back on the bike... at least a little

finally got out for a mountain bike ride the other night after a couple of weeks of bad weather and busy days at work. i headed down to cedarville for the MORE night ride on wednesday and spent a couple of hours riding casually with dave and his son josh, just the sort of riding that i needed after a couple weeks of being mostly off the bike.

whoa

cyclocross nationals were just this past weekend and dates have already been announced for next year's us grand prix of cyclocross...

useless facts of the day

after racing my last 3 races of the cylocross season in the Bs - 2 in the MAC series and 1 in the MABRA series - i ended up with 2 finishes that earned series points and ended up 37th in the MAC B standings and 48th in the MABRA B standings. my win in the Cs at granogue gave me 15th in the MAC C standings.

fairhill cyclocross

Men's Elite Start

woke up this morning to a half inch of sleet on the ground in philly and my hopes raised for a snowy race at fairhill. once at the park it turned out that what had fallen as sleet in philadelphia had come down as rain further south and the course was already turning into a muddy, sloppy mess.

ryan leech

took a quick spin on the course between the C and masters race to see what we had in store us. the course was long and littered with lots of 90 and 180 degree turns. if the course was dry it would have been pretty fast, with little elevation change, save for the start/finish straight. today it was not dry and the course was muddy any place it wasn't on pavement. sticky mud, sloppy mud, sandy mud, grassy mud, watery mud, you describe a kind of mud and this course had it. there were long boggy grass sections, slick mud in the corners, a short technical section full of soft chopped up dirt that clogged up tires, pedals, and shoes. after my pre-ride i washed off my bike and changed my shorts and socks since the ones i was wearing were covered in mud and soaking wet.

yeah, the planks were in the beer tent

after the masters race finished i ventured out of my warm car to "warm up" on the roads around the park and keep an eye on the staging area to get a decent spot for the scrum for the start line after the call-ups. since the group was fairly small (26) the promoters ended up calling up just about the entire field and i was stuck in the very back row the handful of other riders that don't have any MAC B series points. my expectations for the race were pretty minimial, so i really didn't care where i started. after my 38th place at the reston MAC race i just wanted to do a better job at pacing myself in hopes of avoiding cracking once we got past the 30 minute mark.

jon hansen

once the race started i hung back in the pack in the starting sprint, then started to pick of other racers after we hit the grass. after another race the course was muddier than when i pre-rode it, and most of the corners were even slower. i kept moving up through the pack over the first two of what, according to the lap card that was up at the end of the first lap, would be five laps. by the third lap i'd settled into a duel with an alan rider and after both moved up through the field i finally managed to put a gap on him on the start/finish stretch at the start of the fourth (and apparently final) lap. around the middle of the last lap one rider came around me and though i tried to hold onto his wheel i could keep in contact. after coming through the planks (inside the beer tent) towards the end of the fourth lap i noticed a bunch of riders standing around just past the finish. i hadn't looked at the lap cards since seeing "4" after the first lap, but it looked like we were finishing a lap early, since a 5th lap would have had the leader finishing closer to 55 minutes than 45.

chris scott

after hosing the worst of the mud off my bike, grabbing my camera gear from the car, and a beer from the tent i checked the results and saw that i'd finished in a much better than expected 7th place (of 26 starters). stuck around to see georgia gould (kona) take the womens elite race and ryan leech (fort-gpoa) take the mens elite race with his teammate gunnar shogren taking 2nd place. congrats to fort james who took 2nd in the C race (after 3rd in yesterday's race).

gunnar

more pictures from the elite race are up on flickr

ryan leech and gunnar shogren finish 1, 2

last race of the season...

i'll be heading out to the final MAC race of the year this sunday up at fairhill for another spanking in the B race. looks like this will be my last race of the season. time for a couple weeks off and the time to start thinking about this and other plans for next year. i've already got plans brewing for one ski trip over the winter and i want to head out to wv and try some xc skiing before it's time to start laying down base miles on the bike again.

more wool...

they're in the UK, so the exchange rate makes everything to expensive to justify, but rapha is good for riding gear to drool over... talk about style.

swobo...

swobo is once again open for business... i've already ordered a pair of socks.

now that's old school...

Eugene Christophe on Cyclo-Cross (1921)

capital 'cross classic...

raced my second B race this weekend and had a pretty different result than 2 weeks ago, but not far from what i expected. thanks to bad weather and various holiday events i haven't managed much riding in the last few weeks so i was definitely off from the form i was in for the first few races of the year and on top of that i stayed out a little later the night before and had a couple more drinks than i normally would have had, so i wasn't expecting a great day. the field was definately bigger and looked stronger than the leesburg race as we waited to line up for the start and my sizing up of the field was not incorrect.

the start of the race was really fast and the pace never let up. i was somewhere in the middle of the pack for the first half of the first lap, but got caught in the back of a bunch going into one of the courses technical features (a short steep and slick climb up around a tree) and was forced into a bad line and crashed, then got the bike hung up on a small tree while i was trying to get back on and wound up being passed by a lot of guys.

the course was a typical reston course: fast with a lot of climbing, a couple of turns that get muddy, and a couple of technical sections. i was able to use the climbs to get back up to where i was a the start by the end of the 2nd lap, but then the length of the race (and the sake and beer from the night before) started to take it's toll and i started drifting back through the pack. i ended up in 38th out of 49 finishers, about where i'd expected to be in a B race, but a little disappointed by the fact that guys i was near 2 weeks ago at leesburg where 10-15 places ahead of me. i'll be heading up to fair hill next weekend for at least one of the races, probably sunday's.

winter riding rules: freeze, thaw, don't ride...

sure, it's not even december, but it's time to start up the winter riding rules... saturday's ride at schaeffer provided plenty of evidence of the freeze-thaw cycle and it's impact on trails. pay a little more attention for the next couple of months and if the ground is freezing over night make sure that you get out there early before the trails warm up and start to thaw.

if the trails freeze overnight then once the trails start to thaw in the morning, they get really soft and become muddy very quickly and are easily torn up. as a personal rule, i only ride places like schaeffer this time of year if there is a prolonged cold snap and temps are consistently below freezing (or are covered in snow).

be careful out there and don't destroy the trails...

fairmount...

while i was up in philly this weekend i met up with Pat, a former City Bikes guy who's living up there these days and he showed me around some of the local trails. we rode from downtown on relatively calm streets, past the art museam, then up along bike paths that run along the schuykill river to fairmount park. the trails were tight and twisty and with plenty of steep climbs littered with tricky roots the park reminded me of Lodi Farm down in fredericksburg. we rode the trails in the park for an hour or so and then headed back into the city with a quick bike shop tour that included the blingy shop and this one...

tryptofantastic...

thanksgiving 1 of 3 down and it was a tasty one...

beer

no riding last night, since the storms rolled in just before the schaeffer night ride was supposed to start... i'd figured as much and hadn't even bothered to get my gear together to ride. instead, i bottled a batch of beer (honey weizen) that's been sitting in the basement since late spring. tasted about right when we sampled it and hopefully in a couple of weeks it'll be ready to drink. a trip to the gym tonight and a few errands i need to get taken care of before the weekend.

evolution C race pics...

evolution C race pics are up on flickr

evolution racing cyclocross

these 'cross racing days are a lot more relaxed when you're not rushing around to be ready for a 10 am start. hit the road aound 8 to head out to leesburg so i could shoot the C race and cheer on some fellow city bikes riders. took a spin around the course with mike before the C race and saw a lot of differences from last years' race... one more steep climb in the first half of the course, but since they were dry they were all rideable, a new section around the back half of the course that replaced a grassy section in the first half of the course, and a new finish with 2 climbs and a couple of tight turns. took a spill in the final turn, so i got early notice that this could a potential problem in the race.

shot the C race - won by my city bikes teammate, mike scardaville - then watched the first part of the masters race then started warming up in preparation for my first B race. lined up in the 3rd row at the start since my intention for the race was to play it safe, stay out of trouble, and get a feel for the Bs. there were a bunch of call-ups, but a lot of no-shows amongst them and 2 pro women who decided to add the men's B race to their racing for the weekend: sue haywood (trek/vw) and georgia gould (kona).

at the whistle were off and heading up the hill on the road toward the course... i'm sitting about 2/3rds of the way down the 20-30 rider pack but then around the first corner of the course a rider ahead of me overshoots and gets caught in the tape, tangling 4 or 5 of us up. we got sorted out pretty quickly and headed towards the barriers and off towards the back section of the course. once we settled in i started to pick up my pace a bit and pick off riders on the short steep climbs on the back side of the course. took one turn a little too wide and almost hit a short wooden post on the outside of the course.

by the end of the first lap i was somewhere around 15th, and then by the end of the 2nd lap i was up to 10th and was actually closing on a large group of riders that made up the main chase. i managed to pick up one more place as a rider dropped off the back, but i wasn't able to get any closer to the rest of the group. 3 laps in i finally got a look at the lap cards which were showing 3 laps to go. with a lap and a half to go the last rider that i passed came back around me and i while i closed the gap down a couple of times i was fading pretty badly and wasn't able to catch him again. the chase for 9th place may not have worked, but it got me a pretty good gap on the riders behind me and i finished in 10th (of 25 according to the results posted later in the day).