Race Report: 2004 Sacramento Cyclocross #2

Race two took place at Negro Bar. This venue typically gives me problems, but the course they created had a bit more pavement and a little less grass than in the past. There was also significantly more singletrack, including a very steep chute to climb. On the first lap I made it up and gained significant time.

After that I had to run up like everyone else.

I loved the more technical nature of this course.

The run up the steep hill was pretty tough, but instead of dreading it every lap I embraced it. Every time I picked off at least one guy and moved up.

I worked as hard in this race as I ever have.

On the pavement sections where guys tend to let up, I went full blast. I picked up a couple places here too, and not one single person passed me.

In the end I took sixth place, and I must say I was a little surprised and disappointed. I turned myself inside out and really felt like I would place higher. It was an improvement from last week, but I'm not really satisfied.

I don't want to keep harping on it, but my fitness just isn't what it was last year. The only reason I could even grind out a sixth place was I was willing to go so far into the deepest, darkest depths of the pain cave.

Even riding and training and racing as little as I am is a burden on those around me. I am left wondering if it is all worth it just to race at an "OK" level.

Things to think about.

Later.

Race Report: 2004 Sacramento Cyclocross #1

In a perfect world there would be enough time for everything. You could work a full-time job, spend time with your family, take care of the house and yard, cook meals, shop and still train like an absolute madman.

We do not live in a perfect world. Instead I trained like a sensible adult with many responsibilities. In other words, not much.

I went into this cyclocross season knowing I was not as fit as the two previous years. I would take my lumps and try to have some fun. Try.

Unfortunately I have always had a difficult time enjoying the ritual of paying good money to simply ride around in circles knowing I was only pack fodder. A participant. A loser. 

No, battling for podium spots is what has always made racing fun for me. There are guys who can focus on the individual battle against the course, or take pride in improving their 15th place from the race before, but that ain't me.

One thing that would make it even harder this year was the fact that I aged six years since last year. In the 2003 season I raced in the 35+ B class, which has been the standard for quite a while. For some reason it was changed to 30+ Bs this season. At 37 years old this now put me squarely at the older end of the category.

Race one was held at Folsom Point, which is a good venue for me if you discount the fact that I broke my ribs there last November. However, I also had a second-place finish a month before that.

I got a pretty good start up the asphalt starting hill and hit the dirt in sixth. I held that for a while as the pack spread out quickly.

I pretty much rode the whole race by myself.

A few guys passed me along the way, but for the most part it was a solo ride.

I felt OK but not great. My body language as I crossed the line suggested I was glad to be finished.

In the end I took ninth place. Curtis and Will smoked me.

The guy who won, Roger Lackey, was unknown to me at the time. About two years later I would learn that he works with me at FTB and he is an elite endurance racer.

Later.

Spot On

I did the Forest Hill loop today on my new-to-me Spot single speed, which was probably the most difficult mountain bike ride I have ever done with one gear. I owned the Surly 1x1 for a while of course, and rode it a lot, but I only used it around the Lake Natoma and Folsom Lake areas for the most part, which is fairly flat. I also rode it up in Sly Park, which definitely has some extended climbs, but they are long and gradual and non-technical. Riding a single speed up in Auburn definitely took it up a notch.

I'd like to say that I'm so freaking strong that it was easy on the single speed, but that would be a lie. A couple times my heart rate went into places it hasn't visited in some time, even when racing. 

Most of the loop is very rideable, but a few of the hills really hurt. I can say that I did not walk anything, so I felt that was a small victory. There is some definite elevation gain.

I finished with 26 miles hard-fought miles. My legs felt OK but my arms were shot. Sawing away on steep, standing climbs and holding on during rough downhills with only a rigid fork takes a toll on your arms.

I was still smiling at the end, and that's what matters.

Later.

Race Report: 2004 TBF MTB Challenge #4

Today's race was pretty enjoyable. I rode fairly hard but by the finish I felt like I should have gone much harder. There was still some gas left in the tank. In the last half mile I chased furiously to catch up to the guy in front of me, but he did a good job of holding me off by one second at the line.

I improved my time over the last race by roughly a minute, but still lost five places, taking a disappointing ninth. It looks to me like the 30-39 guys are the fastest age group. Crazy.

Here I thought there would be some benefit to getting older and racing against the "old" guys, and then they just go faster. What's even funnier is my time would have placed me third with the 20-year-olds. Is it sandbagging if you race in a younger class?

It's really not that surprising, though. That same thing happened in cyclocross racing, too. The master 35+ B winner usually beat the younger B winner.

This was the last TBF race of the spring. I don't know where I'll go from here, if anywhere. Cyclocross season is still pretty far away, so hopefully I will find something to do in the meantime.

Later.

Race Report: 2004 TBF MTB Challenge #3

Well, I raced today. It was better.

After having my ass handed to me in February, I decided to race in 30-39 sport. I figured, hell, I work 40 hours a week, have two kids, yard work, and a slight beer gut.  If that isn't the definition of sport class, I don't know what is!

Having six weeks to ride my hardtail again and acclimate my body to the specifics of mountain bike racing helped tremendously. 

I was 4th out of 16 starters:

My placing was actually decided pretty early on. I was sitting in about tenth place after a couple miles, waiting for an opening. I attacked from the back of the group of six I was in on the first pavement section so I could be first onto the singletrack climb. 

I hit the climb hard, totally going anaerobic (oh how it hurt), and got a good gap. It was kind of risky, because if I blew up I would have been in trouble. But I managed to hold it until the top, crested strong, rode the downhill well, and that was all she wrote. I never saw those guys again.

I always thought attacking was kind of stupid in mountain bike racing, but I guess not.  It seemed to work pretty well in that situation. At 36 years old I'm still learning new things about myself and racing.

The guy who originally won cut the course was disqualified (Pat Boyle).

Second place protested and won. If you beat second place by 13 minutes on a 20-mile course, they're probably going to take a look at that, you know? Idiot. All that for a freaking plaque? There weren't even any prizes. What's the point? You're 39 years old and cheating?

Anyway, I rode pretty strong, and felt good about my performance. I kept on the gas the whole time except for the last half mile. I made a big effort in the last few miles to close a 45-second gap to about 10 seconds, but he held me off, so I shut it down at the end and coasted in because nobody was behind me. As you can see the gap to third place went back up to 42 seconds at the finish because of it. 

So close to a third-place plaque! I joke but also admit that it would have been cool to podium after all this time.

It was a good day of racing and the 20 mile course was just the right length for my life and fitness level at this time. Another lap at that speed would have hurt.

Speaking of speed, my average was 13.9 miles per hour. I only bring this up to illustrate how much racing and equipment has improved since the old days. In the mid '80s, Joe Murray was winning races averaging a mere 10 miles per hour, and at his peak he was nearly unbeatable. Crazy.

Later.

Johan

Today I took the cross bike out for a spin. I started from Old Folsom with a plan to ride 20 miles or so. I rode towards Granite Bay via the bike trail, dirt roads and singletrack.

When I left the truck, my legs were feeling a bit heavy, as it was my fourth straight day riding. After a couple miles, though, I realized I actually had good legs.

After finishing the climbing up to Beals Point, I really opened it up on the dirt road along the levy, and it felt good. I felt so unbelievably strong. There are those weird days when everything lines up, and you feel invincible. If only you could bottle those unbelievable training rides and save them for race days.

I cruised along at 24 miles per hour for a while on the undulating gravel road. The day before I was struggling to maintain 22 on my road bike on the paved bike trail.

I rode all the way into the singletrack beyond Granite Bay, and I turned around at the planned 10 mile mark because of time constraints. This happened to be at the top of the climb, which worked out nicely.

On the way back down I caught up to a guy on a full suspension bike. He was going a little slow. I pride myself on being a fast descender, but it's pretty bad when a guy on a cyclocross bike is freewheeling behind a mountain bike. Anyway, when it finally opened up to doubletrack, I passed him.

Because I was a little irritated, and had a short rest on the downhill, I put it in the big chainring and opened it up. This is when the experience became otherworldly and why I even bother to write this . . .

It was one of those times when your legs seem to have limitless power. I shifted a few times and kept winding it up. I hit the right shifter again and nothing happened. I looked down to find I was already in my 48x12. The computer said 29.5 miles per hour. On dirt. Singletrack.

I was powering away in the drops, the bushes and weeds flying by my face in a blur—like riding in a tunnel. I was going really fast, but suddenly time slowed down. Everything became fluffy and dreamy, like that time I was given Demerol in the hospital. My body was dumping all the good chemicals into my system and I was high as a kite. And it was awesome.

There is something special about charging down a dirt trail in the drops on skinny tires, floating effortlessly over the bumps like a feather in the wind. It makes you feel like Johan Museeuw in Paris-Roubaix.

It was a cool experience, a short ride that started like thousands of others but ended like an epic. I just thought I would share it.

Later.

Race Report: 2004 TBF MTB Challenge #1

So I did a mountain bike race today for the first time in a while. The short version: It rained the whole time. It was muddy as hell. My legs cramped. It was fun. And it wasn't.

On a whim, I thought I would give a TBF race a try. I had seen them out at Granite Bay a number of times over the years. Although they seemed a bit corporate, and primarily focus on the running/triathlon side of things, I hoped they knew how to run a proper MTB race.

Knowing I was racing, I went on a short ride on my cross bike yesterday. I felt like absolute crap. I hoped that would improve on race day.

Before that could happen, though, I needed was a bike. When I built the Santa Cruz Blur last summer, I scavenged a few parts off my Litespeed. Consequently it had been sitting in a disassembled state for eight months. Knowing the forecast was for rain, I cobbled the old hardtail back together again last night. I rode it up and down the driveway a few times in the darkness, and it felt weird and uncomfortable. I hoped a solid warmup before the race would help my body refamiliarize itself with my old titanium friend.

I was flying during the cyclocross season just a few short months ago. I sat in top three in the 35+ B series for much of the year until the broken ribs ended my season. I guess I still felt fast, so I entered the expert class. This meant three 10-mile laps and 30 miles. No problem, I thought. But when I lined up with all these guys, a few of whom looked like pros, I knew I was in trouble.

After four years of cyclocross and road racing exclusively, just racing on the mountain bike again was cool. It was actually a little surreal. It has only been six years since I raced on a mountain bike, but somehow it felt like much longer as we waited for the start. I was a stranger in a strange land. As we rolled away from the line, however, I clicked into race mode and suddenly I was a mountain bike racer again.

In hindsight, I should have started more conservatively given the circumstances. These guys started fast and I simply followed suit. We hammered out the first lap at a very high pace and I felt OK, but not great. As we rolled through the start/finish, I knew I couldn't do 20 more miles at that pace, so I backed off a bit.

On the second lap, because I wasn't solely focusing on the wheel in front of me, I noticed that the course was pretty cool. I must say, they did a great job of laying it out and marking it. They utilized many of the trails I usually ride but in different ways to make a 10-mile loop. There was a fair amount of climbing, which was my undoing. Hopping on a bike you haven't used in eight months and racing just isn't smart. The climbing position was totally different. It was the climbing that gave me the cramps in my quads. They started about halfway through the second lap, and I fought them through the rest of the race.  As long as it was flat, I was cool. I even felt like I had good power at the end. Every rise, though, and my quads were screaming.

The cramping certainly made it less fun. And the endless gritty mud that crunched away on my drivetrain was annoying. Still, it felt good to be back in my element. At my core, I am still a mountain biker first.

I limped through the last lap and finished a disappointing tenth out of 11.

I am hoping a bunch of people dropped out because of the weather conditions. It certainly seemed like more than 11 guys started with my group.

My bike is going to need some love:

Much of the leather was worn off my trusty WTB SST saddle.

In closing, I discovered that I am probably not an expert-level MTB racer anymore. I should have listened to this guy:

You said it, Harry. I have to acknowledge that my son was born less than three months ago, and that really changes things. I am spending a lot of time with my little human who has already become the center of the universe. I'm likely at the very bottom of my fitness curve after being at the high point last cyclocross season. I will have have to build back up again. Or not.

For much of my life I have identified as a bike racer first. Now my focus has changed to my family, and that's for the better. Obviously. From here on out I am a husband and father who may or may not race a little on the side when time permits. And that's just fine.

As for TBF, they actually ran a pretty tight ship. No complaints.

There are more TBF races coming up. Maybe I do some. Maybe not. We'll see.

Later.