the rest of the lap playing in traffic and trying to figure out where Chandler was.  I race best with a clear nemesis, and somehow my declaration of it "being on" with him at Lowell (aka tomorrow) spiraled into a twitter campaign of trash talk and wagers... and yeah now I really have to beat him, because random people keep saying to me "you better beat Chandler."

Where was I?  Oh yeah, so he showed up to Velo Cross for a race-before-THE-race and I knew that letting him beat me on a mountain-bikey (er, Euro!  dammit!) course the day before the showdown would be catastrophic.

I located Chandler about 20 seconds ahead and decided it was going to be okay.

Then Pete Smith buried it on the track and we cut that gap in half.   It was hurty and efficient.

Somehow I got ahead of Pete later on and bridge up to Chandler.

Then, Chandler and I rode together for a while, and it was hilarious.  Because we are both merciless sprinty wheelsuckers, no wanted to pull and no one could gap anyone.  We rode SLOW.  Very slow.  So then Pete caught us and went tearing past and we were both like SUCK THAT WHEEL!    And then we went race pace again.

Somewhere along the line, Alec Donahue and Peter Goguen had a barrier incident which led to Al drifting back to our group, and Mark dieseling his way up to our group, and then we had a five-man party train!  Whee!

Al and Mark were the strongest dudes (BY FAR) so of course Pete Smith did all the work.  Chandler rode around behind me all the while, and I was started getting worried that he was not going away.

So I attacked.  For the first and probably last time in my life, I was in a group with Al Donahue and I was like I NEED TO GO FASTER.

Al and Mark were still in chill-mode so it actually worked, although it's possible a crash may have helped my cause.  I didn't know because I was OFF THE FRONT!

I had enough of a gap on the track that they didn't even ride all the way back to up to me.  I was so confused!  But I kept hammering.  It seemed like a really dumb idea, because obviously Mark and Al were going to drag Pete and Chan back to me and then I would have ridden really hard for exactly no purpose.

Luckily Mark the Shark has been racing bikes for roughly a century now and he doesn't "help other people" in bike races, ever, so instead of dragging the group up to me he just attacked it and jumped across the gap in a flash.

And then Al was like, oh crap, Mark is racing now! and he had to race now! too, and no one helped Pete and Chandler at all.  GLORIOUS.  Mark caught me and said "let's go Colin, you and me" and I pretended that there was a chance in hell that made sense.  I rode behind him for sixty seconds and then cracked like an egg.

Then Al went roaring by me without even pretending we should work together.

But meanwhile, Chandler had crashed his face off on the BMX track and DNF'ed!  I claim he crashed because he was under so much PRESSURE from my "attack" that I can take credit for it.  Yes, that is surely what happened.  It's either that or he was totally composed and just can't handle his bike, right?

(I realize that taunting Chandler when we have the ultimate grudge match tomorrow is probably unwise.)

So that ended up being kind of the end of the excitement for me.  A lap later I had a healthy gap on Pete behind me and a healthy-and-growing gap ahead of me to Al and Mark.  Time to mail it in!

I lapped Steve on the last lap, and we hung out and chatted for a bit and then tried to get wicked rad air on the bmx track.  There were no photographers around at that point so as far as I'm concerned, I did this on the last whoop and was then relegated to 8th place to being awesomer than was UCI legal.

Or maybe I just got 8th place because I'm a mediocre elite rider.