Ohio Spring Breaks

(Not sure if anyone is still interested in my Ohio ventures ... or if anyone is still even reading this, but heck, why let that stop me?)

These last few weekends have been the start of the spring road race series here in southwest Ohio. This is a pretty cool series, and best of all, the last two races were at a state park only 5 minutes from my front door. How could I miss?

Well, it took a little gumption to head out for the first weekend, as the temperature when I left home was only 28 degrees. But Ohio racers are tough, and the men's cat 3/4 race drew about 30 starters for the 45 miles of rolling terrain. I was fully decked out in winter gear, including my ultra-dorky winter/commuting helmet, complete with ear covers. Lucky for me, there was a race photographer to memorialize my moment in the Fred:

(Photos of this race from smugmug)

That photo doesn't nearly do justice to the helmet's dweebity. At the second event, guys were coming up to me saying, "hey, weren't you the dude with the earflaps?" So I'm doing my part to get Duke Cycling noticed in the Midwest. But I picked this picture because of a strange fact about it. It was taken in the first lap, but it happens to include 5 of the final top 6 placings. I think the other guys knew each other and were watching each other, and I just fell in by chance.

Shortly into the second lap, the two guys in yellow took off on a hard attack. I was perfectly positioned to go with them but I hesitated, figuring it would take a lot of effort to catch their wheel and that the big teams in the pack would probably shut it down anyway. Wrong. That was THE move of the race, and I blew it. Stupid. It turned out that of the two big teams, one was almost entirely cat 4s who were just content to try and finish with the bunch. The other, well, all the riders I asked said, yeah, they do a lot of wheelsucking. So much for my clever tactical reasoning.

I tried working on the front for a while to see if I could spark up a chase, but except for a few guys there just wasn't enough commitment from the pack. Once it was clear that the break wasn't going to be brought back, I switched to trying to get into a chase group. I joined a few, but they all fizzled, mostly because of people not pulling through. Riders would bust their ass to get into the break, then refuse to follow wheels up to the front, thus dooming the effort. I wanted to turn to them and say, you don't get how this works, do you? Instead, I just turned my head over my shoulder and yelled, "pull through fucker!" That was ... probably not productive. Yep, doing my part to get Duke Cycling noticed.

Finally, with only about 10 miles to go, I was in a break that fell apart and I said, screw it, I'm going to keep going. After a couple miles solo I had a small lead on the pack when I looked back and saw a chase group of four had broken off and was coming my way. We united and, much to my pleasure, these guys were actually willing to work. Well, all but two, but they fell off shortly afterwards.

The three of us that remained started rotating smoothly. Rodney (the Saturn rider in the middle of the photo above) was a beast, taking long hard pulls every time he came to the front. Chris (black vest on the right) was having some trouble early on but held with us and never missed a rotation. He made a deal with us: we let him just pull through and off and he wouldn't contest the sprint. Fine with me. As we hit the big climb on the last lap, we saw the break for the first time in 30 miles, now only about 30 seconds ahead of us. I hadn't expected this and had figured we were all racing for the lower placings. But now with the break in sight we had a bigger carrot: could we catch it? Hopefully, we three might be fresher than them, having been off the front for less time. Well, we pulled, we rotated, we pulled some more ... but as we came to the final stretch, they still had about 10 seconds on us. Close, but no dice.

The finish line was on the top of a short but very steep climb. Not so good for us plus-size riders. Actually, the finish could have been at the bottom of a pit, it wouldn't have mattered. It was clear how things would turn out. 300 meters to go and Chris dropped back, saying, all up to you guys. With no sprint left in me, all I could do was spin with maybe 10% more than I had been giving. Rodney hung back for a little while before blasting by me in the last 150 meters and building a huuuge gap by the line. This is him looking back to say, holy cow, where'd I go?:



So I was 2nd from the chase, 5th overall. Not bad, if I do say so myself. I still wish I had gone with the main break, but having missed it, I think I did alright.

I'll write up the second race another time if there's interest. Here're a couple photos, from another photographer, Jeffrey Jakucyk. You'll notice from our clothing that temps had risen more than 40 degrees from the previous weekend.

I would have done better on the climbs if I hadn't been digesting a small piglet in my thigh:



On the other hand, I did OK in the pack sprint:

CX Trashionals (FakeWorld Championships)

Cycling exists in a weird, anachronistic middleground between a much easier way (driving a nice safe car, riding a fast motorcycle) and a much harder way (walking, crawling, doing the caterpillar). But is this stupid, largely arbitrary compromise that makes it so great. This contract essentially says: well, okay, we’ll let you have a bike, but we’re going to make everything else as difficult as possible. These are the things of cycling legend and lore. Terrible weather on the hardest climbs during the toughest-fought grand tours. The bone-breaking cobblestone stretches of Paris-Roubaix. And, of course, cyclocross. The sub-discipline that does everything it can to make the bicycle more of a hindrance than a help. Mud, sand, snow, barriers, steep dirt embankments, and those damn cow bells.

And yet, we still long to make things more difficult. This was the genesis of the first Cyclocross FakeNationals in 2005. In lieu of going to real nationals and getting our asses kicked by professional riders who happen to be in college (and potentially getting our asses kicked by our advisors for skipping work to go to a bike race), we stayed in Durham to get our asses kicked by each other. Plus a couple of cases of PBR. (No, that’s actually not true. Madsen showed up with something called American Beer, cheaper than PBR and never seen before or since that fateful day.) Jonah held-off all competitors to take home the trophy.

And so, a year later, we missed nationals yet again. However, determined to finish the season off with a bang, we decided we all qualified for Cyclocross Fake World Championships, which happened to coincide with real world championships. Stepping up from nationals to worlds required a more intense challenge. The course was about the same. Dryer, actually, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing. We tried to avoid traffic and lacrosse practice and the parkingticketmobile patrolling the lots. But since we are all magnificent cyclists, we knew that simple bicycle race would end in deadlock. So we introduced a scoring system, too complicated to explain here (or precisely remember) but that involved points awarded for laps completed, doughnuts eaten, PBRs consumed, plus anything else our lovely and talented scorekeeper, Robin, fancied. (This all may sound somewhat dangerous, but I can assure you, safety was a priority. We were hoping for less of a Tom Simpson on amphetamines dying from a heart attack on Mt. Ventoux [read: tragedy] and more of Jan Ulrich on ecstasy crashing his Porsche in Berlin [read: comedy].) After a ceremonial procession through K-ville (it was noon so no one was awake to even notice us) the race began in earnest. Right at the gun, we hit the drinks and doughnuts. Tom moved with reckless abandon. Brandi and Annie, Johah, Scott, and I tried to follow. After we all were feeling pretty gross, we jumped on our bikes and hit the course. One lap, then back to the pits for more snacks. Two personal observations: (1) I love doughnuts, but they weren’t worth enough points to eat as many as I did, and (2) I only felt really bad for about the first minute on the bike, then my stomach mellowed out. Jonah and I discussed whether or not this was more painful than a real cyclocross race. With about 15 minutes left to race, Robin pulled out the opportunity for some bonus points: expired egg nog. Two more points: (1) I bought the egg nog right when I got back from break because I thought they’d stop selling egg nog pretty soon and because I thought we’d have the race before it expired, and (2) I didn’t think egg nog really expired. You know, like Marshmallow Peeps or Twinkies. Anyways, Robin went to pour it into cups and it glugged out in lumps. Not quite cottage cheese consistency, but obviously expired. I hesitated and Jonah took a fast swig, then a fast step back while his stomach decided whether it should regurgitate or gurgitate. Scott assessed the situation, realized that expired egg nog could make us very sick, then started drinking. Each were given full points for drinking half a glass, at which point Tom rolled up and downed an entire glass. Meanwhile, Annie and Brandi had taken up Robin’s scavenger hunt offer and had persuaded some K-ville campers to give them their sleeping bag, which Annie crammed into her jersey and rode most of a lap with. The sleeping bag netted them both some valuable points and the race was tightening up. Tom, however, cemented his victory by winning the Valentine writing competition by wooing Robin with some nerdy biology jargon.

Tom was so excited by his Fake World Championship Trophy, he ran around a bunch and challenged everyone to a somersault contest. I had to go home and sleep the rest of the afternoon. Congratulations again to Tom and thanks to all of the participants. Hope to see you all at the upcoming Entire Solar System Cyclocross Fake Championships and Cookout.