A call up

Two races done, one rib damaged (repairing well), one week off. The ridiculous thing was that my damage came after the last race when I wasn't paying attention while riding slowly back to my car. The only thing that you can do for damaged ribs is not to laugh too much, don't sneeze, don't cough.

The last race, cyclocross at a Central Park (not the Central Park) turned out to be a loaded race on a tough course. Very rough grass sections, mercifully dry, with a lot of rises and sharp, fast turns made for a very hard effort. I gave pretty much what I had but was disappointed not to catch the guy ahead of me - a frantic sprint effort to catch him at the finish left me 1/2 a tire width short. The rider ahead of him led by 6 seconds leaving me 6 seconds from 13th place, the field median. 

The highlight of the day was getting a call up. As I've described before, this is a rare privilege for the proletariat but the start was wide enough for the small field to only fill two and a bit rows.  The moment of fame was great.  Seeding for this race was done based on the NJBA standings.  As my semi-pro teammate and I have discussed, placing in this competition is a greater accolade than you'd expect from a NJ state series.  There's no requirement of state residency to be granted points (and a placing in this competition) so it could be thought of a national competition.  Furthermore, there's not even a US residency requirement as all that's required is a 1 day USA Cycling membership which means that Belgian ringers can participate for a princely $10.  As such, it could be described as a world championship of sorts.  A call up in that is really something.

 

Chains, chains, I'm all in chains ....

Cyclocross is sort of a meeting point between the cultures of road- and mountain biking.  The bikes themselves look like road bikes but have knobbly tires and brakes more similar to mountain bikes.  Road races are exclusively on paved roads (apart from a few exotic races), mountain bikes are off-road and cyclocross races are a combination of the two with a few other things thrown in.   As a result, there are CX racers that come from road biking backgrounds and some that are predominantly mountain bikers.

It’s probably because I started out as a roadie (in more ways than one) that I'm not used to the upkeep required on a 'cross bike which is closer to a mountain bike in terms of upkeep.  Fussy brakes (to work well in mud and sand), damage to bits that I didn't know existed (like derailleur hangers - the repair and replacement of which has been more due to my poor bike handling than the nature of the sport) and indeed in the couple of months that I've been riding this bike I've crashed more often than I did as a kid.

I've been fortunate enough so far to have done no damage during a race but kept that part of the sport for training and rides chasing my accomplished off-road cycling buddies on the trails.  Until last Sunday that is.  About 2 mins into the start of the MAC series HPCX 35+ race at Jamesburg NJ, I was trying to overtake on a bumpy grassy section and changed down a gear to hear my chain rattling around is if it had dropped off the chainring.  I started trying to recover only to look down to find that the chain was broken - the end of the race for me.  I don't know how it happened - either a faulty part or weakened from one of the many crashes that I've had in training to this point.  It was a real bummer to retire out of this race as the conditions were perfect and I'd had a pretty good start.  A number of our non-CX team members had shown up to shout for us which made it worse.  It's all part of cyclocross I was told.

The uncharacteristically warm and dry cyclocross season so far changed in respect of the former yesterday.  The NJ state championship was held at the Cyclocross at the Hidden Valley Club in north west NJ with a forecast maximum of about 40 deg F or 5 deg C.  It was below freezing when we arrived for warmup.  The course was long with lots of turns, primarily on bumpy grass with a run up stairs and a single barrier as well as a couple of sand pits.  The cold in warmup and waiting at the start soon gave away to a comfortable heat of the race.  I had a reasonable start but once again found myself shoogled further back than I'd have liked.  I rode pretty well and drove hard to catch and overtake a number of riders finishing about 20th which gives me a princely couple of points in the NJ series. 

I was happy with my performance, especially as my cornering was where I was making up time on my opponents.  Last week I suffered a lot in training with a strong riding partner which probably also helped.  There was a particularly good local ale on tap after the race which added to the enjoyment of the sunny late morning after the race.

This week is a very busy one of work and travel so any training I do will need to be done before 6.30am.  Likely indoors on the trainer watching a bit of TV news between the commercials. 

Next Saturday is another NJBA race, then a hard week of training for me before a week off in the sunshine.

Coming back to the topic of the differences between road and mountain biking and racing, one of the local mountain bikers, Slonie, wrote a comic strip on cyclocross.  He talks a bit about the sport, what it's like and has one page on the versatility of cyclocross bikes.  Having ridden the CX bike on a few mountain bike trails, I know what he means about what you need for that purpose:

I also agree about what he said about CX bikes.  You can read the whole comic strip here:

Thanks for reading