Verge NECCS #8 Downeast Day 2 Report

Elite
14th/43




Don't worry, these results are not going to my head! Although the weather conditions were dramatically improved to a warm sunny day, the course was in my opinion uglier than the day before. Gone were the big wet puddles and rain showers to wash the liquid mud off the bike. In its place was the hateful drying, sticky mud that hung on to your bike and body like crabs to a crotch. The shit just kept multiplying! The wooded sections were barely rideable up or down and the open fields were saturated leaving you no break from keeping power to the pedals.


I took a 15 minute pre-ride on my pit bike, bagged half the lap, scraped the mud off the bike and dropped it off in the pits hoping I would never have to see it. I gained no course knowledge and didn't even have an idea how the start was going. I returned to warm up alongside John Burns and I had nothing but disdain for the course and my thoughts on how I thought the race would go. "Suck" was my best descriptor. JB tried to motivate me be letting me know how cool it was that I beat MTB pro Mike Broderick the day before. That was cool, for a second, then I realized the pressure was on to have another solid performance again today, in this swine of course.


An oddity I noticed was folks like Myerson, Lindine and Ward weren't even spinning on trainers. What did they know that I didn't? Was this race going to be such a shit show it didn't even matter if you were warmed up?!


No matter, I was going to get through this and be happy with a finish, period. I did my best to recover the night before with a sushi, pizza meal, followed by an ice bath, a restless night's sleep, then blueberry pancakes in the morning. The legs felt decent, probably given the fact they weren't taxed too heavily on Saturday.


Today I got a 2nd row callup! WTF is happening?!

That's Manny Goguen behind me. I was hoping we would be riding together again today but he had a stellar outing and finshed about a minute ahead.

I have never been so close to Timmerman's ass before! It's shapely. I was deep in the doubting-my-ability-cave when the whistle blew and I ride off blindly following the wheels of the front row guys. I'm pretty sure I lost a handful of positions en route to the first wooded descent where all hell broke loose in front of me. Turns out these guys up front are pretty committed to either winning or losing a race on the first lap no matter the conditions as Colin and I surmised after the race. A little give and take early on could go a long way towards having a solid finish.




Guys were criss-crossing and banging into and yelling at each other all over the place forcing many of us behind to hop off our bikes. Funniest thing was Colin riding through laughing and yelling "Yeah, bike racing! You guys are doing it all wrong!" The melee put me in a long run up a normally rideable climb and relegated out of the top-20. So much for a good start and having a good day I thought. From there, it was survival mode riding slippery sections in a group. On the pre-ride there was a stone wall that I thought was un-rideable and I dismounted in preparation for it. When I came upon it someone had done some altering and it was now rideable, which was nice, but not for this lap. I stayed on the gas where I could and began the long and slow process of picking up positions over the next couple of laps. At one point I was the cream in the middle of the Colin and Kevin cookie battle for supremacy and got to hear some of the heckling those guys have to endure!


I soon deduced I was going to have to race the course and let the result come as it may. Second lap I bridged up to Burns and Rubijono. I cut JB off a bit on a quick run, then got my just desserts as Rubi stumbled and I had to dismount as well. What I wanted was to essentially mountain bike race: get alone and find my own line through the crap. There were a few stealth lines on the trail edges, including a nice piece of singletrack through the trees that I found a couple times. The bike was performing really well save for a couple of skips in the gears. For the record, I didn't use my pit bike all weekend. I dragged that race bike from start to finish with half the course on it.


Long story short, cheers from fans (sorry I couldn't thank you all out there, I was in the pain asylum and not allowed to acknowledge visitors!) and Freye plain old yelling at me to ride harder kept me going. LaFlamme's encouragement saying I had "only 4 laps to go" was tough to swallow though! I was happy to hear my placing at the end. My time wasn't exactly stellar and I no doubt advanced spots thanks to some of the leaders taking each other out, but I feel OK about backing up Saturday's result with this one.


Major equipment advantage today was my Shimano/Hutchinson tubeless wheelset. The traction and mud-shedding ability of this combo really helped get me through.


On a personal note, I relished the support from folks like my OA/CycleMania teammates, friends like Freye and Hattie, the McEwans, Stephanie Chase, even fellow competitor Tom Gosselin on Saturday and anyone else I missed. It's the motivation gleaned from the likes of their encouragement that make racing fun an good finishes rewarding.
THANK YOU HATTIE FOR THE AWESOME PICS!



But the downside to my selfish ego-boosting is that just yesterday I missed my youngest score his soccer team's only goal in a 1-1 dramatic final game of the season to remain undefeated. To make matters worse, I didn't see any of his games all season and my wife was the coach!


I also missed the whole family participating in a 1 mile Halloween run that my oldest son won outright beating everyone with a time of 7.33.


The icing on the cake is the fact that the family hasn't seen one of my races all season, that's going all the way back to March. That's simply totally fucked up. What was once a family affair has turned into my own selfish pursuit. I guess that's why there aren't too many 40+ pros with a wife who hasn't divorced him yet and kids who still recognize him. I'm afraid the writing is on the wall and next season will see a much more limited but no less rewarding schedule.

OK. I had to get that off my chest. In the meantime, it's ALL IN this season and I'm looking for ward to NoHo! Bring on the power!