Sunday September 26th
Morning
Nothing special this morning. Slight sore throat which I could feel coming on a bit in the last 2 days. But nothing that a hot cup of coffee can’t cover. Breakfast tastes particularly good today, which probably means I need more sleep or that Venus is in alignment with Betelgeuse.
Other than that, normal pre-race day. I taped my warm-up to my top tube because I don’t know it by heart right now. Unfortunately reg opens at 8:00 so that throws a monkey wrench in the middle of my warm-up.
The Race
Reg ended up opening at 7:30 and even though they were a disorganized mess, I was able to roll at 7:57 and start checking out the course. I did my prescribed warm-up almost to a T until the last few minutes I was flying up through a section and came upon the start section and suddenly 100 C class racers were standing around at about 8:40 waiting to line-up. So like a sheep I cut my warm-up 2 minutes short and stood around and made “baaa” sounds for the next 20 minutes.
They lined us up by reg order. I wish I knew this before because milling around does no good if they’re going to line you up so precisely. I would have kept the warm-up going until 8:55 had I known. I was in the 8th row, plate #662, which means I was the 62nd person to reg. I lined up on the far left. I saw Ilya, Joe Mundi, and SXG out in front of me.
When the whistle sounded I took the left line and jumped up at least 30 spots from the door, then things gummed up a bit as you would expect. I was a hair trigger-shy in a few spots because people blow their tops in these first 60 seconds. But I tried to stay safe and on the outside. We dumped into a twisty section and there was plenty of chaos, and people started to yell. I chimed in, “Relax everyone, we’re 2 minutes into a long race. Just be safe.”
Then it opened up and I started picking my way up from 30 to 20 to 15 or so. I could see Ilya out front with SXG, not that far ahead and not gaining ground. I rode smart and in every technical section I would pass guys. The first lap was an effort in just getting back spots. I was feeling good, keeping a good pace, riding really clean.
At the end of lap 1 Ben was warming up right on the course and told me I was in 11th. I could still see Ilya and SXG in 1/2 or 2/1, I forget. They were still in striking distance so I then started reeling off the 8 people between us. 10 went down immediately, then 9 shortly after. In one technical section I took out 3 guys at once, and before half of the 2nd lap was over I was sitting in 5th, slowly making ground.
At the end of the second lap I took out 4 and 3 pretty aggressively, and dangled in 3rd a bit between Ilya (now in 2nd) and the guy I just passed in 4th. Ben called out for me not to drag the 4/5 guys up to me, which I hadn’t really thought of. While this isn’t a road race, there is still some drafting involved. So you want to pass and make it stick, make them hurt to latch on. After he said that I dropped some distance and started to close more on 1/2.
Shortly into lap 3 I caught up to Ilya, who was starting to fade a bit. SXG was out in first by maybe 50 yards, and I asked Ilya how he was doing. He said he was recovering a bit. I jumped by him in the rooty tree corners and he said to make sure I run it clean from there on in, I just kept on my pace, feeling good, riding clean, and closing the gap.
I continued to bridge the gap...slowly...slowly...but surely. At points I was almost on his wheel, other times he would gap me by 50-100 feet or so. End of lap 3 and Ben yells for me to close the gap. Coming into the barriers he falls, and gets up and the gap is smaller than ever. I pass him at this point and at the end of lap 3 I’m in the lead. But he’s right there, and we cross the line basically right with each other.
I think. I’m going to admit that things are a little foggy at this point. But I’m pretty sure this is how it went.
So he jumps on my wheel, drafting me at the very end of lap 3 into lap 4. One of his buddies yells, “Draft him!” So I pull up, and go uber slow. I look back and 3rd place isn’t in sight so no worries there.
I should probably step back and explain where I am mentally at this point. There is no way I’m not leaving everything out there today. Through those first 3 laps there was nothing but pure f’ing motivation running through my veins today. I mean, sure, it was innocent enough. But SXG is the dude that took me out at Nittany. They talk about a carrot at the end of the stick. This was like a lobster dinner spread on a super model holding a premium beer in each hand, all dipped in butter. I mean motivation by the bucket here.
So ok, I sit up, and let him pull ahead. We go into the choppy section and he goes low so I jump up high and pull next to him, just to let him know I’m there. Then I let him go again. He pushed hard into those next sections then the low-high turn comes up, and like most everyone else he takes it wrong, and I go way low and cut inside and jump in front of him. Then I soft pedal a little bit. And let him pull ahead again.
Here it opens up into a straight section with a 90 degree turn and then a straight section going into the turns with the painted roots - the first section with painted roots on the course. He goes high, so I go low. This is it, his race will end now. I f’ed with him a little bit and now the dagger goes down, and hard. I know he’s going to drop down to draft me so as soon as he does I go high and drill it, and I mean drill it. I press to the max back up on the high side, hit the corner at speed, and open up a 30-50 foot gap immediately. We go into the turns and I’m into the second turn before he’s into the first. And we go from there.
The rest of lap 4 is attack after attack. We’re not going back and forth, I’m just blistering him. I know he was pressing to try and keep Ilya and I away in lap 3. So now that I’ve passed him, I know he’s on the brink, and at every juncture I’m going to attack and make him hurt. We roll out the rest of the lap, with me inching further and further ahead. I come by Ben again and he yells at me to open up the gap more.
So we go by pit and the guy announces that Ilya Cantor is winning now, to which I yell, “Wrong one!” Shortly after checks himself and says my name, and says that SXG is still looking good. I cross the line and the official has a bell in his hand. I ask him how many laps left and he says nothing. I ask him again and he rings the bell a few times. Really, a simple “yes” would have done the trick.
At this point I have 50 yards on SXG at least, and I know he’s hurting. So again, I just lay the hammer down at every opportunity and try to drive the dagger deeper. In fact, I said exactly that to myself as I started the 5th lap. At this point I was on fire, nothing was going to stop me. I was lapping people at this point, and every rider I came on I would yell, “Coming hard on your left, race leader.” There was no doubt that I was passing you, and passing you hard.
I could still see SXG at times, but he was fading further and further back. That’s the thing about the cx race as opposed to a mtb race. You can see so much further ahead of you. So my lead was growing larger and larger, and I kept pressing harder and harder. NFW was this guy going to catch me.
I rolled out the lap and came up to the line. I asked the guy if I was done, and he looked at me like I was an alien. So I repeated the question and he said that yes, it was over.
Win bitch. Win.
The file:
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/50647795
Look at the splits. 183 average HR for the race. That’s leaving it all out there.
I’m not proofreading this. I’m 2 beers in and too lazy.
After the race the 3rd place guy came up to me and asked if I was a mountain biker. He said, “I was 5 seconds behind you into 1 corner then suddenly you were 15 seconds ahead.”
Sweet, this skills crap is working.
History
I wrote this morning before the race today. How appropriate that the next step in my history is my first mountain bike win.
SSaP, the first win:
http://www.mtbnj.com/forum/showthread.php?p=155564#post155564
Bringing the cup to NJ, which Ilya collected this year and I suspect Woody will be the odds on favorite to bring in next year, assuming he doesn’t jump up to cat 1.
I love that when I search Google for race results, the MTBNJ wiki comes up as the first link as often as not. Sweet!
The Egghead Corner
Apparently you can only see that Wattage list if you’re a member. That sounds vaguely familiar from when I joined some moons ago. I’ll keep that in mind going forward and just c&p the relevant information from the list. Much of the good info is external links, so I’ll just post those when I can.
Tomorrow & This Week
Supposed to be a rest day but since I’m in Chicago Tue-Thu, which I’m not thrilled about, I’m WFH and loading up my Monday with a microbust interval session followed by a 30 minute effort on a local cx course in the morning, then a threshold session at night, more 8 minute sets followed by 1 minute sprints.
That sounds absurd on paper. I may need to cut out the extras in both workouts and just try to pull off the meat of these. 5 hours of work is going to be hard to pull off in 1 day.
Tuesday off. Running in Chicago Wed & Thu mornings. A tough workout Friday morning followed by CX skills Friday evening. Saturday race tune up. Sunday Hillbilly Hustle.
...congrats norm