Supercross
(Pre blather -
@The Squirrel! Glad to hear you're ok. Sorry I missed you pre-gash. Does this mean you can still heckle?)
Day 1:
Up early and on the road w/out too many complications. Ok, yes, forgot the leggings, but remembered 1000 yards from the house, so all was well. Parked, jumped out, got onto the course and freaked the fuck out at the hills. I didn’t know there were THAT many ways to go uphill. And for all that climbing, there only seemed to be two downhills. Alright, it’s gonna be one of those days…
Trainer, immediatement! By 7:45 I’m hamstering away and things are on track. I’ve got some trepidations, and my mood is grey. Dunno if it’s just a phase, but seems like the stoke takes a bit of time to get going nowadays. One more lap at quarter of nine and back on the trainer to finish up the warmup. Starting to feel pretty good. The bike, at least, is runnin’ fine, so I’ve got that working for me.
Get to the line early-ish and do a few start sprints. Call ups are chill and I’m fourth row middle. Not terrible. It’s a slight uphill start into loose gravel and an off camber chute, so what could go wrong? Turns out that would be a crash in front of me. NBD. Everyone’s back up and grinding, but the field has been halved. Not that MY people, the 400+ points club on Crossresults, were too terribly affected.
Then we settle in for five laps of the worst roller coaster in the world. My goal was not to blow up on the first ½ lap, as that pretty much pointed straight uphill. The end of that mountain was effectively the barriers in the middle of the flat field past the pits. I hit em just shy of redline, still surrounded by delusional middle-aged men.
At this point it was power. All day power. Lots of folks were soft pedaling through some of the downhills, looking for a moment’s rest. That cost them places. To me. I realized early on that the uphills were just gonna suck, as I’m a fat underpowered bastard, but that if I kept the Hyundai motor moving through the downs and picked lines where I could pedal through the corners, I’d make myself happier. I’d also be in more pain. Sadly, this worked, and I was able to pick folks off throughout the rest of the race, taken a few chances on some off-camber sweepers, but mostly just being a bit more efficient.
Gave myself a lil break just before the pits on lap 2, when I pointed my front tire sideways on a dumb corner and burped it a bit. Happily I was 15 meters from the pits and the SRAM guy had me back out at 32 PSI just in time for the downhill! Whee!
End of the race was a fun sprint that I won before it started by dint of being the first guy on the pavement, which I knew had to happen about 10 turns earlier, so I dug into the cake of resolution with the soup ladle of tenacity and took a big “what the fuck” bite and ripped through a turn fully licking the tape and carrying enuf speed to pop me out in front like a teenagers boner. 31st doesn’t happen by itself.
Splits – 8:46 9:00 8:46 8:48 8:35
Super stoked that my last lap was my fast lap!
Warmed down for 20 minutes or so, stood around like a goon for another half hour and headed south to ride bikes at the Tourne with a friend who’s just getting started on this whole thing. His derailleur decided it’d rather be replaced by one that works at some later date, so it became a bit harum-skarum, but still a nice afternoon on the red trail. (This MAY have been a mistake. My legs were wood when we started, but they got going. Lots of lil rock gardens, meaning, even at The Tourne, lots of small accelerations, followed by holding onto a tree trunk shouting encouraging things as he tried to ride those same rocks in a pretty stout gear.)
Kept the food intake and drinking to a minimum and crashed out early, serenaded by the wind generated by the inversion of the atmosphere that would lead to tomorrow’s SNOW!
Day 2:
Up and out 5 minutes earlier. Quick stop at Quickczech for a couple of breakfast egg muffins and some road coffee. All is well. The further north I drive the more fluffy loveliness is happeing. Find myself smiling as I drive.
Arriving before the team trailers set up across 12 spaces in a row, I grab a nice vista, set up the trainer, get kitted up and realize the price of my view is a hard, blowing wind, with zero cover. Down in the lot, where the view sucks, the wind is blocked by 100 other cars. …and now it’s time for the pre-ride!
The course is reversed. And already muddy as hell. Like, deeply muddy, with grit.
And here, I wanna pause and mention that I usually do well in mud. HPCX after the snow 5 years ago, blew my start, into the hill DFL, finished 7th. Limestone Kiln 3 years ago, 8 inches of snow on the ground, not terrible at 16th in the Bs. Madison Natz in conditions so bad they ate the brake pads on both my bikes in one race, beat my Crossresults predictor by 30 spots, w/a last row start.
So, mud good, right?
I put on the Kenda Kommando wheelset, eschewing the PDXs for the tractor tread, get the PSI down to 28 rear, 26 front (I’m 207lbs, leeme alone), adjust the pads, do another half lap to make sure it’s all working ok. It is. But the ground is soooooo soft. I’m sinking into it. Mentally, this pops a lil warning flag. Like a turkey thermometer.
Get to the line early. I thought. They’re already calling folks up. I don’t even brake as I hear my name called. Boop, right back into fourth row. Not sweating the timing. Off come the leggings (embro, bro), jacket goes cape and holyfuckwhatareyourseriouswe’reatthirtysecondsallready? Everything flies off into the woods and the whistle goes. I didn’t even have time to get into the big ring for the start. Weirdly, this affects nothing, and I get off well. Even finding a way to pass the 3rd row going into the off camber by riding low while everyone is queuing for the top section. Same on the next one, and the third long one. Then we pass the pits and HUGE FIGHT erupts behind me. Never heard anything like it in a race. It goes on from the pits to the barriers. I so desperately want to see who’s involved, but also have zero desire to give it any kind of audience, so I focus on riding and it all falls away, sucked into the earth with my watts.
The first lap wasn’t horrible. I was able to reclip after the runups, find good lines on the 180 down and ups, etc.
After that though, shit show. Clipping back in became almost impossible. Rather than standing up and pounding through the accumulation, I was trying to finesse it. Wrong. And my head went, too. Shifting began to require thought. Like real, which button should I be pressing now? thought. This race did make my butt look big. Every lap, I gained weight. By lap three the bike was howling as grit and mud found their ways in between every. Single. Moving. Part. Including the smoking gears in my head.
The cold itself wasn’t bad. And the course was amazing. I just wasn’t able to get going. And not being able to go on a dry day still looks like bike racing. But one a day like today, there’s nowhere to hide. I was molasses slow. I was slow-motion slow. I was sad. And perversely, I was sadder still to be pulled at four laps, 51 minutes in. I’d missed the next lap by one rider.
Splits - 11:57 12:42 13:15 13:56
Those numbers are hard to look at. As is this:
Thanks Chris Labudde for keeping the shutter open long enough to take this pic.
This was a wakeup call. These lovely days have been lovely. But this was cx, revealed as the ugly brute it can be. And most likely WILL be in January at Hartford. All the cold weather gear has to be in the car. SPDS and down tubes and bottom bracket shelves MUST be Rain-X’d. Stay-warm protocol and warm-up have to be locked down. And post race clean up, from towels, to shower locations, to a go-bag of dry clothing, has to be solid. Not to mention brushes and water for the bike after the prerides and the race. I was able to put none of this in the “check” column, and it cost me mentally.
Of course, this was all made more difficult by sucking at the race. Plenty of unprepared chilly folks kicked my ass today, so it wasn’t a question of ticking those boxes and going on to win. But nailing the other stuff makes being tolerably mediocre at the main thing a lil less painful.
Did the MTB post-race hurt me at all? Prolly not. Didn't even think about til I was writing this. SO many variables. Adding another prolly didn't help, but could it have hurt THAT much?
Anyone want a set of tubeless Kenda Kommandos? Used 2x and possibly cursed.
), change gloves, ditch skull cap and jacket, and make it to staging as call ups start. Same staging. 4th row. Go! Up the pavement to the first off camber along the fence. I find myself on the high line, make up a few lost spots along the way until the end when I catch my bar on the chain link fence. Stay upright, but loose a few spots. Then we hit the off camber turns, and the right hander is all jammed up. Running, remount, hot that long off camber straight by the tennis court, try to ride, and slide out. The mud is just nasty. As we hit firmer ground, I notice my chain dropped. ugh. 3rd time this year? fix, remount, still not DFL, how is that possible? I see 
