Eastern Grind Race Report

 Another one from the "I banged this out for Team Slack" files.   Eastern Grind (Williston VT) is a cool XC mtb race so I wrote about it.

Eastern Grind Race ReportOk this course rules, it's has enough climbing to whoop your ass but half of it is actually super fast flowy stuff so you think you're riding like really fast, at least until you realize that every time you see Harry he is a little further ahead so actually everyone is riding super fast.  But anyway it's good, you should have been here unless you were @Harry Gordenstein and @Luke Plummer because they WERE here.There was no pro field, just "expert open men" so all the super fast guys ended up in our category (boo) but that meant we had 24 dudes (yay!).  The start was FAST because of aforementioned pro dudes and I did a shit ton of work just to end up in... last place after 90 seconds.  I talked about how we were going unsustainably hard and the guy in front of me agreed.  Harry was only like 4 guys in front of me and I assume he agreed too.  Luke was already 10 guys ahead of me and has never found a pace to be  "unsustainable" so I assume he was fine.In the first ten minutes two dudes succumbed to "unsustainable" so I got out of last place only to get PASSED LIKE WAS STANDING STILL by Greta Kilburn, who made up 1 minute from the women's field on me in like 9:45 of racing.  I let her by, rode uncomfortably fast down a descent trying to hold her wheel, and then got immediately dropped the second the descent ended and never saw her again.  She eventually beat all but 6 men and finished 10 minutes ahead of me.Harry remained in sight for a while and I tried to convince myself I was easing into racing well, but I had to admit that by the end of lap 1 I was not seeing a lot of Harry on the trails ahead of me.  I did pass another dude putting myself THREE PLACES AHEAD OF LAST which meant I was meeting my goals for the event.Lap two was the normal middle-of-the-race lap where your enthusiasm for smashing has worn off and the finish is not near enough to make you want to go hard.  I passed two more dudes on this lap though which was cool.    I saw Harry at the start of the lap on one of the longer climbs and he was like 50 seconds ahead, which was not cool.Near the end of lap two I got passed by the lead 45+ guy who was Andy Bishop, Andy Bishop has finished the Tour de France 3 times and has his own Wikipedia page so I'm okay with that even if he is 59 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_Bishop_(cyclist)).  Unlike Greta he did not make me feel stupid descending which I was grateful for.Starting Lap 3 I saw Harry again at the same distance as I had seen him on Lap 2 so this meant I had stopped the bleeding but now I only had one lap to make him BLEED HIS OWN BLOOD if I was going to avenge my Great Glen/Secret Squirrel defeats.  But also riding bikes was hurting me a lot as it usually does after an hour, so I mainly rode along and hope he would crack harder than me.Halfway through the lap the leading junior caught me at the top of the climb and ALSO failed to Greta me on the descent, and then we were done climbing so his svelteness was no longer an advantage, and thus we could smash the flat twisty parts together.  We shared the common goal of going fast, I wanted to go fast to catch Harry and he wanted to go fast to get rid of this 42 year old man that was drafting him.  However he was being a junior and spraying watts all over the corners instead of being a smooth cagey old man, so I kept getting back onto his wheel despite all the passionate pedaling.During this time Harry was spotted at definitely-less-than-50-seconds ahead so progress was being made, however the end of the race was getting annoyingly close.  The child and I continued to battle pointlessly yet heartily and surely we were near to catching Harry by now, right?  I kept looking through the woods for a B2C2 jersey but sadly never saw it, and when we got to the final doubletrack he was still not in sight.  It was clear I had lost and my only option was to take out my frustration on the child who had been pulling me around for the last 15 minutes.With 100 meters to go I jumped out of his draft, started sprinting, drew next to him... then realized that 100 meters on bumpy false flat grass is way further than I thought it was and blew up.  So he beat me in the sprint and also by like 2 minutes on the results.Despite all my failures I was actually totally satisfied with my pacing and performance, I got as much out of my body as I could, paced it well, and didn't make any mistakes of note so if you can't be happy with that, what's your problem?In case it is not clear I would recommend buying Greta's stock if there is an IPO.  Also you should do this race next year.

Comments

Julia said…
Fun read. Hi to Harry.
8/20/2024 10:00 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sam Anderson Cheats at Mountain Bike Racing

Image
Note that this is NOT the 24 Hours of Great Glen   Race Report. 24HOGG delivered another AMAZING race weekend that reminded me how much I love this event and why it keeps going strong in its 19th year, long after the 24-hour craze of the 90s has faded.  I will be back in 2015, and you should be too! ---- update:  I made a second post  that answers some questions and has some more info. The only individual prizes you can get at a team 24 hour race are the "Fastest Lap" and "Fastest Night Lap" prizes. If you're a serious racer (which most people at this race AREN'T), you pay attention to this stuff. Back when I used to do the race on the Back Bay Team, we'd fight over who got to ride 2nd because it was the "hot lap spot" -- the first rider on the course who didn't have to do the Le Mans start. This was better than going 3rd or 4th on your team because lapped traffic quickly started appearing -- your best bet at taking "fastest
Read more

Do-It-Yourself March Cycling Blog Post

So, are you a cyclist? Do you have a blog? If you answered "yes" to both of these questions, I hope you've already written your March Training Blog Post . You know what I'm talking about. To make it easier for those of you who haven't yet written the required cycling-blogger March Training Post , here is a handy template. Just cut and paste the text and then choose whichever option from the brackets [option1|option2], or add in the details [something vague] for whatever fits your training more accurately, and BAM, blog post DONE! Early Spring Training Post Template Just a [quick|surprisingly detailed] update about how training is going this year, in case any of the [joke about small number of readers] care. This week I've done [15 hours|30 hours] in the saddle, [getting up at 4 am|returning after 8pm] each time. It's been pretty chilly out there-- 5 below [celsius|fahrenheit] when I [started|finished] yesterday, but I'm toughing it out because
Read more

US Cyclocross Nationals Travesty Report: Junior Girls

Image
Note:  if you're a USA Cycling representative or Austin 2015 representative, and want to add a comment, rebuttal, fact, or perspective to this discussion, feel free to email me at colin.reuter@gmail.com and I'll post it here verbatim.  I fully accept that I wasn't there and don't know every issue that may have contributed to the decisions that were made.  There may be an explanation for these events that I am not aware of, and if so, I would love to hear it. Important Facts Update and Hyperbole Correction - The Junior Girls 15-16 race was supposed to be 30 minutes long, so the 7 girls who made it 2 laps were not "pulled" from the race, they were removed from the course after the finished their race.  Without firsthand testimony it's impossible to know how clear they were on their race duration being 2 laps shorter than the boys race happening simultaneously -- based on Turner Ramsey's quote to Cyclocross Magazine, it was certainly not a straightforwa
Read more