Judging Self-Worth Through Insignifigant Cycling Achievements

                                                               

Yeah, that’s right, I can finally grow one. And it’s power to strike fear in the heart of my competition and inspire lust in the loins of all female onlookers is undeniable!! Just kidding, the stupid thing still doesn’t connect at the corners of my mouth and it gets all nasty with GU on long rides. I’ll probably keep it for at least a little while longer (seeing as that it took like two months or so to grow in), maybe through the summer or something.
 
But seriously, look at that picture above, if that doesn’t look like the makings for a 6th place finish I don’t know what does! Needless to say things went as planned at Sea Otter and my “as dinky as possible” bike set up was flawless. The bike was about as light as it can get, I think that it was weighing in at just a hare over 20 lbs for that race. I was planning on using Karma’s front and rear but I notices a cut in the sidewall of the rear after the Napa race and decided to put a Crow on the rear instead (like Jim and Max had been telling me to for about a week). I had used that same tire at 24 HOA at pretty much the same course last fall and it worked fine then so I figured that I’d be okay.

I got down to Monterey on Saturday night with just enough time to eat some dinner and go to sleep. I kinda figured that pre riding the course was not a necessity since I have now ridden it like 25 times in my life or some terrible number like that. Jim, Tom, Shilo, and I showed up at the venue at about 6:30 in the morning so that we could stand around in the freezing cold wind and talk about how we were gonna race in a little while. Once that was done and the start time was pushed back from 7:30 to 8 I decided to go through my geekey warm-up routine on the trainer. I did this up in the dirt parking lot with all the sport class riders as not to be spotted by anyone who I might know. Then it was time to ride around the paved part of the course a bit and line up waaayyy early. I got a spot on the very front line, I need to start doing that at short track races and other stuff where it matters, not 2 1/2 + hour xc races. Anyways there was the normal grumble grumble of who’s suppose to have a good day and who isn’t and then we were off!

Despite my good starting position I ended up towards the back of the field by the time we hit the dirt. There was a bit of a traffic jam there and people started spazing out about it, I had decided that lap 1 was gonna be an easyish lap and I just wanted to be top 20ish by the second lap. I stuck to my plan and just kinda rode around with a bunch of people that I didn’t recognize. Towards the end of the first lap I was with Jason Seigel (strong guy from down south) and we could see a group ahead with Jim, Chris Brown, Romolo, and a few other strong guys. I was able to chase on to that group and finish the first lap with them, our first lap was a 1:21 which felt like a medium-hard pace to me. I think that I was about 23rd at that point in time. I let those guys pull me around for about the first third of the second lap and then I started to feel really good! We came to one of the steeper climbing sections and I was able to climb away from the group. I ended up being able to keep a good hard effort going for the rest of the race and passed what seemed like A LOT of people through the rest of the course. The most memorable part of the race for me was at the top of the final climb where all the people hang out and watch. I was really charging at that point (please refrence above picture) and there was some guy with a megaphone up there. As I was coming up the hill he was yelling, “He’s in the big ring, he’s in the big ring!!” Then when I actually got next to him he started yelling, “Oh, he’s only got one ring, He’s only got one ring!!”

All in all a good day on the bike for me. Oops the little lady just showed up and I haven’t really got much else to say anyways. This weekend I’m doing a road race with a 7 mile dirt decent. I’ll letcha know how that went sometime next week

So yeah, I was feeling a little down after my sub-par results down in Phoenix. I, like any self respecting mountain biker, tried to blame a bad weekend on anything but myself (sore back, long drive, hot weather, course that didn’t suit me, blah blah blah…..) only to come to the conclusion that I just had a bad weekend and that I needed a good one to feel better about myself. Well that day came on Sunday in the form of the 15th annual Napa Valley Dirt Classic.

 This is one of the very first races that I did back in 06′. It came after Sea Otter back then and my stellar performance at Sea Otter (2nd in beginner) had convinced me that I belonged in the sport class. I did the race on my Intense Spider and ended 3rd in the sport class with a time of 1:51 or so. Two years of racing, dieting, and a much better bike later and the story has a different ending….

I warmed up on my trainer (dorky but sooooo important to do) for about half an hour with Jim and Max. I felt like a bit of a specticle because we had decided to set up on a lawn that was in the middle of an 1/8 mile running track and everyone else was warming up by riding in circles around it. After that was done I had about another half of an hour to kill and I thought that I’d go socialize a bit. Next thing you know everyone is already lined up and I’m the late guy trying to squeeze into a good starting position. Right about then I noticed Barry Wicks towering above everyone else, he looked a little like a brontisaurus or something since he’s about a head and neck taller that everybody. I snuggled in between some random pro/semi-pro guys and noticed that we had a much bigger field that usual. It turned out to be 30 plus 5  or so pro single speeders (yes I do miss it), way up from the usual 8 to 10 that show up to local stuff. I was kinda worried since the race starts on a 200 yard paved climb through a parking lot straght into single track and everybody likes to show off for the crowd.

And show off we did! There was posatively a crash getting into the single track that left one guy with a broken deraileur and another guy with Weir sized footprints on his front spokes. I did end up behind the crash and lost contact with Wicks, Sneddon, and some Specalized pro from Japan that I’ve been seeing at the nationals. This mattered very little because I was sure to loose contact with them in the next few seconds anyways. The race was kinda uneventful from that point on, I mostly rode with Jim, Yakiatias, Chris Brown, and Weir. I was scolded at one point for being too slow in some of the single track (everybody knows that I’m a little too slow in the single track) and lost contact with Jim, Mark, and Chris. About 3/4 of the way through this race there is a STEEP fire road climb on some loose gravel and once we got there I saw that everyone that I had “lost contact” with was about 10 seconds at most ahead of me. Now I run a single front 34 tooth chainring on my niner, which would equate to a 38 tooth on a 26″ bike. Jim has the same set up and was able to climb the whole thing, I was not. I don’t feel like walking some parts of it hurt me at all, I could see everyone that I was racing against and nobody was getting away. Dare I say that walking may have even been a little easier that trying to grind up that thing? In any case, Dave Yak did pass me on that hill but that’s okay becasue Dave always beats me and he’s good people. I caught everyone else as soon as the hill flattened out a bit and I was able to re-mount my steed. Jim and I rode off and Chris Brown ended up chasing hard and catching us at a flat section. We decided to try and crack him on the very last hill possible, Chris is a very tough dude and luckly it worked out in our favor this time. Then Jim and I rode into the finish together and he out sprinted me for 6th overall. The three big pro’s had beaten us by minutes, Aren Timmel had us by 30 seconds or so, and Dave Yak got us by about 10 seconds.

Now this is the kind of racing that I want to be involved in!! I wanna go out, really give it my all and have it be a race of seconds. I do miss single speeding and I do still think that they’re the coolest but I never had races like this last year. What I mean is that in single speeding the gaps are almost always HUGE. Huge to the point that ethier you ride away from everybody at the start line or they do it to you. Where’s the fun in that? The best that I can figure it I’ll be doing all my endurance stuff on my single and maybe a select few xc races (Downieville anyone?) that I don’t stand a chance of winning anyways on it. For everything else it’s gonna be nine speeds of fury for the rest of 08′ and I’m totally okay with that finally.

Side note;

I broke my Orbea about a month ago during a grasshopper race. I just got something in the mail…

This fancy new frame had me questioning the quality of the components that had come off the old frame. Seeing as how they had bounced off the asphault more than once I decided to order a new Ultegra Sl group to match the fancy new bike. That left me with a bunch of pretty good parts with no home. What to do, what to do?? Oh yeah, My cross bike is a piece of shit and in DIRE need of attention. The Limba ended up with a very used but still waaaay beter than what was on there crankset, bottom bracket, shifters, deraileurs, seat, new grip tape, and new cables and housing all around. What I ended up with was this;

I got this together on Monday after work and took it on a ride Tuesday after work. We ended up with 2 hrs and 20 minutes for a Stinson Beach loop which is about how long it usually takes me on my ROAD bike. 5,000 feet of climbing is 35 miles without as much as a skipping chain or a squealing brake, ladies and gentlemen she passed the test! This bike has never been such a joy to ride and I can’t frigging wait for my road bike stuff to get here!!

Another side note;

About two and a half months ago I was able to convince an awesome girl to start spending most all of her free time with me despite my obvious shortcomings. I know that I don’t mention her much on here because I seriously doubt that any of you want to hear about it and I’m pretty sure that she doesn’t read this anyways. But she’s on my mind right now and I’m feeling a bit like showing off so here’s a picture of my girlfriend Hilary (don’t get mad if you’re reading this!!);
I can’t believe she doesn’t mind me spending as much time as I do riding bikes, working on bikes, talking about bikes, and yes, even sometimes racing bikes.

I have driven about 2700 miles in the last two weeks. Well, I didn’t actually drive the whole way, maybe more like half. But I was in the car the whole way and it was an endurance event of it’s own. Two weekends ago Jim and I drove down to Fontana for the first of six NMBS races. If you are unfamiliar with the venue all that you need to know is that they have taken to calling it the “urban assualt”, which it is. The start finish is across the street for a Safeway in some Southern California neighborhood and part of the race is a paved climb. Sound like no fun? WRONG, it was a blast this year!
 
Last year I crashed a whole bunch and got third in single speed, unhappy. This year I crashed a little and got 9th in Semi-Pro, happy!! I was actually in the top 5 after the first lap but slowed a little toward the end. Partly because I went out too hard and partly because my back was starting to give me a little trouble. Now that I read that it looks like I’m making excuses. I GOT NINTH BECASUSE EIGHT OTHER PEOPLE GOT AROUND THE RACE COURSE FASTER THAN I DID THAT DAY, there now I feel better. Jim proved to all of us that his shoulder injury last month is a non-issue and pulled off a 5th place finish! On the podium at the first race of a National Series is a good place to be. The short track was on sunday and I’m a little bitter about how this turned out. Jim and I both got off to bad starts (Jim espeically) and had to pick people off the whole time. With 3 to go I was alone chasing down the front group of 4 but decided to fall over instead. At that point I was more worried about what was going on behing me, which was Jim coming to pass me. After he passed me on the final lap I tried to sprint by him to get into some single track ahead of him. That did not work and I fell again, this time blocking 3 other guys from setting up for a sprint finish. Jim ended 5th and I think that I was 8th or 9th but I’m not sure because I didn’t get a result for that race. That’ll teach me to take off before the results are posted, right?

Then we drove home after the short track on sunday evening and I worked monday through wednesday. After work on wed. we started driving to Phoenix and ended up stopping for sleep half way. We made it to Fountain Hills (where the race was) on thursday at about 2 and pre rode the course. Not much climbing, very rocky, lots of cactus and a lot of loose fast cornering, different to say the least. The race was a stage race which consisted of a Super-D (Time Trial is more accurate), a short track race, and a cross country race. The super-d was all fire road with a slight down grade, some sand and a couple little climbs at the end, pedaling the whole way. If you’ve ever ridden with me then you know that going down fireroads fast is not something that I pride myself on. I ended 23rd and got chicked by Georgia Gould, not a proud moment. The next day was short track and I didn’t get a call up because of my lackluster performance in the super-d. I was in the BACK of a field of 50 when they said go and pretty much lost a minute on the leaders just waiting for everyone to get up the run-up. I started picking people off and ended up somewhere in the low 20’s that day also. This I was okay with because I felt strong that day and would have done better if it weren’t for the bad start. Lastly we have what matters to me, the cross country. I got off to a good start and we all lined up and rode the first lap like a bunch of roadies. I mean really, the entire field of 60 was in a single file line. Then people started getting tired and there was carnage! Everybody started getting flats and crashing into rocks and cactus and all kinds of nonsense. Somewhere in there I started to come apart and had to let people by, not my weekend. This time I really started to slow and my back was bothering my a lot. I think that I ended 25th out of a field of 60, which is not where I want to be in a cross country race. Jim kept it together and ended up 12th ( I think) after washing out right at the end of the race and giving up a few spots. I think that he finished maybe 11th or something in the stage race and I was   17th, not our best results but not by any means horrible.

I was a little cranky during the drive home (sorry Jim) and probably kept talking about my back. I was still sore on Monday and a little on Tuesday so I deciced that something must be done. I remembered that the first time that it had bothered me was at the Cool race. I had figured that it was because my seat had slipped down a little during the race but then I remembered that I had taken off my riser bars and put a set of flat bars on right before Cool. Hmmmm, maybe that was the problem all along. I put the risers back on and went on some pretty hard rides on wednesday and thursday (today) without any pain at all!! I think that we’ve figured it out ladies and gentlemen and I am really happy about this. Napa Valley Dirt Classic is this sunday and I think that it’ll be a good warm up before Sea Otter the following weekend. Sea Otter is kinda a weird race for me because I seem to be fast there but have no desire to ride around that race course at all. Please remember that 24 Worlds was held there last year and the course was similar, I am tired of riding around those fireroads. It is also the first mountian bike race that I ever did WAYYY back in 06′ as a beginner on a full suspension geared bike, I got second place in my age group. Then last year I raced single speed and ended up 4th in pro/expert, Travis Brown won. I wonder what’s gonna happen this year?