Race Report: 2002 Sacramento Cyclocross #1

The story of my first cyclocross race actually starts a year earlier in 2001. I was out riding my single speed near Granite Bay on a nice fall Sunday when I happened upon a cross race. I sat and watched for a while and thought to myself, I was made for this.

Over the years I have had my best results on shorter mountain bike courses of the rolling variety. I can typically climb with good power in short bursts, and recover quickly. I am also above average going downhill. Put me on a course with an abundance of these two elements and I have a chance of success.

With a little Internet research, I found out that the last race of the season was the following week at Negro Bar. I put a rigid fork and narrow tires on my mountain bike. I stripped off all the unneeded stuff—water bottles, bar ends (illegal in cyclocross), pump—just like all the guys I saw the week before. It was only five miles from my apartment to Negro Bar, so I figured the ride over would be a good warm-up. About halfway there I flatted . . . with no pump. By the time I walked home it was too late to fix the flat and make the race.

Fast forward to late the next summer and the memory of watching that cyclocross race was still fresh my mind. I decided to jump in head-first. I bought my racing license and started looking for a bike. I found the perfect used bike in a classified ad on the NCNCA web site:

Unfortunately, the bike was in Reno. I negotiated for the matching front wheel, a lower price, and a meeting point in Incline Village. My buddy Bill drove up with me and we took the opportunity to eat at our favorite sushi place and hit the casinos before meeting the seller. I bought the bike and everything was in place for my first race.

*****

I swapped out the tiny Crank Brothers pedals for my trusted Time ATAC pedals and traded out the wheels for my old road racing wheels. A new set of tires completed the package.

Although I considered myself an expert cyclist in many respects, I swallowed my pride and attended the free clinic before the race. This was a good move on my part. Conducted by longtime Sacramento cyclocross supporters (and National Champions) John and Linda Elgart, it was a great 30 minute introduction to cyclocross. My dismounts and remounts were definitely bad even after the clinic, but at least I learned the proper technique.

The last question was what division to race in. Cyclocross racing is broken up into three main divisions—A, B and C—with A being the fastest guys. I thought I had plenty of fitness to compete with the Bs, but absolutely no technique. I talked to Linda and she assured me that it wasn’t sandbagging to start in the Cs because the division was created for first-year riders.

When the time came, I lined up for the C race and looked around. There were a number of guys kitted out like me, a few guys on mountain bikes, a couple guys on single speeds, and a few juniors. I really didn’t see anyone who I thought could compete with me.

We took off and I wasn't aggressive enough. The course started on the asphalt parking lot, and after 100 yards or so, we turned right onto narrow singletrack. I hit the dirt trail in 15th place or so. We went down the trail for a while, took a few corners, and approached the first set of barriers. I hit them well and passed three guys as we ran and jumped through the set of three. Then we hit a short section of asphalt and turned again onto the dirt. Then we had a 24-inch diameter log to jump over, then more trail, then a set of two barricades. On a long section of asphalt I passed a few more guys.

After the road section we hit a dirt downhill followed by a climb, followed by a sandy hill we had to run up. Man, that deep sand made the legs burn. Then after a remount there was another hundred yards of dirt uphill to the finish line. After one two-mile lap I was thinking, "I have to do this FIVE more times?"

It didn’t take long for me to realize that cyclocross was hard. Really hard. It hurt in new and excruciating ways. Even in the shortest mountain bike race there is some pacing involved, and even a few opportunities to rest on downhills. Cyclocross? Um, no. There is no rest. My assumption of crossers not carrying water because it’s too heavy, or that it gets in the way when shouldering the bike was completely wrong. No, it’s just that you can’t drink water when you’re hyperventilating.

On lap two I passed some more guys and settled into a group of three. I was leading on the asphalt section when the guy behind me yelled, "Fucking go!" This wasn't a gesture of encouragement. He was frustrated with my slow speed. I yelled back, "Come around if you're so fucking fast!"

He did not.

During lap three we were all still together. I attacked from third position on the long road section and rid myself of the yelling guy. The other one I had a hell of a time shaking. We kept passing each other over and over.

At the end of lap five I decided to give it all I had, so I took the downhill really fast, hit the climb hard, and ran as fast as I could up the sandy hill. It killed me, but I got enough of a gap that I broke his will, and he gave up. I cruised the last lap with comfortable gap for fourth place. Yelling Guy took sixth.

Speed and handling skills kept me near the front of the race, but I lost time to the leaders every dismount. The last dismount on each of the six laps was the worst: the uphill slog through deep sand. Every lap I watched guys elegantly dismount and run away from me with long, smooth strides while I plodded through the sand like a pack mule. My running would have to improve.

I won a hat, water bottle and socks. Not a great payday, but it felt nice to place again after all these years.

One thing that has improved with age is my mental toughness. Pitted against a guy with similar physical ability, I think I will beat him because I am simply willing to hurt more.

My new bike, though old and used and abused, worked well.

Later.

Home

Today I took possession of a townhouse, my first home. It is a very weird feeling. I am sitting here in a daze. I really didn't know I could feel this happy.

I really never thought this was a possibility for me. As little as six years ago I was a struggling student living in a shitty apartment in the hood. I had rats. I sometimes sold possessions when I ran out of money to eat. A crash on my mountain bike changed everything.

My friend Matt and I were out goofing around on our mountain bikes near Cal Expo. I was trucking along on some singletrack when I suddenly found myself going over the bars and slamming to the ground on my left shoulder. I had hit a deep hole that I never saw because the weeds in the hole had grown up to ground level.

I suffered a dislocation and a separation at the AC joint. I was in tremendous pain. I had no medical coverage. Matt, who was well on his way to becoming a doctor, told me there was little to be done in the short term. They would simply put me in a sling.

I made a homemade sling and toughed it out. When my mom saw me she said I either needed to quit mountain biking or get a real job with medical coverage. Well, I certainly wasn't going to quit riding, so . . . 

I got a job with the state almost six years ago to the day. I worked my way up from an entry level job into IT and started making decent money. And here I am today sitting in my empty first house.

As luck would have it my current apartment (which is quite nice) is about 125 yards from my new townhouse. Easy move.

Oh, you want bike content? Well, I am less than a mile from the American River Bike Trail.

Anyway, here are a few pictures of the new place.

My realtor. She's a bulldog at negotiating.

My own garage! I have been working on bikes in apartments for so long. I cannot wait to work out here.

I feel extremely lucky, and I will be forever grateful to my mom who pitched in with the down payment.

Later.

Ciento por El Viejo

I am very, very tired today. After a hectic week, a week in which I rode only twice, I punished myself by riding 100 miles yesterday. Somehow I managed to make it through my work shift today with a major case of the Mondays.

The Rio Strada team ride started in El Dorado Hills. I was the only one foolish enough to ride from home, making everyone else's 70-mile ride an even 100 for me. There were a few raised eyebrows when I rolled into the parking lot on my bike.

We rode up past Georgetown towards Uncle Tom's Cabin, topping out at an elevation of 4500 feet or so. It was some tough climbing. The last few miles were steep.

There is a guy on the team, Mark, a little fireplug of a guy, who competes in triathlons. He does everything from local sprint triathlons to the big ones like the Iron Man in Hawaii. He has also won his age class in the last FOURTEEN Eppie's Great Races, and holds three record times. Needless to say he is a strong dude, and he set an absolutely sadistic pace on the ride. He is the kind of guy who immediately starts shifting down a cog if the steepness of a climb lessens for even 50 meters. Most normal humans, like me, use that as an opportunity to recover a little before the road tilts up again. Not this dude. There was just no recovery time yesterday.

I actually beat him up the first real climb, which was up Luneman Road. I think because the beginning is really steep my lower weight gave me an advantage. I looked back and everyone was just gone off the back. Maybe those 20% grades give us mountain bikers the advantage. Anyway, after that climb he really punished me. I was a distant second on all the climbs after that, but I beat all the other guys. I held his wheel two-thirds of the way up Marshall Grade before I cracked. That one hurt. He was flying.

On the way back down Green Valley Road, with almost 80 miles under my belt, I rode the front from Cameron Park all the way to El Dorado Hills. Dan was right behind me yelling encouragement. I felt like I was really ripping it, and nobody tried to come around, so I guess I was going fairly fast. Most of the time I looked down to see we were going 28-32 miles per hour. I wish someone would have come around, because I paid for that big effort later.

Anyway, I impressed the guys on my team. I rode strong, and I received a lot of pats on the back in the parking lot. Most of them were wasted after the ride, and I still had to ride home. I must admit, once I left them in El Dorado Hills, I totally limped back to Fair Oaks. That last 15 miles was awful. My legs hurt like hell after cooling down and starting back up. I rolled up to my apartment so glad it was over.

That was probably the hardest combination of ride length and speed I can remember, at least for many years. This was much harder than the Sierra Century last year.

These big rides tend to happen right around my birthday. Is it just coincidence? Probably not, at least in this case.

Turning 34 is one of those tough cycling years. In most cycling disciplines, the "old guys" age classes start at 35, so that's something to look forward to: being the "young guy" again.

But during that year when you are 34, racing can feel like a long season of getting your ass handed to you by unemployed 20-year-olds. So yeah, I might have been feeling old. When I decided to ride from home I knew it would be around 100 miles total, and it would definitely test me. You know, let me know if I still "had it."

Oh, I definitely still have it, kids. Come get some.

Later.

Wipeout

I am not doing so well.

I took a pretty bad spill yesterday afternoon on my single speed. My front tire slid out going around a turn on some singletrack out past Granite Bay. The turn was a fast left-hand sweeper, slightly off-camber, and I hit the edge of a small rut with the inside edge of my tire. Boom! It happened so fast. A half inch either way and nothing would have happened, but I hit the edge of the rut just perfectly. Or imperfectly. Life is all about perspective, I guess.

I had the bike spun out, so I was going over 20 miles per hour. I was about 14 miles from home, and it was a long ride back. I am skinned up pretty badly with abrasions on my shoulder, elbow, hip, thigh, knee, shin, and ankle—pretty much my whole left side.

Scrubbing the dirt and gravel out was fun. We had plans to go out to dinner, and Jennifer arrived while I was in the shower. She heard me screaming and was pretty horrified by the shower scene she saw. She gained some insight into the life of a bike racer. She might not come back.

I'm in some serious discomfort right now, but I made it to work today. I tried to bandage as best I could, but eventually I bled through my pants. The hip injury is by far the worst part. I lost some serious skin, and there is a deep laceration right through the middle of the abrasion. It probably needed to be stitched up, but the area around it is such a mess, I don't know if they could have.

The ground where I hit was like fucking cement, so I am bruised and sore in addition to the (off) road rash. I am pissed off at myself because I just don't make dumb mistakes like that. Now I will be on the shelf for a while, just when I felt like my fitness was coming back. Frustrating. So very, very frustrating.

The irony of making it through two criteriums completely unscathed just a few days ago is what bugs me the most.

Later.

Race Report: 2001 Lighthouse Criterium

When I woke up this morning, my legs felt pretty heavy and sore from racing in Land Park yesterday. Had my mom not planned to come see me race, her first time ever, I might have bailed. I crawled out of bed and took a hot shower. After giving my legs a good rubdown, they started feeling better. At the race I warmed up on the trainer for a full 40 minutes—the longest I have ever warmed up. I had a serious sweat going, and that seemed to help loosen me up quite well.

I met a guy from the Bay Area who had parked right next to me. He asked me about the race course, we got to talking, and we ended up hanging out until the start. His name was Jay, but I would only learn this after the race. He works at the Lawrence Livermore Lab.

Because they were running a little behind schedule, the officials didn't allow us a warm-up lap. There was much grumbling from the pack. Before anyone was really ready, the ref blew the whistle and we were off. Immediately the pack strung out in a single file line. The pace was incredibly fast in the beginning, but mellowed out after a few laps.

I rode about mid-pack for the first half of the race. I ended up drifting back little by little and found myself at the back for a couple laps getting sucked along on the nice, long straightaways. After a little recovery time I made an effort up the outside of the hill and suddenly found myself at the head of the pack. I tried to rotate out after a hard pull at the front, and then again a little later, but nobody would come around. Out of anger I put the hammer down and strung out the field, but made no gaps. I must admit it was cool to look back and see the entire pack riding single file in my wake. I rode almost a whole 1.4 mile lap on the front and felt pretty good. I spent the next three laps in the third or fourth position, resting a bit but keeping an eye out for a breakaway.

After my effort at the front, I drifted back in the pack where I saw the lab guy. I said, "What are you doing?" in an Indian accent, like the guy in the Budweiser commercial, and everyone around us was laughing.

On the final lap, going down the first hill, some joker tried to pass on the inside in the gutter. He slid out and crashed hard right in front of me going about 32 miles per hour. I braked hard, swerved and avoided the crash. Nobody else went down, but the field split right in front of me. There was a big gap very quickly. I took off in pursuit and lab guy came around me. I said, "Go Lawrence Livermore Lab guy!" I jumped on his wheel, but unfortunately he petered out pretty quickly. I said, "I'm coming around, let's go!" I put in a blistering effort which actually started dropping lab guy. "Stay with me, stay with me," I said, and he caught back on. I wound it up to 30 miles per hour and managed to get back on the lead group with about 20 seconds of intense effort. I sat in through the three quick S-turns and tried to catch my runaway breath. Then I purposely downshifted to a low gear and really spun it out up the last hill. I shot by about five guys who were in too big a gear. Then after the last turn I shifted down and wound it back up. I couldn't catch onto a wheel so I just sprinted for the finish, passing two more guys and almost nipping a third at the line. It was cool. I made a quick count of nine guys in front of me.

After the race, during the warm-down lap, lab guy introduced himself as Jay. He apologized for not introducing himself earlier because it would have been much easier for me to say, "Go Jay." We got a good laugh out of that.

After a race I like to interact with the fans. OK, it's my mom.

I ended up in 10th place, a decent finish for me in a criterium.

Later.

Race Report: 2001 Land Park Criterium

Today's race ended pretty much like every Land Park Criterium does—with a huge crash. There is a reason we call it "Crash Park."

The race takes place in Sacramento's Land Park on a circuit that really doesn't have any corners to speak of. Because of its circular nature, speeds are very high and the pack is a crammed together. It's really tough for anyone to go fast enough to string out the pack. Most of the time my computer registered 28-30 miles per hour, and this speed is achieved with three or four guys within inches or even at times bumping you.

I drifted from the front of the pack to the back a number of times throughout the race, and even took a few short pulls on the very front. With three laps to go the speed picked up even more and we did finally see some real racing. I moved up to the top third and was feeling pretty good about making a move.

Four guys split off the front with two laps to go and the rest of us were trying to bridge up. On the back side of the course there was a touch of wheels in front of me and a couple guys went down. Everyone scattered, and another racer went down and slid across the road in front of me. I hit the rear brakes and slid sideways to miss him. It was a nice mountain bike move that kept me upright, but I heard the telltale ping of spokes breaking. My rear wheel was toast. Second year in a row.

As I was pulling to the outside of the road the crash continued behind me and I turned just in time to see a guy hit a palm tree. I will never forget the sound of his torso hitting the trunk. It sounded not unlike Stallone punching a side of beef in the first Rocky film.

I continued "racing" with my badly bent rear wheel, but with the rim rubbing my brakes I couldn't do much. When I came around to the crash site on the last lap, the rider who hit the tree was still down but appeared to be conscious and alert.

I limped in to take 38th out of 45.

After barely escaping yet another criterium crash, I have to ask myself if it's worth it. The race format just isn't that fun, and it is by far the type of racing I am weakest at.

At least tomorrow's Lighthouse Criterium has a hill and lots of cornering. Hopefully I will perform a bit better there.

Later.

Race Report: 2001 Mount San Bruno Hillclimb

Today's race was one of those last-minute-decision events that happen from time to time. Since I decided not to go out and party for New Year's Eve, I started to look around for something to do the next day. What better way to start off the new year than with a race?

I got up at the crack of dawn and made the drive down to Brisbane, which took over two hours. I was already questioning the sanity of driving 110 miles to race a mere 3.5 miles.

I registered, dressed and went out to warm up. I hadn't raced a hillclimb in a while, but I remembered enough to warm up thoroughly. For a race that's going to last around 20 minutes, you don't really have to leave much in the tank. You want to be revved up and ready to hit it hard.

We lined up and I took a spot near the back. It wasn't necessary to elbow my way to the front; things would sort themselves out quickly.

The 3.5 mile course averages a 6% gradient with a short break in the middle and the steepest grade at the top.

We took off and within a couple hundred yards I was solidly mid-pack. A few guys got together and we paced up the climb at a moderate clip. I was actually pretty comfortable.

When we hit the halfway point with the slight downhill, the guys I was with started coasting. My strategy was a bit different. I sped up.

I hit the little downhill hard and then never really let up. I picked off people pretty consistently the rest of the way and not a single rider passed me.

Towards the top I did struggle a bit and had to shift down a cog as the grade steepened.

I ended up 8th out of 23 in my class and was pretty happy with that. Not a bad way to start off the racing season.

Later.