Wielding Jehovah's Cyclocross Battleaxe

It wasn't the heat for me it was the intensity. I haven't done anything hard training wise since Mid July.
 
Nice job chief. It was encouraging to read the part about you not being in full race mode in 2 years. I didn't realize that. I feel slightly less of a hack now.
 
Day 1 - The Post Game

It has become apparent over the past few years that the following 2 things seem to work in concert to produce a better result on day #2 than on day #1:

1. Drinking
2. Racing the day before

I don't know how this works, but it seems to. At this stage perhaps it is a self-fulfilling prophecy but it is what it is. So we got beer, and after 4 of them and a glass of wine, I was off to bed to sleep on it all.

Race #2

Warm-up was the same as the day before. Today I am in the 4th row, slightly behind EO.

The gun goes off and we run the start stretch, past the pit, and we approach the mud pit. But I AM A MOUNTAIN BIKER and I hit the mud, go right, and pass like 8 people just like THAT, son. I mean, just like THAT.

I settle in. Lap 1 is the settling time. I find my way, prayer mat to the mecca, and whatnot. Grooves, finding one's self, looking at other man ass - all standard stuff on lap 1. So it goes.

On lap 2 I am finding myself in some pack, feeling pretty good. After 2 laps I look down and I see my HR is in the 170s, but my power is over 400. Ok so this does not count 0s but I'm pretty sure I can't keep this up. But still, this is a good thing. I mean, I'm laying some serious power wood here. After 2 laps I'm in the groove, and with less heat I'm feeling pretty good.

Maybe lap 3 or 4 I'm with a group of 5-7 or something. I like this. It was what I was talking about for race 1. I'm good at this. Draft, hop, 2 gone. Draft, hop, 2 more gone. And so on. At the end of lap 4 I have vanquished this entire group. They are gone, used & abused like a bad smoking habit. I am on my own. The last 2 I drop on the mud pit, as they tangle and I AM A MOUNTAIN BIKER. Yes son, love THAT!

Lap 5 I jump my way up to this bike roadie guy in a blue kit. We weave through the woods and he hits the gas but OH NO YOU DON'T, I sit on his wheel and eat up that free draft. We go around the field, through the turns, and hit the barrier.

And OMG that big fat blue & orange hunk of beef cleans the barriers and passes your ass, son. TAKE THAT, roadie!

I drive through the rest of the lap trying to be consistent and we come up on the mud pit and I AM A MOUNTAIN BIKER so of course my bike goes left and I am off the line and the big blue roadie PASSES ME and I am like OH NO YOU DIDN'T and he quietly is like OH HELLS YES I DID and I try to get on his wheel but he has gapped me so I have to work hard to get his wheel again, which I do, but I am tired from all this work.

And so we go into the woods and I am just sitting on his wheel, and for a roadie this guy is pretty good but we cruise through and we come out of the last turn and BAM he hits the gas and I'm like "oh shit where did that come from" and I try...so...valiantly...to grab his wheel but alas, he is big, and strong, and roadie like as he pulls away on the straightaway to the end of the course.

And in the end, the results say I finished 30th, which gets changed to 31st the next day. But in the end, I raced one day, had 5 drinks that night, and came back and finished slightly better the next day. Just like the pattern says.

And I AM A MOUNTAIN BIKER but...I guess sometimes the roadies can handle a bike too. Or maybe I was incorrect, and he was just a really damn strong mountain biker.

And then the weekend was over.
 
It's kinda like that intuitive science like when you walk around holding 2 bent sticks and suddenly you know there is water 100 feet below you, or not.
 
The Not Necessarily Killer Bs

There was once a time when everyone referred to the B class as The Killer Bs. Those of you who have any recollection of NFL history will know that this refers to the 1982 Miami Dolphins defense, who had something like 8 different players whose last name began with the letter B. So to me, the killer Bs are an NFL defense, not a class to race in cross. Regardless, I'm not sure many people refer to the class this way anymore.

To the point, why do I not race against the 1982 Miami Dolphins? As I explained to JP there are 3 reasons:

1. Time of day. I will always opt for the earlier race if all things are equal.
2. Skill level. No offense, but some of the B races look only slightly less cohesive than the C/D race. I enjoy racing with guys that just know their shit and make no mistakes. I feel like this makes me a better biker. On the log Sunday, which I rode all 6 laps, maybe on lap 4 someone on the side yelled at us, "Can you guys at least make this look hard!" Everyone I was around rode it every lap. Apparently Roger A did not.
3. The pointy end of the 35+ class is faster than the Bs. I admit that this is me deluding myself at this point, given that I'm a pack mule in either. But we can always dream.

I think if the Bs went at 10:00 I'd race that. I love that the NJ series starts my class first.

RNG

I don't really have much to add but I'm really happy to see you back. I think the site is better with you posting. Maybe we can have lunch one day.

Degrees of Suckage

I think when you line up against these guys who win my class you really have to end the day trying to suck less than you did in previous races. Heckler (I'm dropping "the" from the title so it's a name like Cher or Prince) says I suck less than last year, which is really just a testament to the fact that the pointy end of the race makes anyone from 10+ look like some degree of suck. This was more true Saturday, as even I lapped probably a dozen people.

Each day I try to suck less. Maybe one day I'll only suck a very little bit.

I AM...Something

No, sorry Woody, Thursday is the full slate of children in the house so as things stand right now, I won't be making that ride like ever. All things change, of course, and as soon as I'm able to make it you guys will change it to Tuesday or something.

We should ride bikes together one day.

Training

After the weekend I took Monday off.

Tuesday I did the B ride on the cross bike, since my Evo [expletives deleted]. I ended up with 2+ hours and the ride itself was around 285w by the end. This was a result of me doing more work than I planned as well as these damn knobby tires on the road.

Wednesday I did my own version of microbursts. I have crunched some data and found that 15 seconds is a totally useless number to train at. All the data points to 5 seconds being a key duration. So I have changed my MB workout to be 10 pedal strokes, every 20 seconds, for 10 minutes. 3 sets of these.

At Otto's practice I had 21 & 28 intervals at 500w for 5s or more. Nittany was 67 & 75. The workout yesterday was 100+. The software cannot chart any more than 100. This was a solid workout and I think focuses more on what you actually do in a cross race. And it was far less sucky. So to me, the workout is more real, less awful, and thus more effective. I rode home at tempo for 13 minutes or so.

Today I did 4x5 minutes at power in the 340-390 realm. The 390 was to start and the 340 was to end. Then I did 3x1 in the 445-465 realm, again with the big one being first and so on. Today hurt. I did this on grass.

So that's 5 hard workouts in 6 days. Mecca may shine a light on me sooner or later.

In Other News

I may actually be serious again about this biking thing.

If so, I need to get real on the whole weight loss thing. While Nittany does not expose you quite so much if you have a +15 pounds, the acceleration makes a difference. On day 2, I put out 500w 75 different times. 2 ways to look at it. Less weight would mean a) less power needed to pop out of turns or b) more bang for the same buck.

Kirt is awesome as he brought me some Heady Topper from VT.

Yes I understand the last 2 paragraphs are at odds with one another.

I am razing the backyard in preparation for the septic tank to get put in. I cut down 12 trees this week and I'm slicing & dicing them up as well as cleaning up all the junk back there. I will likely need to get 1-3 of them removed professionally. I mean, I could try to drop them myself but there's 1 that could do some serious damage if it goes the wrong way.

Baltimore is on the edge of the radar. Not sure yet but I really enjoyed Nittany so it only stands to reason that I'll try and burn out by the end of September then find a new hobby in October.
 
Baltimore

I have never seen The Wire. I'm told it is a fantastic show and that I would like it, but the chances of me watching it this week are pretty low. I don't know what it's about, other than something to do with crime. Anyone who has ever spent time in Baltimore knows that a show about the city ("city" is a word I use with some reservation here) is either about crime or the Inner Harbor. Given that the Inner Harbor is summed up in about 4 sentences, I'm pretty sure it's about crime.

So when I think of Baltimore I think of crime. I think of the time I was there and needed to pick up spare tires, and rode to a bike shop. When I went in, the guy said, "Are you crazy leaving your bike out there? It won't last 10 minutes."

Baltimore. Crime.

I was somewhat intrigued by the course change until I saw that "stairs" has turned into "stairs then another set of stairs" and 2 sand pits turned to 4. Oh and going up to the far end of the field which is the highest point of the whole park. This is great. One of the things that non-waif-like racers enjoy is that cross affords those of us who do not in any way resemble Kate Moss to do ok. Sometimes.

The loop on Saturday is setup so you do the stairs, then the other stairs, then you go down a little short hill then back up it, then you go up to the top of the hill. Then you did the other 2/3 of the course or so. This stretch would represent the part of the race that killed me. This is all well & good, as I can try to recover and do better in the other 2/3 of the course. Things even out, good with bad, yin/yang and that stuff.

However, when you combine a) my usually poor race starts with b) the race prologue dumping you RIGHT into the stairs, it did not paint a pretty picture in the first 3 minutes of the race. To start, I was even slower on the gun that normal. As we dumped into the grass, I felt like a rock in a stream, with people pouring around both sides of me.

And then we hit the stairs and climbed the hill. So they say about 90-100 people started this race. I'm going to say at the top of the hill I was like 75th, maybe 80th? Much closer to the end than the beginning. Not good.

Then gravity took over and I started catching people. Through the turns in the trees I would catch people every lap. Literally 30 foot gaps would disappear going through the trees. Then the hill behind it, more people. The sand pits were almost always 2-3 people per lap. Don't get me wrong, they sucked hog for me too. But I was able to ride 3 then run the last 1 with some sort of consistency and every lap I would pass at least 1, sometimes up to 4. Then the lap would end, I'd do the barriers, and the hell of reality would start all over.

Each lap I must have passed 5-6 people, at least this is what I thought. Overall I felt ok, things were going fine. Towards the end of the race I started to see Angelo, then Angelo got really close really fast, then Angelo disappeared really fast. He was cooked, like fire-on-the-grill cooked. At some point here I realized that Satan was timing the race and we were going to end up being out there an hour. As I approached the bell lap I hear that Roger is almost done. I literally hit the barriers as he finishes.

I am pretty much the last person on the lead lap now, maybe DFL+1 or so. Not DFL for the race, something like 30 people had been lapped. That's a crazy high number but at this moment I'm thinking that I am out here riding by myself for absolutely no reason. Aren't we all zombies at this stage? Whatever, keep moving and it'll all be over soon enough.

But I keep passing people, and really I have no idea if they are lapped or 55+ or what. I must be doing something wrong in my training because even on lap #7, almost an hour in, I'm pretty much just keeping the same pace I did for the first set of laps. Here are the 6 full laps I rode (note: lap 1 was not full because of the prologue and does not show up in strava):

2: 7:56
3: 8:01
4: 8:00
5: 8:45
6: 8:30
7: 8:06

Note: this is Strava so take it for what it's worth

In the end, 81 people finish, 53 on the lead lap. This means 28 people were lapped by Roger. As I sit and look at my power, my HR, the results pages from the 45+ and 35+, I'm not sure what to make of it all. Guys like Kelly Cline are coming in 20th, Pondorf 25th. I felt good, my power was very good, my HR is high which means I'm suffering sufficiently, and here I am still outside the top 50%.

You know, there's a small part of me that feels a little disappointed by this but most of me is pretty much like, "Well F it, I do a lot of work on the bike and this is pretty much the best I can do right now." Short of losing 25 pounds (or 55 really to be in league with some of these runway models I race against - no joke) and practicing steps all year long, I don't see how I can improve much on this result.

So Baltimore, city of crime, is a bit humbling on day 1. I do ok, and I guess when I look at the numbers, 44/81 is just like Nittany where I was 32/62. Or at least they were close. Top 54% at Charm, 51% at Nittany. Statistical anomaly. Standard deviation. Sun spots. Whatever. In all I'd say that I probably ended where I should, even if Cross Results says Nittany day 1 was a 330 and Charm was a 396. Given these 2 races I'm not sure their math is spot-on.

But then this is probably all more like horseshoes than rocket science.
 
Yes, Baltimore is crime outside of Inner Harbor and Fells Point. The area in between those two places is dramatically improved since the last 15 years and now only one or two blocks of sketch is you are on the main roads. There are one or two good pockets but really close to inner harbor. But considering inner harbor and fells point is like 2% of the city, city is the ruler. I have seen far sketchier shit in Baltimore than Philly but that's probably because we used to skate and ride BMX there, which takes you off the beaten bath trying to find spots to session.

On a side note, my brother was a drug dealer in high school and Baltimore was his source. Some of the stuff he seen there makes him not step one foot outside of inner harbor.
 
You know, there's a small part of me that feels a little disappointed by this but most of me is pretty much like, "Well F it, I do a lot of work on the bike and this is pretty much the best I can do right now." Short of losing 25 pounds (or 55 really to be in league with some of these runway models I race against - no joke) and practicing steps all year long, I don't see how I can improve much on this result.

This is how I feel most of the time as well when I line up to race. Yeah, maybe I could do better if I train more . But then there is no guarantee saying that if I do X amount of training I will be on the podium. For me the only sure thing is whether or not I am going to enjoy myself no matter what place I finish.
Party on.
 
what about cooking yourself in lap 2 so your lap times are inconsistent? like try to shave a minute off of it? since you are obviously pacing yourself so well, why not try to make all your passes in the earlier laps and then just bleed spots from there? all in the name of science of course.




Some of the stuff he seen there makes him not step one foot outside of inner harbor.

so happy that i took my kids there for a vacation last year. during anicon. that was a nightmare.
 
So what's your take. Start fast then die or start slow then ramp up the diesel? Seems like both attempts netted pretty similar results?

The video I saw of lap 1 of the 2/3/4 race at the stairs was just silly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmvLfk83g9A
Poor dudes at the back have already lost nearly 2 minutes on the leaders by the time they got through the logjam.
 
as long as you don't capitalize "city" its all good. The City is where we go, and if you live south of princeton, yeah, you get lower case city....

Are you meeting your expectations?
and/or
Settling for results given your effort?

do you look like robin or da'heckler at the end of a race?

what type of food are you bringing to the picnic, cause that may be the tipping point for me. (should that end in a ? or . cause it seems like a q wrapped in a statement...)

thanks for the read/insight.
 
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