Slushy

before i get into the race... it was slushy and slippery out there this morning. But, as much as i might have wanted to, it was carpool today. Schedules have it set that i gotta do pick up and drop off, pick up of 2 tonight. Trailer holds 1... and combined they are both over the weight limit of a double so no real solution there. I'm not torn up too much. Last week i took saturday off. That was about it. Got some good self massaging in watching some college football. how about that BCS mess. LSU and OSU back in the title match up. Crazy. Playoff? yeah right. But that said the BCS stuff and colin's foray into big time stuff with his numbers game got me thinking. I wonder how hard it would be to rank strength of competitors in his whole equation. IE who you beat becomes a component in the rankings. Sort of the strength of schedule. But that's alot and colin's already doing some cool ass stuff. Gotta give props to him for it all. So that's sort of the funny thing. Jumping ahead to the race. I picked up #220. And. I finished... 20th. Good predictor.

The MRC race was a blast. The guys and gals who made it all run, who made it work, who got up way early to get it set up. Thanks. Damn fun.

Where to start though? The cold forcast meant the girls, namely my wife, didn't want to go stand around in the twenty degree weather for a few hours with not playground, no real shelter and with parking not really anywhere near the course. I can't really blame them. It was pretty damn cold standing around chatting with folks after my race, watching curtis kick some serious ass. Like he was toying with them, something that looks remarkably like racing smart. It was very very cool to watch. HUGE WTG needs to be heaped on Thom P. Holy crap. Doing that well on a single speed. 6th? Sure it wasn't a USGP/UCI type field, but there were some very fast guys in that race.

So about the race. The introspective goodness of the MRC event. Gotta say. For some reason i really like this course. I think CTodd not so much, esp since he rolled both the front and rear tubulars. Momentary aside. He offered me the wheels to take and glue them for the upcoming RI race weekend. If it was gluing new tubulars to new wheels i'd probably have accepted the challenge and rolled the dice on my gluing reputation with the one super tubular rolling king. But. I don't have the time today or tomorrow to properly clean and prep the rim for re-gluing. Sure it isn't that hard to do. But it is time consuming. Scraping the old glue off, then using a bit of solvent to get the dust and other stuff off. Double scraping in case the solvent pulled a bit of glue off. Sure it can be assumed that what ever is stuck to the rim won't go anywhere. But if i'm going to do something as critical as this, no way in hell am i gonna make any assumptions. So cleaning and prepping two wheels with everything else that is going on, not to mention getting the glue on there and all that in time to let it set and be raced this weekend? Esp without a super stable park truing stand. (no i don't have a kick ass truing stand, yes, i've even used my trainer to true rear wheels - works pretty well actually).

So the race. Where was I? Love the course. Started in 3rd row. Had a decent start. Wiggled in behind Morse for a while, then someone came around fast and Morse jumped and gapped me for a minute going around someone else and he was gone for the race. I hung around behind Stevens for a while. In retrospect maybe a bit longer than i should have but this is my justification: how many times do you have the opportunity to sit on the wheel of a professor of the sport? Wondering if there was anything to learn about lines, cornering, all that sitting in behind him. That and well, he's big enough to provide a decent draft, and it meant i could settle the legs a bit after the first lap or so of going hard. Not that it was easy sitting there, but when i went around him, man it got tough. Not many people there in front, it had strung out a bit already when i went around. Honestly I felt pretty good about my line choices, and realized they weren't really any different than the ones Stevens was making. That said, it wasn't the most tricky/technical course. It was fun. I didn't go all cort and bare legged. Sleeveless baselayer, last years LS skinsuit under this years LS skinsuit. Some knee warmers, plain old cycling cap and my DeFeet Blaze socks. Folks, one thing you learn the hard way often is that more socks doesn't mean warmer feet. Toes gotta move. Gotta have air space, let the sock you are wearing create some air space. My feet were plenty warm all day. My head was too hot wearing the ibex wool cap under the helmet on my warmup laps so i ditched it. At one point pre-riding with the cycling cap my ears were freaking cold. But during the race everything was perfect. Except for the growing chunk of ice on my beard. Until it got so annoying i knocked it off. It felt like my daughter tugging on my whiskers. Hoard said it was humorous watching it grow lap after lap. Solobreaks's jersey front was covered in frozen spit (gross). Speaking of spit. There was on point, just after the barriers that i almost puked some phlegm got caught in my throat or something and i just slowed right the hell down trying to get it all out and... well i did and tried to ramp it back up to recover but that was when Solo and his train was starting to make their move. They swallowed up Stevens and they came around me there in the field and it was all i could do to hang on for a bit. I had passed Mark Super, feeling great, not knowing he'd busted two bikes and was riding with broken handlebars, and ya know that slight let down ya get when you catch and pass a marker with no markers in sight beyond them... well that let down kinda sucked the last bit out and i couldn't quite hang with the solo/matt h crowd. That Solo attacked matt on the uphill there after the little barriers and gapped both of us and i didn't have it to get around i guess. being the chasee sometimes sucks more than being the chaser. But mentally i felt like i had a great race. I wasn't the fastest out there, but i drilled it as hard as i could and i raced the whole race. A few bobbles here and there, maybe a perfect race and i would have managed top 15, but i'm very happy with how i raced. It was a wicked damn fun race. Good to see Il Bruce there with his better half, good to see Marro, and esp hanging with the awesome MRC crew. Those guys put on a good show and are all a damn fine bunch of people. Ya know it is cold when the beer freezes solid on top of the keg! Watching Curtis win was cold but worth it. Gave me a chance to hang out with some great folks while yelling and cheering for a team mate.

Good weekend. Good weekend.

One more weekend of cyclocross. And just as i am getting used to racing the later time slot, i'm back to being an early race. Kinda odd. The claim of "scheduling it like a verge race" is total horseshit. Show me any race where it has been even somewhat consistent? G-ster and NoHo and Chain and sterling? Were ANY of those the same? Um. No. That and with the somewhat confounding starting of the 3/4 masters BEHIND the cat 4, i would make a suggestion that all those cat 3 guys just move on up to the 1/2/3 masters field. Clean track, better racing. It ain't like Verge is going to give you any recognition for that race other than a medal. But then, a medal is kinda cool i guess. It is cross racing, and cross racing on a two great courses(we can assume, right?). It will be fun. It might even be cold again! Whooo!

peace
G