Until the Snow Ends

I have been going to Green Mountain CX religiously every single year since 2008.  And I hate  it.   But it's the first UCI race of the year!  Any my love for trying not to get lapped exceed my hatred for pedaling uphill.  So away we go. This year was especially good because I got sick the week before and just barely got my bike built and tubulars glued by Saturday morning.  I felt like a sheep going to the slaughterhouse. But you know, low expectations are the key to happiness . GMCX Day 1:  If you'd done GMSR this would seem easy I drew a horrible starting spot, which was actually exactly what I wanted. (Quick aside, it's pretty cool that we had something like 30 starters in the UCI races at GMCX.  I remember back when there would be 30 guys and all you had do was not break your bike to get paid) So the race goes off and I am bottled up at the back with everyone else, but unlike guys with top-25 dreams, I don't waste any energy trying...

I am a traditional opponent of early-September cyclocross, but with my 29er frame broken there wasn't much to do except roll out to Quad Cross and eat dust. Due to an 11th-hour bike build (is there any other kind?), I didn't preregister, which was stupid because I ended up not finishing the build and just racing on last year's bike, proving that finishing the build was unnecessary and I could have saved myself $10 and about 30 start spots if I had just USED THE BIKEREG. Quad Cross Bar Cam from colin reuter on Vimeo . The holeshot was 40 yards into a turn, then a turn, and then a lot more turns, so any first-minute heroics were ruled out for those of us on the back row.  Instead I tried to "stay calm" or whatever it is I would have told Christin to do, and move up when I could without getting into any crashes. This plan lasted for a solid two minutes, until we hit the dirt road on the backstretch and things opened up enough for me to get EXCITED.  And ...

I have never been as prepared for a race (or was it a "race"?) to go completely ice-world as I have this one. As someone who regularly loses sleep over race budgets, seeing this race EXIST AT ALL with 340 racers at an average entry fee of maybe  $10 each blew my mind.  Putting on a road race with a $3400 budget is basically impossible.... hell, by the time you pay for insurance, timing and portapotties for that many people, you might be already out of money. But you know, when you're so deep in the Kingdom the race course regularly has to turn away from the Canadian border, those might be your only expenses...and I'm not convinced we were actually insured.  And you know what?  It was AWESOME. The nice thing about $0-10 entries is the massive no-show rate reduced turnout to "only" a 220-rider neutral start, behind a pickup truck.  I established a position at the front well before we rolled anywhere, and missed the shenanigans you knew had to be happening ...