Pachinko

How to describe course conditions and my race at the cyclocross national championships yesterday? Friend and fellow racer Rheudabaga called it riding in a Tom and Jerry cartoon. I think that sums it up perfectly.

They don't call it Badger Prairie for nothing... All photos: Ellen

My last trip to Nationals was two years ago in Bend.  There, I started in the second row and managed to be in third position when we turned off the paved start/finish straight and on to the dirt. This year, I had a front-row start and may have actually led the first 10 feet of the race, but try as I might, I was back to about 15th when we left the long pavement section. When we made our first right turn on to the worst section of frozen ruts covered with a thin layer of slippery mud, the race exploded. Have you ever seen a Pachinko machine in action? Suddenly each of us was like one of the little steel balls in a Pachinko machine, bouncing randomly left and right, smashing into each other and onto the ground. Ninety seconds into the race I was already running to the pits with a mangled bike. My father-son pit crew of Paul and Jake Schilling (thanks guys!!) got me sorted out, and I was back on course in 27th place.

Negotiating traffic

Applying a little 'body English' before my back locked up

Kevin of the Pony Shop digging deep.

I moved up slowly, dodging out-of-control riders as I went. All the frozen ruts made the already-bumpy course murder on my back, and with one lap to go I started falling apart. I could no longer use 'body English' to keep my bike under me, so my forward progress came to an end, and I even gave up one spot after crashing a few more times. I finished ninth, a respectable result but one that leaves me hungry for more next year!

1st and 2nd place  - teammates Brandon and Peter of Boulder Cycle Sport. Unbeatable?

My post-race cyclocross bike maintenance regimen…

The ChiCrossCup crew put on a fantastic UCI race weekend over New Year’s Eve / New Year’s Day. I won’t try to summarize for you, because there are tons of great stories, comments, photos and videos to be found on the web, starting here and here and here. It was muddy – really muddy, and due to a miscommunication on my part, my two-person volunteer pit crew for Sunday’s race was not present and I did the entire race (until I got pulled, that is) without a bike change.  I love the post-race pictures of my bike below:

New Red crankset revealed!!

Firecrest rim profile is super aerodynamic.  

Ultralight crankset was a huge advantage this weekend.

I thought this might be a good opportunity to share my post-race bike maintenance regimen with you. After every muddy race, and there have been several this year, I have a two-step plan:

1. Hose off the bike

2. Oil the chain

That’s it. In fact, since I built up my “A” bike for this year in September, I’ve done 29 races and subjected my bike to a lot of power washing, and I am still using all the original bearings, cable and housing, chain, brake pads, etc. I’ve had to make a couple of bike repairs due to a soft rear derailleur hanger (finally cured with a steel one-off hanger), but all the typical maintenance items are still going strong. 

On a final note, while there are still a couple of weeks left in my CX season, I think my body decided to go in to winter hibernation a month ago. I’m still having great fun out there and I really appreciate all the heckles and cheers, folks. Thanks so much!

Colorado State CX Championships

Photo Credit goes to Annette at Mountain Moon Photography, from the top: Shotty, Butler, Sneady heading up the fly-over and Jim carving up the mud

Kudos to Alpha Bicycle Co and the Frites crew for a great wrap-up of our Colorado CX season. There was a last minute venue change from the rolling grassy course up in Aurora to returning to the "soon to be classic" track back in Castle Rock. After a minor botch with a flyover re-route when the womens Cat 4 group kicked off the first race of the day, the remainder of the weekend seemed to go off without a hitch. After missing some key points race due to travel I ended up with a mid pack starting position. Whistle sounds and the hardest start of the season was underway with a super long uphill drag that never ends. Bottlenecks were immediate as our group dove into what was a quickly thawing mix of snow, ice, mud, and some patches of dry fast grass. The course was absurdly fun. I felt super good on about 90% of the track,the remaining 10% was pure pain, a steep greasy run/ride up that looped directly into a paved uphill climb that just absolutely crushed me. I was sharing another epic battle with Tom Haynes from the Springs as we swapped positions about 2-3 times. I started ahead, Tom caught me on lap 2, I caught Tom but then dropped a chain. John Bliss came up to me with a solid pass but then a rear QR skewer came loose on him and he was set back a few spots. I came back up on Tom and squeaked by within 100m to finish and rolled though in 24th. While washing the mud off back at the car, I uncovered a nasty bloody bruise/cut to my right knee that I cannot recollect as to what may have occurred, I never hit the deck, and certainly never remembered smacking my bars, a course stake or another rider, I suppose that may be the sign of a good race....anyway...to sum, I am stoked with an overall incremental improvement over last season and have some plans to continue that track.

I stuck around the remainder of the day to witness fellow SRAMmies Brian Butler work though a massive 90+ rider 35+4 field to place 26th! Then Braden Snead had a rough start in the Cat 3 group to put in a solid effort and came though with a very impressive top ten finish (9th)in a rapidly deteriorating course.

So, there you have it, 15 races in the bag this season, 3rd was my highest placing, 40th was my deepest placing. A late-season switch onto a 15lb. Rapha-Focus team ride that is just absolutely sick. Two trips to Asia squeezed into the season, one nasty head cold but zero mechanicals and no crashes worth writing home about.As always it's tough to come off the season with nothing on horizon for 9 more months. I already miss my Northern Colorado cross family but our group here in the Springs has coalesced into a very tight knit group of die-hard enthusiasts and we have some plans on the horizon. So stay tuned and best of luck to those continuing their season onto Nationals and Masters Worlds !

Thanks so much for reading, hope the Colorado side of Sram Factory Cyclocross has been entertaining. Until next season...

Shotty

Mud, Sand, Ice and Snow

The Chicago Cyclocross Cup ended two weeks ago at Montrose Harbor but the Chicago cyclocross racing scene is still going strong.  This past Saturday the Chicago Cuttin' Crew and Robots Powered by Love put on Afterglow - A Cyclocross Race in Chicago's Humboldt Park - the same park we use for weekly CX practices. We had the four basic elements of a great CX course - mud, sand, ice and snow, and they were masterfully combined in to a really fun and challenging course. I submit one single picture from the event, which for me sums it all up perfectly:

After two minutes of racing, I was down to two usable rear cogs.

Though I am sure there was no doubt in anyone's mind, I do want to state for the record that I did not beat Kona pro Barry Wicks. He just chose not to crush me, and you'll have to ask him why.

USGP Finals- Bend OR

In 1998 or 99, my wife Jen and I were living in Santa Cruz Ca.and struck out on a road trip with a camper and our dog headed North. The ultimate goal was Victoria, BC but relentless rains stopped us dead in our tracks in Portland, OR consulting maps. We picked Bend as it was on the lee side of the Coastal Range and bound to be drier.We immediately were smitten with the size of the city, awesome views, a great vibe and climate. So returning ( both years ) for our CX National Championships was an easy decision. This year I've opted out of Nationals but was looking to participate on both sides of tape at one last large event of the season so when Bend was announced to host the USGP finals on the same track as Nationals, again, an easy decision was made. I would be returning from a Taiwan/China excursion and Jen would come along as it was her first trip back since our road trip. Our Sram NRS ( neutral race support ) sage of wisdom, Jose Alcala was kind enough to drag up my ride and a spare set of wheels.

After the past 2 years of epic conditions ( packed snow/icy ruts and last years freezing cold mud fest ) this year was strangely bone dry but very loose and fast, much like Colorado. I managed to pick up a nice head cold /flu thing while travelling in Asia and was still expelling all kinds of junk out of my lungs and sinus. Nevertheless, I was in Bend and bound to race. Day one felt super good, not a great start but consistently picking my way through the field on each lap. It might have also been the shortest race I've done in awhile, for some reason, I think we're were shorted one lap. I came through the start finish expecting 3 to go and saw 1 one to go! Head down and picked up a few more spots and remained smooth. Came through in 26th out of about 56 starters. The Elite race was on par with the Trebon/Powers battle at Ft Collins. I thought Tim would finally take the big win of the season as both he and Powers came around the last corner before the straight pretty much wheel to wheel. Powers kicked to the finish although almost celebrated a little prematurely..such great racing!

Sunday was noticeably colder and the course had taken a beating from all classes on Saturday. Lots of blown out ruts and super loose. I spotted lots of torn skinsuits and forlorn riders picking themselves up after stacking it in the duff.
I felt like I was working way harder on Sunday, and sure enough dumped the bike on a flat sharp left hander- just a dumb asleep at the wheel type move. I immediately lost 3 places and picked myself up to begin the chase. Slowly reeled one in and absolutely charged the last lap trying to catch 2 more and came within about 10 meters but ran out of race, rolling through for the day in 28th. Still pretty pleased with the effort. Bend has yet to disappoint, we had a great weekend soaking in the Oregon hippie/hipster cross vibe and hope to return for more.

This Sat marks the conclusion of my 2011 season. It's shaping up to a brutal day,we had a late in the game venue change and will now be racing on potentially a mix of ice, snow, dried grass and clay mud. the type that immediately doubles the weight of the bike. Should be interesting. fellow SRAMmies Braden, Brian B, and Jim are all on board. Wish us luck

Weak Link no more!

Way back in October I described how ridiculously weak the replaceable rear derailleur hanger is on most bike frames, and said I planned to machine my own out of steel. Well, it didn't happen as quickly as I might have hoped but it's finally done:

A few of you have asked me if I could make a few extras while I'm at it.  Sorry, but this was done with old-school machining methods, not CNC, so it was very labor intensive. I'm not even making an extra for my own pit bike. Hopefully, Wheels Manufacturing can be convinced to make them for us - they make quite a few variants, but not one that fits my bike - yet. Maybe if enough of us inquire...

Room for improvement

This past weekend I competed at Badger Cross in Verona (Madison), Wisconsin. Saturday was the final stop in the WCA Crank Daddy''s cyclocross series. Sunday, on the same course, was the Midwest Regional Championships. The course is a preview of the cyclocross National Championships course we'll race on in January - more on that later. I thought this weekend would draw more racers curious about the nationals course, but fields were relatively small.  The big guns from the region were all at the USGP races in Bend, Oregon, so the "Regional Championship" title didn't hold a lot of weight. The most positive thing I can say about my performance at Badger Cross is there is plenty of room for improvement when I'm there in 4 weeks for nationals!

It was 20 degrees F on Saturday and the ground was frozen solid.  The course was just unbelievably bumpy in places, and "only" extremely bumpy everywhere else.  I destroyed an expensive tubular tire in my warm up before realizing I would need to have much higher tire pressures than I had ever used before. Some hard training during the week had left my legs tired and perhaps helped me succumb to a cold on Thursday and Friday. I felt OK in my warm-up Saturday but within 10 seconds of the start of the race I knew I was in trouble. Out of around 20 starters in the Pro/1/2 race, I finished 16th - easily my worst result in as long as I can remember.

Sunday it was a balmy 38 degrees and sunny, and the course had softened up a bit. It was still very, very bumpy but at least bearable. The course had also changed subtly from the day before and had better 'flow,' which made it much more fun. I still wasn't feeling great and after a slow start clawed my way up to 6th but then faded back to 9th by the end.

The course has some fun technical elements but some long pedaling sections with short, steep climbs in the middle.  If conditions are dry for nationals, the course is clearly going to favor the biggest engines and not the technical specialists. As I've mentioned before, pedaling is not my strong suit.

So here's how I can improve on my Badger Cross performance when CX nationals rolls around in 4 weeks:
1. Try to be healthy and rested. That's going to make the biggest difference over this past weekend.
2. Work on my core strength. That's the only way to survive all those bumps.
3. Hill repeats. Luckily, the Montrose Harbor sledding hill is close by. 
4. Hope and pray for a blizzard!!!