Woodchuck holes are not the cyclocrosser’s friend.

Yesterday I went over to the beautiful Shenandoah Valley to race at the inaugural Luray Caverns CX race.  I was pretty excited because not only am I on some great form, but they even had a 35+ Cat 4 race, which I figured I’d have a pretty good shot at winning.

The course had one decent hill, one set of barriers, one set of logs that you could easily hop, and more twists and turns than you could ever want.  I didn’t get a great start, having lined up in the second row of the 18 starters, and left the pavement in maybe 5th wheel.  We immediately went into a downhill zig-zag section, before bombing down a decent descent and making a 180 and climbing up the same hill we had just descended.  No problems here, I rode easy, maintained position and waited for things to start splitting up.  For most of the first lap they didn’t and I just sat in.  Towards the end of the first lap we hit the barriers for the first time and I had a great dismount, made up a spot or two, set the bike down and… realized I had been a bit too hasty and rough putting the bike down and somehow had gotten the chain off the ring and past the chain catcher.  While I stopped to fix that, the lead group rode away, but again, I wasn’t too worried because I felt so good.

I? start hustling after them, chasing for a lap and then catch one rider.  After jumping over the logs, I decide I should put in a little dig to get some distance on him, stand up to accelerate and put my front wheel right into a hole (unmarked of course) and go down.  Not badly because I hadn’t really accelerated, but enough that the rider passed me.

So I’m back up and chasing again, now sitting in 7th place.  I catch sixth place (John Murray who I believe rides for the Winchester Wheelmen) and we ride together for a bit, and as I’m bombing down a hill leading to the pits I manage to find yet another hole or divot and, bang, I’m down again.  This one hurt a bit because it was at speed (when I got the skinsuit off, I discovered a nice bruise on my thigh in the shape of a the hook of a handle bar), but I got up and, yes, chased him down yet again?.

So now it’s last lap, we’re catching 5th place, and although the podium is out of reach, I’m thinking top 5 would be pretty good.  Going into the downhill switchbacks, I have a complete brain fart and start to turn too early, nearly run into the tape, slow way down and allow him to pass me.  He gets a little gap going down the hill, but yet again, I chase him down on the hill.

And here I made a tactical error — rather than attacking immediately after getting on his wheel and trying to get a gap on the power section I sat in.  It was a mistake because clearly he was a better technical rider than I while I seemed to have a bit more power — I needed a gap because he would pull away on the technical stuff.  Anyway, he would get a little gap on every corner and I would close it a bit and so on around the course until we finally caught 5th place, he got by cleanly and I had to slow down a bit and that was all she wrote, he rode off for 5th while I had to settle for 6th despite having some of the best form of my life.

Take home lesson here: in cross (and probably in mountain biking, though I haven’t raced that discipline yet) good technique is as important as good form.

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Having done my first cross race of the season this past weekend, I was reminded yet again how much fun you can have killing yourself for 45′  riding circuits in the dirt.

I’ve pasted a copy of my race report from the Bryan Park cross race below.  I’d love to hear from others about how their cross seasons are going.

I finally dragged the cross bike out for a race — 35+ open.  The course was at Bryan Park in Richmond — site of the weekly training crit series — and the course was very much like  a crit.  Totally flat, 2 sets of barriers, lots of twists and turns.  It really was a technical crit raced on cross bikes.  I had really good legs, but didn’t have a great start.  I was on the front row during staging, but because this is a series, they did call ups and I wound up losing a row and a chance at the hole shot.  I sat in ~10th place for the first half of the race, picking a few guys off here and there, but not really closing to the leaders.  My luck for the worse turned towards the end of the race — I stacked it trying to take a corner too sharply.  Nothing serious and I was up and moving in a few seconds, but I did lose 2 spots.  Next lap, however, the fatigue must have been setting in because as I was going over the last barrier, I banged the bike  and knocked the chain off (short legs and 40cm high barriers don’t always mix well).  Lost 3-4 spots getting it back on.  I lost some momentum after that and rode with a teammate for the last three laps, actually sitting in at times as if it were a road race.  Wound up finishing 15th/ 25ish.

So a relatively disappointing finish, but boy, was it fun.  For those of us focused on the road season, cross provides such a great mental change of pace that it always rekindles enthusiasm.  Plus it’s an easy way, psychologically at least, to get some good late season intensity in without slogging through another set of intervals.  So if you haven’t already — grab a cross or mountain bike and go play in the dirt!

So, what happened?  It was a hard race, but it certainly wasn’t beyond my current abilities.  The NP for the 40′ I was in was nearly right at my ftp.  It did have over 20 bursts of at least 15" over 150% of ftp as opposed to the Amphibious Assault which had only 5, but had a similar NP.  But I believe the reason I dnf’d was not mainly physical.  Yes, I probably wasn’t going to be tearing up the course on this particular day, but I should have finished the race and been sprinting for a top 10.  No the reason, I believe, is psychological.  I was never into the race mentally, and the rain and the string of crashes early in the race certainly didn’t help.

One way to deal with with a bad race is to examine the experience for lessons (and not get sulky and snippy as I initially did, just ask my wife).  In this case the lesson is fairly simple — I clearly wasn’t on a good day, either physically or psychologically, so I needed to look for other ways to succeed.  One answer that became obvious as soon as my brain came out of oxygen debt was the corners — after the field thinned down and the rain lessened, I found I could corner as fast if not faster than the other guys in my group, and even I as would get gapped off on the finishing straight I could make the space up in the corners.  Of course, doing so also meant having my rear wheel slide quite a bit, but I held it up every time.  If I had been able to look beyond the fear the slides engendered and the pain of the efforts, I would have seen that I could hang in, and because the field was so much reduced, I would have had a good shot at a top 10, 15 at worst.  I suppose I need to "reframe" the situation, seeing what was worrying me — the  wet corners — as an opportunity and redefine success on that day not as a top 5 finish, but as simply completing a very tough race on a technical, tough course.

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6/13 Amphibious Assault Crit

The Amphibious Assault Crit is a unique venue — we literally race around around parked hovercraft used by the Navy to, well, assault things amphibiously (see video here ).  And because it’s on the landing apron, the course is pancake flat and relatively smooth — a crit racer’s dream.  The course is extremely wide and not all that technical, although the organizers did throw in a nice chicane on the backside just to keep things interesting.  The final corner was a good 500 meters from the line.  My race went accordingly to plan — I marked Dominic Meier who has been just tearing up the VCA Cat 4 Bar.  I lost a sprint for an early prime by less than a wheel (to Dominic of course) and then we settled in.  The course nearly guaranteed a field sprint, despite the heavy rain falling at the race start.  On the last lap, I was 3rd wheel, but as the rider leading out tired coming out of the last corner, we got swarmed, and in that instance I hesitated and my shot at the podium was over.  I still managed to worm my way out and unleash a decent sprint, passing several guys, but only managed 8th.

6/20 Virginia State Crit

Fast forward a week and the same last lap scenario replays itself.  The lead up to that moment, however, was quite different.  I arrived a bit later than I prefer and had to fix a loose cleat, so my warm up was cursory at best.  No hard efforts, no measuring out of the sprint and only 1 lap of the course.  Given the extreme heat, I didn’t think the lack of a warm up would be that big of a deal.  I would just sit in the first few laps and use that as a warm up.  Well, I sat in and sat in and sat in all the way to the back of the pack and when a break went, I missed it.  I still wasn’t feeling sharp and continued to do no work.  It was a gamble that the other guys would bring the break back, but it was a gamble that should have paid off.  By two-thirds through the race, I was back in the main pack, maintaining decent position, but still feeling awful.  (This was the first time this season I contemplated a voluntary DNF.)  Coming out of the final 180 turn, may be 400 meters from the line, there was a near crash just to my left.  Normally, after my initial instant of panic, I would have gone hard to take advantage of the reduced field, but not today.  I stood up to jump and nothing happened.  Those few seconds are something of a blur, but what is clear is that at that point I gave up and didn’t even attempt a sprint.  I rolled in at the very back of the pack for 26th place.

What do these results share, despite being nearly 20 places apart?  That instant on the last lap that I hesitate and get swarmed.  I suspect that if there were an organized leadout and the pack stayed single file until the sprint started, I might do better, but that is rare in amateur races and probably non-existent in Cat 4.  So it’s back to working on my own limiter, which, it is increasingly clear, is mostly mental.

The race started out well — I jumped across to what I thought was a dangerous break (with 2 NCVC guys in it.  NCVC had something like 1/4 the 80 person field), and I was up the road when the crash happened.  I was surprised at the effort it took to get across.  I guess these MABRA races are harder.  We were caught and I was recovering deep in the field when the surprise bell lap happened and was nowhere in position to sprint, so I rolled in.

But it gets better.  When Jake had been taken care of, there was an announcement that we’d restart and that the person who won the sprint  in the previous “race” was awarded only a prime.  We were given 10 laps and sent on our way.  Again, what I thought would be a dangerous break went and I killed it jumping across.  But although we kept a gap for a few laps, there was no real cooperation and once again we were caught.  My biggest mistake was letting myself drift too far back while recovering and not checking the lap card when we went back into the field.  The result was that the bell came as a surprise to me (again), and I was woefully out of position.  I managed to move up a bit, but could only manage 19th out of 80ish.

But I wasn’t too upset — all my thoughts were with young Jake. Here’s hoping he recovers quickly.

The one positive is that my form is coming around; now all I have to do is put the tactical pieces together.