Until the Snow Ends

I did this race last year and got my butt handed to me on 3 out of 4 stages.  But it was so fun!  I don't know why!  So I came back.  I dunno.  It's different and hard and great and beautiful and expensive and hard. Did I mention it's hard? So yeah. Stage 1:  TT Last year I got crushed in the TT, but I set a power record for 18 minutes, so it still made me feel good because 'cross season is just around the corner and I feel like setting power records on the cusp of cross season is a good thing. (I can't tell you how low this number is because you'll laugh at me) So the goal this year was to set a power record again.  And I met my goal! But, I only beat 4 out of 67 people because TT's are dumb and other people are good pedaling and being aerodynamic. The Official B2C2 General Classification Threat (tm) started 60 seconds behind me and caught me about 12 minutes in.  I did not provide a draft as I am a SPORTSMAN not a chea...

Like most hypercompetitive amateur athletes, my first reaction to having an injury under control is to start operating like the injury never happened.  So with my IT band finally allowing me to ride 2 hours more or less unencumbered, we're healed!  Time to train ("train") for 2 weeks and then go race four crits in four days! Last year B2C2  sent a small squad of racers to the Intelligentsia Cup in Chicago, and they came back with glowing reviews, so the Cup had been on my mind as a recovery goal ever since I started having to cross races off my season back in April.  Christin has recently caught the crit bug, so when she was like "this is random, but do you want to go do this race series in Chicago I heard about?" I was like WHY YES IN FACT I DO! So we descended upon Preston's parents house with the fury of collegiate bike racers and they didn't kick us out after the first day. (Actually I was only there for the last 4 days, so maybe they did get ...

Hey, remember when I wrote race reports?  You might think that I stopped race reporting because blogging is dead (tm), but actually it's because I hurt my IT band in February and have barely ridden, nevermind raced, this year.  The cause of the injury?  I walked up a canyon for 5 minutes, rock climbed for 2 hours, and then walked back to the car.   Yeah, that's it.   Well that and 34 years of being alive and doing god knows what to imbalance my body.  But in any case... rough times for the brand. I've been slowly returning to functionality since then and have recently got back to the point where I can ride a mountain bike for 2 whole hours straight (!) as long as I stand up a lot to reduce hip/knee angles.  And since I need to race bikes like a shark needs to swim to breathe, I signed up for the Thunder Mountain Enduro since it had less than two hours of total pedaling in it, and you barely pedal in the actual racing parts (lol jinx). Steven Hopeng...

Hey American Cyclocross Fans!  Are you HYPED to get up at 7AM on January 28th and watch the women's U23 world championship?  YES YOU ARE! This thing has only been around for two years, but Ellen Noble won the U23 World Cup and Emma White was the youngest woman to ever win a UCI race (take that, Marianne Vos), so you better believe that #MERICA is gonna show up guns a-blazin, sweep the podium,  and you're gonna spill your coffee when you post up in your living room watching a pirated feed early Saturday morning!  We've got the best women in the world!  We're getting our first rainbow jersey this weekend! ... ... Actually, let's be honest.  You have no idea who is racing the U23 women's world champs except for "Emma and Ellen." It's not your fault.  U23 women don't get their own race at World Cups, so you know exactly one U23 woman in those races -- whomever is leading the U23 World Cup (thanks to the leader's jersey).  And that...

I haven't raced 'cross nationals in five years.   Last time  I went, I drove to Madison and had what could charitably be described as a "bland" experience.  Most notably, I spent the season getting hyped for what would surely be the sickest snow/ice cx race ever, only to show up and race a 40 degree tractor pull. So when 2017 Nationals were announced in Hartford, I knew I had to race (being an hour from home and all) but I also knew that getting myself amped with dreams of snowy CX radness was a good way to end up disappointed.  After all, it's Hartford in January. Even before global warming, Hartford wasn't exactly a hotbed of skiing. And on the first two days of Nationals, it was mid 40s and raining and awful: "It's like the storming of Normandy out there" #cxnats pic.twitter.com/EQFiXlc72V — Hunter Pronovost (@hunterpronovost) January 3, 2017 This video looks "rad" but every part of the course that wasn't straight do...

It's hard to believe, but the 10th anniversary of crossresults  passed this year.   (Apparently I started Dec 2nd, 2006 according  to this blog post ).  One of the cool things is that now I have ten years of data to analyze.  One of the less cool things is that now I am ten years older, so I've started thinking about things like "when will I get slow(er)?" When a rider slows down/retires is, of course, a highly personal thing.  Sven Nys won a World Cup at 40.  Laura van Gilder had her best season at 47.  Ryan Trebon just retired at 35.  Zach McDonald retired (?) at 25.  So clearly professional careers have some pretty significant variability to them -- but let's see what we can find out if we look at some numbers -- after all, the crossresults database has 1.3 million results in it by now! And since it's January, I'm hyped out of my mind for Nationals and  I actually have a little bit of free time for once.  Let's not talk ...