A few moments of clarity...

this morning.

but right now I can't remember exactly the flow that I had and had strung together in a premeditated manner.

It started with something, maybe the rest day, maybe just wearing work clothes (jeans and a nice shirt) with a winter cycling jacket and gloves to keep the chilly 34°F morning tolerable. Riding in non-cycling gear is a good way to mentally separate a training ride or regular commute into a "hey take it easy man" kind of ride in. And I did. And it was nice. And because I wasn't focused on 1 minute-ish intervals or trying to get 10 100m bursts in w/o affecting any other users on the trail before getting home or getting to work to do something else, my brain was free to wander. Maybe that's one of those sentences that marro was razzin me about yesterday, although that one seems kind of short.

I did get a chance to watch the race on Sunday. It was great. In a way wishing for courses closer to that level of challenge than the wide open Canton Super Speedway. But I suck at Canton, what's to make me think I will suck less on a course like Zonhoven? And despite being a massive grass crit, Canton took a fair share of prisoners. Sadly watching Sully get hauled off in a meat wagon was not the highlight of the day, but fortunately he sounds like he'll be fine.

Hmm, now I'm remembering what I was going to call this post:
DAMN HORSES.
Lead off with an aerial shot of canton from google maps you can see the actual course pretty well. I noticed that last week, hmm interesting. Yeah it is from 2010 it seems (watermark there by the track).

How in the world do they keep a cyclocross course that clear year round.

About lap 2 or 3 trying to pedal through that first section of grass it hit me. One there isn't a smooth fucking line in that whole field, and from edge to edge it is worked into a bumpy mess by damn horses. Now yes, they are theraputic and do a wonderful job with the kids at the Hospital School. Don't get me wrong, they're GREAT (as tony would say). It's just riding on that is tough, esp if you don't pre-ride and take a WAG on air pressure for the first race using a new set of tires. Yeah. Awesome me.
38 was too high. No bottoming out, just bounced the hell around.

Oops.

And thinking about that, in reference to Zonhoven, and thinking about how few seconds separate those guys and ErikV's post kind of clicked. One spot, 3 seconds 5 laps is only 15 seconds (i think). But 15 seconds is the gap that Stybar made in 1/2 a lap and he was out of sight!

Not pre-riding really hurt my results because I was wasting a ton of energy on the first and part of the second lap trying to stay with the group up there. I'd take a second too long here or there, slow down way too much on the right hander after the log jump, and go deep in the red every time trying to overcome for my mistakes.

I was flying over and making up time on the barriers, but that's about it. Carrie said I looked really smooth, I felt it, but wish I could take that and make the rest of my race that effortless. Oh up the run up too. I felt like I was just lifted up. But that's three places where I could gain maybe 1 second if someone screwed up, not nearly enough to compensate for my not figuring out the course on the first lap. I mean it is Canton. I've been racing there a ton. I missed it one year now that I think of it, drove up there with my girls on a day my wife was working, but the course doesn't really change much. Long laps, wide open fields. Yet somehow I still haven't figured it out.

The fact that it was less than an hour away seemed to reduce my desire to get out of the house as fast as possible, until it was too late to get changed and out for a lap. I actually probably did have time to do a lap if I hurried to get the bike ready and I just pre-rode before I changed, or if I'd been waiting at the start finish line when the 45+ race ended and did a lap around. I didn't. I elected to be relaxed, and get warmed up, on the trainer while heckling. Really got a decent warm up. Actually felt pretty good. Wound up with a 3rd row start right behind Sally, looking good in her fancy Crossresults.com skinsuit. Didn't plan to line up there, actually lined up behind Chad but he said "There is a high probability that I'm going to miss my pedal." "No seriously Geoff, you don't want to start behind me." So I moved over one and lined up behind Sally.

Compared to the starts in the B Masters (back in 06, thanks Crossresults.com although I never did the Chimborazo Cross Race - weird) or maybe in 08 in combined 35+ race with a good number of people it was a mellow not so bar banging brawl. That or I just hung in, found a wheel and motored. Sally had a great start but the front row was bookended by 1st and 2nd with 3rd right in the middle. And like a seine net the two ends met in the middle pretty quickly.

Of note CTodd came out of "retirement/funemployment" to race. And man he's like wicked way skinnier than he was last racing here. Granted he was never a big guy but he's CurtB or KurtP skinny right now. And Marro was racing with us too. Along with Chad, Scott, Burke, Stevens and the normal fast 35+ guys. In reality all that was missing? Asphlom and Hines and Boivin and you've got the front of the verge race more or less in tact.

I hemoraged time screwing up the corners that first lap. I was reeling in CTodd pretty well, then we saw "2 to go" for the second time and I knew he was cooked and I had plenty of time to make the pass, not just cooked but I came around him (actually he stopped before the gravel S turns asking for a draft) and he folded like a lawn chair. A cheap chabot kind. I was making headway and then Burke suddenly appeared in front of me, and I got pretty close coming onto the section before the track but he had 200 meters on me when I got up the run up, and there was no contesting him for 23rd place. I was cooked, felt I raced better and better, and had fun the whole time. After the first lap it was just me passing a couple people.

I was slow, am slower than I was last year but I had fun. A metric ton of it racing. I wished I'd run maybe 36 or 35 psi in the tires instead of the 38 but hey, it wouldn't have amounted to much of a difference compared to all my other screw ups (over cooking that turn really screwed me up, even the last lap). But hey, it wasn't too hot and I was racing.

I did manage to slowly nurse the last couple gallons in the tank home, slowly, in the rusty trusty race wagon. I need to transfer the 18 gallons of 100% bio into that tank before NoHo that i have in the shed. The car seems to move on down the road okay though. No issues getting there or back, as long as the road stays nice and smooth.

Oh to add insanity to this post - not that there isn't enough rambling and stuff in here to begin with... I had this week as a planned rest week, but I'm not feeling fatigued, kind of feeling hungry for some more pain. So. I'm going to make a change based on how I feel. Since I'm not feeling anything more than a bit sleepy, I'm going to keep pouring it on going into NoHo and then hit the rest week before Plymouth. Yeah Plymouth is generally my highlight, but hey, this year is different, and maybe i can make it to Eco-Cross and that will fire up the engines for the weekend races. I think I just made up my mind. Now I just have to remember to register for NoHo!

*deep breath*
no way in hell am i going to go back and read that/edit right now

heddwch
G