OVCX - John Bryan SP - Cyclocross Race - October 2, 2011

Lining up with 60 plus guys is always better than lining up with 120. However the challenges remain, lots of pedals, shifters, elbows, gritting of teeth, tongues hanging out, grunts, shifting noises and swear words. However, the difference is the 35 and 45 plus categories have a tendency to be very competitive. Many entrants, who train hard, who set goals each season to improve their fitness, watts, overall speed on a given course and improve their results to a new place among the masses each week, each season. Sounds easy right?

Well, it’s not that easy if everyone you are racing against has been putting in more hours, more time, more training, maybe some of them have a coach? Maybe some of them are a few years younger? Maybe some of them have a job, where they can get out in the Fall as the days shorten earlier than you? Maybe they lost their job and have been able to go out and spend lots of time on the bike? Maybe they just might have the gift, a better watt output at a given 20 minute effort? Maybe they have a higher VO2 max and can sustain 45 minutes at a breakneck speed longer than you? Some people you race with each week, talk post race each week with ‘excuses’. I discount these, we all have them. I believe it’s more so about all the above questions and differences between us as bike riders and athletes.

With that, I got registered, grabbed my free awesome giant cowbell provided by the main race sponsor, got my helmet set up for the race chip system, that would track our lap times as well as our finish time and filled out my free raffle ticket for the Reynolds Carbon wheelset.

I headed back to the car to pin up my number, usually the BWE takes care of this as part of my good luck process, however, she was on a social and cowbell marketing mission. Crap I forgot pins. Ahh found some spares in the hatch of the car.

Number pin’d, it’s time for some pre-race drink and some warm up on the bike. The last race was finished so I sneak out onto the course looking for places I can excel, places that suit my skills, areas and corners I can handle faster than others.

The course is long, I mean long, did I say long? I like a long course, but I also like to travel to cross races for the full 45 minutes of racing. I don’t like being short changed by 5 minutes either. Am I bitching? Maybe, but I traveled to your race, paid your entry fee and I want my 45 minutes, not 40, not 42, Forty Fucking Five Minutes. Odd about 10% of the Elite field got to race an hour, then the other 90% got to race an hour and 5 min. plus. Let us all race for 30, 45 and an hour please.

The course is awesome, as usual, TJ and the crew at JB always throw some great stuff out there and did so this round. Karen and Doug Hamilton volunteer a ton of time at this park, building and maintaining the mountain bike trails, they also regularly keeps us informed about the condition of the trails at the park via Facebook. I say thanks to those that put this together and for CapCity to help sponsor this fine event.

Usually this JB race is in November around Thanksgiving and the ground is cold as well as the temperature. This day however, the temperature during my race would hover around 60 some degrees and sunny. The fortunate part for most of us racing later in the day is the sun and other racers were drying out the course with each race. It rained most of the week of the race, which proved to soften a few sections of the course, including the section from the start. It was a false flat as some say, but basically it’s a 3 to 5% hill with some super bumpy grass and some life sucking soggy, saturated ground. Lots of guys in my race were really going backwards on this section, my plan during my race was shift down a few gears, stand up, tell the legs to shut up and throttle myself all the way up each time. Once we got up to the ‘top’, we rounded a new wildflower field that was quite awesome and smelled great each lap, then back down a bit into some twisty’s, over two tree/logs, and then back up that same false flat hill just on the other side of the flower field. The logs were not really a factor I don’t think in the race per say of separating the field one way or another in my race at least. They were just big enough that they could be crossed without stepping off the bike, if you had some skills and were willing to take the risk, however, I choose the conservative method and got off my bike. There was one other set of barriers, a double set, over by the popular twisty bits near the park Gazebo. This area is always a fun set of turns and slickery grass, where you must find the balance of speed, pedaling, driving your bike, leaning while pedaling, upper body position and the like. It’s always one of my favorite areas of the cross races at JB.

We get our call ups according to who’s leading the OVCX series, not one f’ing mention of CapCity, and then line up according to registration. I am about 3rd or 4th row, and snag a spot right behind my buddy Matt Stierwalt. He’s a badass, I figure if I can stick on his wheel for a majority of the race or at least keep him in sight, I will have a good day. We’re off, I am sitting in about top 15 maybe into the first turn and surprised where I am as we round the flower field. Guys are racing like it’s the world championship and cutting others off, running into course stakes, course tape, etc. 

My heart rate was up there, but I was able to recover as sections of the course got stacked up in certain areas with racers and as the pecking order was formed. I knew we’d only be racing a few laps and each one had to count. I went after my goal of shifting down two gears, standing up and throttling it up the false hill each lap, passing racers and putting distance on those behind me. Scott Young a few other guys I knew were going to be giving me a run for my money. Scott was easy to spot, Stierwalt was gone, James Turner was still in my sights but gaining time on me here and there in front of me. The toughest thing to do I’ve found during these races is keep your brain going, keep thinking, keep focusing on who is in ‘your race’ who you need to go after and when to put in an effort to distance those behind you…The guy in the specialized kit, Michael Seaman and Scott Bond came around me near the double barriers I think and just kept distancing themselves from my front wheel. Uggg. I pushed hard to stick with them on the third lap, and by the time I got to the Gazebo, I almost threw up. 

I guess I had done some damage, since looking at the timing, my fourth lap was my slowest at 9:27. I recovered for my final and fifth lap for a 9:21.

Sad to know, I faded a bit in the last two laps, from my best lap of 9:15 which was Lap2’s time and my Lap3 time being within .01 second of Lap2 at 9:16. If I had ridden more consistently with a bunch of 9:15 laps, I might have won my race or at least been podium material, so lets hope my fitness improves as it should each week of racing.

With my calve issues at hand I was pretty worried about running full speed over the logs or over the barriers. As I got to lap 4, the legs/calve seemed to be responding to faster and faster dismounts back by the gazebo. This was a confidence booster, so, with the bell lap, I put the afterburners on and fought hard to keep some distance between myself and Scott Young and the other guy with him, who I had no clue if he was in my race or not, however, that’s not a bad thing when you don’t know, it pushes you, forces you to go hard and maintain a hard pace. One last time up the false flat, the legs felt good, so I gave it one last super hard effort to try to maintain my gap. I think I got passed around the sand pit and right before the finish line, I just have no idea if he was a 35 or 45 guy. I didn’t bother sprinting for it, he had already done the damage, I looked back to make sure no one was there and rode across the computer finish line for 7th place in the 45+.

I finished 17th out of 64 total racers.

For my third-race of the season and a week-break since my second race, I think it’s a sign things (fitness and power) are on track to have some fun this season.

So, lets just chat a bit about the timing and what the lap results show via OVCX. The Top 10-15 of the CAT 4 race all need to move up. The Top-10 of the CAT 3 Open races also need to move up. The winner of the CAT 3/35+ has lap times early in his race, to compete in the Elite race for sure, however, his last two laps he was going backwards.