2011 rebounds

Not much action here anymore, but I figured, what the hell, a little summer wrap-up:

2011 didn't look to be too promising, what with a torn rotator cuff and surgery keeping me untrained for 10 weeks. I played it by ear this year, doing long solo rides, hella intervals, fartlek-on-a-bike, some swimming, and a new one for me: rest and recovery between hard workouts. I guess it worked: I only raced 8 times this year, but the results were pretty good:

-Gravel Metric - win (tie)

-Glencoe - Cat 4 sprint points competition (yeah, it was only a couple of primes, but damn it's a fancy watch)

-Cat 4 State Champ - Points race. That's *my race* and I wanted it more than anything since the SSCX in 2009. I was marked but I took the last 3 sprints FTW. I won both cat 4 races that night, and was the top 4 in the 3/4s race. That's when I started to notice my form was coming on...

-Cat 3 State Champ - Scratch. My first night as a 3 and I won both 3s races! I came looking to work for Jeff, but he ordered me to go for the win myself. He worked them over and made it look easy for me. No disrespect to my fellow racers but the 3s field isn't too deep right now. A couple big dogs have upgraded, and one of the strongest 3s doesn't have a teammate, so Jeff's attacks were particularly effective. Just to bring me down to earth: In the 1/2/3s Points race, I thought I was the baller, getting on Moyer/JT/Whiteman as they established their break...I lasted about 20 seconds.

Felt ok on my first CX race, but I haven't touched the CX bike in 8 months and apparently I've forgotten how to corner in the dirt. I blame all those laps on 20 mm tires at 145 psi.

Onward!

Twenty Eleven

There are enough blogs out there about bike racing, and I just don't feel compelled to add to them at the moment. However, I need a place to put the picture above (courtesy of Amy Dykema) to capture the day that I finally won a goddamned road race. Even if it was sort of an alleycat cyclocross type of road race. Blogged to death on the team site here with pictures here.

one door closes, another one opens

Jaysus what a weekend. The basics:

Masters' Track State Champs. I was targeting the kilo, but not enough to actually try out different gear inches or get some quality advice. I spun out and got second place. arg. Normally I wouldn't be too upset about not winning, but the field was thin and I had lots more in the tank. So I went into the 3k pursuit with a little fire in my belly, but no pacing strategy. Somehow I pulled a 3:59, about a half second up on Chuck Judy. I was convinced he had it in the bag. I would have thought the officials would've grouped us a little more on account of the small field, but hey, 40-44 was almost the same field that 40-49 would have been. Good thing they didn't go totally by the rulebook, or the day would have possibly been rounded to 30+ and Jeff Whiteman would have won everything. It seemed like the big boys stayed home to rest for Nats, and somehow "Masters' 40-44 3k State Champ" just doesn't exactly blow your hair back, but I'll take it.

Meanwhile back in Gotham city, Ella got 2nd in the Chicago Triathlon, out of 152 in her division! Woot! Nearly last out of the water (they really ought to call the kids' ChiTri swim "water-jogging"). 3rd after a killer T1, then grabbed one spot in the run. The winner was even in sight, but with a little too much ground to make up.

Lang did his first 'real' soccer games, and man, trial by fire: 4 games in two days, in the heat, and up against some psycho suburban teams. He got a hefty plaque. I'm proud of him. He was working hard and having fun, and just givin' er. Soccer gets so little ink in this family, and he had a couple of great moves, a header or two, a couple reverses. Awesome.

Relay cross: I was slated to partner with Jannette, but after her crash, I got a shot at racing with Ella for the first time. She was a little spooked by the triple-bend/harbor drop/couch madness, but started to shine mid-first lap. The whirlpool taught her how to lean into the turns more than I'd been able to. We somehow finished 35th of 50, but more importantly, I had the best time ever at a cross race, and that's saying something. She was slightly shell shocked for a while, but she's definitely down for doing more cross. Hup! Hup!

Mom was domestique to the stars. Gotta go serve her up a vacation.

Sometimes a race is more than a race.

2009 has been rough. It started well enough, sitting in an ale house with a few teammates, with our newly sworn in president's inaugural ball in the background. For a change, we were determined to talk about anything except bikes. Good times.

That night, my father woke up with pressure in his chest. Within 18 hours, a small tear in his aorta had, in the doctor's words, "opened up like a zipper" and he was gone.

The following week, I lived in a hotel in Michigan, sorting things out. I spent a lot of time on the exercise bike, sorting my own things out, the only way I knew how. One day I held 350 watts for 30 minutes. My offseason plan peaked then and there, I never matched that feat again.

If you think it's hard to put yourself in the pain cave, imagine that when you get there, the first thing on your mind is, "What exactly is my heart doing right now? Is it good or bad for me?" We all have to suffer loss at one point or another, and we all have to figure out how to get through it. Little by little, I bounced back in different ways; you get through life, and I pushed myself a little harder, without the question marks looking back at me from the heart rate monitor.

You do what you have to do. I raced, a lot. Probably too much. Results weren't really the goal, but at some point, you get tired of discovering all the factors working against you. I'm not young, I'm not a sprinter, I don't have a lot of time, I don't have hills. When cross season comes, I may not win, but I can settle some scores. I'm certainly not a ringer out there, but it's nice to see some top roadies ten, twenty spots behind mine in the results.

I built up a solid cross bike, and for the first time ever, with ten whole speeds to choose from, though I ended up using two or three max. Word gets out that there will be an "Officially Unofficial" single speed cyclocross state championship. I'm thinking about this race more than I'll let anyone know.

I know that no one is owed a win in this world, and I'm lucky to have a fantastic family, great friends, a solid job, some change to spend on candy for the bikes...but god dammit, it's been long enough. I know it's just a little sub-category of a bastard discipline on two wheels, but single speed cyclocross is what I am. I don't want to win. I want to stamp my authority on it, to leave it a race for second, and post up without looking back. Barring that, I don't mind losing to a better man (god knows there are a couple guys lurking out there that can do the job). I just didn't want to fuck it up.

There were two sides of this race. The race report is one, and this is the other.

2008 Illinois Cyclocross State Championships

Why do we race?

I'm not going to pretend that I can answer that question here, or anywhere else. I've thought about it a lot, and it always just leads to a litany of philosophical truisms, none of which are particularly insightful or unique. But sometimes I have a good answer.

I race for days like this one.

Coming into this race, I couldn't decide if I should focus on the Masters' 30+ race, where I'd yet to make the top ten, or put all my eggs into the cat 4 race, where, if all went well, I had a shot at the podium (though my highest finish has been 7th). Whichever one I did, it would be my last race as a cat 4.

I finally decided that I just love cross racing, and that I'd do both, damn the target races. I've learned a ton in this, my first full season as a proper sanctioned racer, but mostly I've learned that I love cross, and I just love to grind it out.

Grind. It. Out.

The kind of race where one day you finish in 13th and think "hell YES!" The kind of racing where, all of a sudden, at the 40 minute mark, you start reeling in and picking off some of the guys that ditched you at the start (hence my attraction to the longer and harder Masters' races, as the 4s are just about over by then). The hecklers, the pain, the tailgating.

So I figured I'd be happy with a top ten finish in Masters', or a top five in the 4s, with a little daydream of making the podium. The bike has pretty much fallen to pieces in the last few weeks, and as a result, I'd been hemorrhaging money along the way...a new tire, then another, chainring, chain, ss cog, brakepads, cables, and pedals. I hate installing/tweaking canti brakes, so I dropped it off to Justin at Turin. He tuned it and cleaned it up, and did not take any shortcuts: new bearings in the bb, and he "found" some bar tape and endcaps for me. That thing was dialed in, as dialed in as a $500, seven-year-old singlespeed can be. He pointed out that my front wheel was looking rough, but I explained that it was a twelve-year-old ex-messenger wheel, so I'd be happy if it just got me through the day.

Sunrise: it was 7 degrees outside. The Masters' race went off and it wasn't much warmer. My team hadn't shown up yet, and my family was tied up. A brawly start with 20 guys going sideways powering through the slush. I cleaned the 4 s-curves as best I could (with my slack turning radius) and found myself in 12th on the first climb up the hill. I thought "great, I have 50 minutes to pick off two guys and I'm in the top ten." 2-3 guys passed me, I passed 2-3 guys faltered in a turn, and I had no idea what my position was.

So often in these races, if you're not contesting for the win, you're locked in a man-to-man battle with whomever's nearby. I was ten seconds off Walid, a guy from Van Wagners/Yojimbo's. I'd finished just behind him in another Masters' race this season, but it was a "hundred yards ahead of me" kind of finish. This time, he was ten seconds ahead of me for most of the race. The thing about cross is, ten seconds can be ten feet away in a technical runup/barrier switchback, or it can be a hundred feet in a downhill. I'd close to three seconds, and he'd unwind again and ditch me. Somewhere along the way, my team showed up, and made up for lost time by chasing me through the turns with a bullhorn aimed at me. Good times.

I pretty much thought I lost Van Wagners, and I was just grinding it out, trying not to count remaining laps, and I crept up on him again. We were on the final lap, being lapped by the leaders, and maybe he was a little complacent and not seeing me. We turned out of the downhill, into a long smooth straightaway, and I caught his eye. Damn. He wound up the speed to keep me from attacking, and I thought "that's it...there aren't many places to pass on this course, and I just missed this one." But I noticed he faded, and fast. Perhaps I could still wind it up and get the corner before the barriers? I kicked it up, and it seemed I wasn't going to make it...he could literally just pause, hesitate, block me...take up too much space going into the barrier/corner...but he didn't. A rather sporting move! We went over side-by-side and I had the inside coming out. "You got me!" he said as I leapt back on.

He was there the rest of the lap, sometimes close. One mistake and he'd get the spot back (and they are easy to make in the snow, especially late in a race, when you're sloppy). I kept it clean to the finish to come in 8th, my best finish in a Masters' race. Almost certainly the top cat 4 in the race, not that it counts for squat, but I was happy to find out Walid is a highly regarded cat 2 track racer. Beating someone like that feels like a win for me.

It was hard not to go to the Cuttin' Cruiser and just start drinking hot spiked cider and chowing hot dogs. But I'd already purchased my second race number, knowing I'd lose momentum. So I defrosted my toes, hung out on the cruiser, cheered out the windows, sat in a pile of warm bodies...some prepping to race, some just spectating. Our fearless leader was fine-tuning the tandem for the 4b race, the squad was pinning numbers and taking practice laps, and the rest were drinking and whatnot, cranking Public Enemy, which seems to be the only disc on the bus. I was just trying to stay warm. I'd planned on bringing out the (now barred) Jordan jersey, and I didn't want to risk catching a chill first.

On to cat 4: The regional administrator (who's forbidden me from racing with uncovered shoulders) was tied up sorting results, and the start line official just laughed at me. Jordan was in. More bodies in the start, not so many of them strong. I was in 6th going into the first climb, and I knew the guy in 5th would fade soon. I could feel racers behind me, but I can't start looking backwards so early in a race; it makes me lose focus on catching the guy in front of me. I went over the double barrier to discover a patch of ice had formed on the inside line. I went down, but so did the guy behind me, and nobody passed us. He made a deep groan; the kind that makes you think he's not getting right back up. A brief "whew" entered my mind and I resumed the chase without losing any spots. I came around a few switches and saw him still standing there. Shit! It was my teammate Bradley. In retrospect I felt kinda bad, but I didn't bring him down (we both did the same thing on the same ice patch). I had been covering the corners supertight, thinking someone might make a move, but had I known it was him, I wouldn't have protected so hard. Hell, if he thought I was holding him back, I would have let him by.

I resumed the hunt, now in fourth. Somehow I slipped past a Pony Shop rider. I realized I was in third. The podium! It was a fine balance between chasing down the two leaders and making sure I didn't take a chance that would slide me out. At one point, he passed me on the climb, but I don't know what came over me, I countered on the outside, in the deeper snow, longer line, steeper rise...and closed it down. He never got so close again.

I "almost" caught Henry (Pegasus) in second, but he wasn't wearing down late in the race the way most were; he was still able to wind it up and get distance here and there. I rolled across the line in third...my highest placing ever, and good for a bronze medal! I finished 17th in this race last year!

Turns out...maybe a silver medal? Nobody (except for Henry) was thrilled to find out that the winner didn't hold an annual license, and was therefore ineligible (and didn't find out until the start line). So maybe we slotted up a spot, but who cares, we all know who really won the championship. I personally think the officials jerked him around, as they said "if he'd asked to convert to an annual license at the start line, they would have accommodated him" but not so after the race. Lame.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, our team President, Jeff, the owner/captain of the Cuttin' Cruiser, was presented with an all-around "Awesomeness" trophy from another team and a bunch of fans...for showing up, rockin' the bus, cheering, grilling, occasionally racing, and just bringing it. (Unfortunately he didn't get more than half a lap into the 4b race before an Official pulled he and Adam for riding a tandem.) That's why he's the prez.

One thing that can't go unmentioned. I got serious noise for rocking Jordan colors. A bunch of people knew my name, the rest called me EMJAY! and quite a few called me fucking crazy. The family showed up during the race, and even my father-in-law was running back and forth across the bridge so he wouldn't miss any action.

On a more somber note, the only thing that really sucks about getting my two best results ever, and hanging out with the most rocking (and occasionally ass-kicking) team, on the last racing day of a crazy year...Bradley broke his ankle in his fall. He doesn't seem to be too phased by it, but damn. We had the same fall, at the same spot, at the same time. I got a big purple bruise on my kneecap, and he got a cast. Damn.

Half the fun of cross is trolling flickr, ego surfing for action shots. These shots were swiped from ffonst's flickr stream. There's something about this one that really captures the day...the panorama, the desolate windswept spot overlooking the beach, somewhere between second and fourth place, just Grinding It Out.

Let there be 'cross...

and there was, and it was good.

The Chicago Cyclocross Cup kicked off today, nearly doubling in size from recent incarnations, on a hot and muggy day in Hyde Park. I love the mud, love the heat, love racing in the city and LOVE getting to a race and back for pennies in gas. But mostly I love the abuse.

Unlike last year, when I ran about double the pressure I should've, this time I erred slightly in the other direction; my tires folded like a weak hand at a couple points in particular. Nothing major, though I can't wait for a couple of spectacular one-foot-off, rear-tire-sliding-out, odds-are-that-guy's-about-to-bite-it pics to show up on flickr. I managed to hit the one speck of pavement, but that was from pedal strike. I also tried to bunny hop a barrier in warmup. Unfortunately my low pressure soaked up my launching energy, I clipped the rear wheel, and hit the dirt. So I showed up at the line looking like I'd already done a heat....and skipped the bunny hop attempts during the race.

Cyclocross races are often little more than a hole shot plus a time trial, making for the dullest of race reports, and really, I'm starting to believe race reports are for an audience of one: me, for when I'm old(er) and so decrepit I can't recall the details. For the record: started stronger than my usual single speed spin, holding around 20th. Got passed by about five in the opening laps, but I was just off a group of a dozen and I knew if I could keep them in sight, I'd be able to pick them off. That part of the plan mostly worked. I felt a little sloppy on account of bending my tires on a few turns, strong in the small bumps, and fairly clean in the runups.

My plan only seriously failed in one regard. I don't know if I was getting stronger as the race went on, or everyone else was just getting weaker, but I was able to pick off spots pretty easily late in the game, meaning I didn't get caught up spending half a lap attacking and defending each one. In the paved straightaway coming into the s/f area at the beginning of the final lap, I saw that I had 4-5 guys behind me. I was extremely surprised no one successfully attacked me there, as my lack of gearing put me at a slight disadvantage. But as I held everyone off through the technical parts of the final lap, I felt like I could keep position if I just stayed calm.

The one truly ugly part of the course was a 180 turn in the middle of a downhill. Nobody took it well with any speed, and lots of people slid out. I knew I just had to take it conservatively there, but...whoops. I went down. I might have been ok, as nobody had a decent line to get around me, but I'd dropped my chain (yeah yeah, it's a single speed, don't ask why it happened, crappy chainline, a million miles on the drivetrain, yadda yadda). I could not get it back on, and a well-meaning spectator was actually not assisting as well as he thought. Anyway, I lost 5 spots, and got one back to finish 17th (out of how many? 70-90 or so? christ this sport is blowing up).

Despite the single-digit placing I'd hoped for, I'm pretty happy with it on several accounts. I recognized some names in my neighborhood of the results, and they are some guys who are at least 2 Categories above me on the road and track. Back when they had a singlespeed division, I got schooled by one guy who never finished worse than second, and I passed him a couple laps in. Most of all, I did it on a bike that, in its best day was worth about $600 - and that was about five years ago. There were some spare wheelsets in the pit that easily beat that. It's fun to beat people on a singlespeed, but it's even more fun when they are riding $2-4k bikes.

EDIT: I realized that I overlooked what's really the best part of cyclocross: the crowd, the vibe, the fact that people I hardly know are screaming bloody murder for me, the fact that people I don't know at all are calling me singlespeed badass, having my team screaming my name when I clean another racer in the double corkscrew, the bus (with a couch to bring right up alongside the course)...and of course, Luke yelling for everybody because he knows everyone in Lycra within a hundred mile radius. (Sorry man, I didn't recognize you with the beard!)

EDIT #2: It seems USAC has me listed in 11th place after all. Hm. No arguments here.

Despite being off to a blistering start, I have to take a small hiatus from 'cross. My frame is going back to my man Spicer to repair a couple of cracks, and besides...the next two weekends are reserved for my first stage race, the ABR Fall Fling. Woohoo!

now that's racing

Six kegs, scantily clad cheerleaders on the podium, a late nip at the line when the leader paused for a beer grab, a "tequila shortcut" on the course, and a heckling contest. Sounds like fun. Sounds like the inaugural Single Speed Cyclocross Championships.

OK, it's old news (a month old). But after wrapping up the last weekend of the 'cross season, I came across this and realized...*that* was the race I wish I were at. Once upon a time, mountain bike racing was the antithesis of the road racing scene, for better or worse, with a number of racers indulging in "a rolled one and a cold one" right at the finish line (and some before the start line). Even a couple years ago, 'cross was sort of the bastard child offspring of the two, and the racers reflected it, in a bit of laissez faire racing, if there could be such a thing. Now it seems 'cross is the fastest growing segment in competitive cycling (the NY Times is weighing in on it no less) and with it, the fields are twice as crowded, and there seems to be more of an icy roadie vibe.

I saw a couple of Cat 4s nearly come to blows over some mid-race skirmish. Another guy was taunting a fellow racer after beating him, and not in a friendly "nice race man" kind of way. I thought, wtf? Cat 4? You just came in 2oth in Cat 4 and you're taunting someone? Why don't you go find some middle school and challenge some kids to 3-on-3? For the record, I finished 17th (on less than three hours of sleep, but that's another story), and while I rode a pretty clean race, it quickly became a 3-way battle for me, only half a lap into it. Maybe it's just me, but if you're in the FIRST LAP of a race, and you're watching a gap open up in front of you, I think you need to let somebody by, somebody that will close that gap. Sadly, the 3-4 inches of snow off the course prevented normal passing outside of a couple areas.

So instead of staying in the "ant march" at the front of the pack for as long as I could, I got caught up in a grudge match. I eventually dropped the other two guys, but not before we were well out of sight of the leaders. All because a single speeder couldn't mind his gap. I'm not blaming it on his single-speedness (mind you, I was riding a solo and I had no problem putting him away, and a couple of geared guys to boot), but a decent racer should know when he's holding up the field (IN THE FIRST LAP), and be decent about it. Of course, I could have been a little more vocal, like "Close that gap, man, or let me!" Oh well, racing's all about learning what to do better next time, right?

Still, reading about the SS 'Cross Championships in Portland, it made me realize that I was at the wrong race. Yeah, we had our share of castaways, like the guy who still cross-dressed, even though it didn't get double series points this year, and a couple of messenger types who were dressed for work and still made top ten, but there was just a lot of that bitter roadie energy this time around. Whatever dudes. It made me hungry for a winter alley cat.

ss rider wins cyclocross A race

Sweet. Pat Schott won a cyclocross A race on a ss. Winning an A race is no small feat, and doing it on a ss is pretty badass.

Actually, if a ss rider were going to beat their geared compadres, CX racing is probably one of the only formats where the odds might be in their favor. About half of the CX races I've been in have been fairly consistent topographically...that is, flat or with a couple of short climbs. The (B) racers I've drafted often shift once per lap, or not at all, so it's not that surprising that a ss could hang on pretty well. Depends on the terrain of course, I know some organizers throw in some steep nasties for kicks.