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Andrea and I headed east to Dahlonega, Georgia for the 2nd annual Southern X.  This year, the date had to be rescheduled due to impassible roads on the original date two weeks ago, the new date fortunately allowed me to go (couldn’t make the first date).  The weather was a damp 45F or so, probably colder up at the high points of the course.

This year’s course was completely different than last years, but featured the same type of terrain.  Starting out at Camp Wahsega, we did a cyclocross loop before heading out onto the gravel roads for 49 miles or so.  I came out of the Camp probably in 9th or 10th spot, with a 50 foot gap to the group.  I was unable to close it and had to watch the group pull away from me as we climbed up and down the smaller hills that proceeded the first main climb.  I managed to pull back one rider going up the climbs and was passed by a mountain bike going up the steeper sections of the climbs.

The problem that I had with the climbs was primarily gearing (and maybe some fitness).  My spare road compact crank, Andrea was using and I didn’t really have time to pull one off my other cyclocross bike before we left on the trip.  I was forced to walk part of the hill when the grade pitched up to 10% or so.  Generally I was able to keep my speed about the same as what I was muscling over (~4 mph) in my low gear (39×26).  The soft muddy gravel made the normally rideable grades (on the road) impossible to manage.

On the first long descent after the first main climb, I repassed the mountain biker who was stopped on the side of the road.  He must have not been stopped long because he was right behind me at the end of the descent as we turned onto the pavement.

The pavement section was about 10 miles long with a short section of gravel joining the two stretches.  The first part of the pavement was downhill or downwind and I rolling at 25-30 mph for the first 2 miles so.   Hills and wind slowed down the rest of the pavement, but I managed to pull back in a rider that flatted out of the lead group.  We rode the last section of the pavement a few miles and several miles of the gravel together.   It was on this gravel section that I ate my two gels (really needed to eat more, but didn’t bring anything else).  Towards the end of the 2nd largest climb, I couldn’t hold his pace and he rode away from me.  So I back to riding alone with no one in sight.

After another kick in the teeth hill, I started the final long descent back to the Camp.  Early parts were rocky and washboard, it sounded like my bike was falling apart..  It turned out that I lost the lower cage bolt on seat tube bottle cage and the top on was loose.  Before realizing this, I was passed with authority by the Applegates riding a mountain tandem down the hill.

As I entered the Camp property I pitched off my seat tube bottle (to keep the bottle from flopping around) and rode to the dreaded run up.  Like last year, the cyclocross loop was modified on the return to include a long run up and some singletrack.  The run was longer, by a lot.  It was scramble up a steep embankment followed by a long power line section.  At the power line section, you could see minutes up the course due to the slow speeds and ahead were the rider I was riding with earlier and the mountain tandem…  By the time I got to the top, I was wondering how we would get back down.  The answer was a winding descending singletrack.  Most of it was fine, had to get over 5 logs or so (my legs were pissed by this point) and around a slippery hairpin switchback.  My tires didn’t want to hookup, so I did a half crash there with out actually falling.  By then I could see Andrea coming behind me.  I pretty much tried to get out of her way when we hit the bridge, but my hamstring suddenly cramped, so it was pretty retarded…  Anyway, she passed me and I just rode it on in for 8th.  Andrea took 1st in Open Women.

Even better than the race (which was really hard actually), was the cabin that Namrita & Eddie setup near the Camp.  In total we had about 10 people staying there.  Between the microbrew (thanks, Dave), the hot tub, and the good company it was a great weekend.  The cabin represented a good portion of the top riders in the race with 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th in Open Men and 1st, 4th, and 7th in Open Women.   The mix of the worlds of (endurance) mountain biking and road cycling made for a great evening.

The weekend was a good way to kick off my real training for the 2010 road season.  I have been riding, but nothing this intense or this long (at least not often).  It is also a great capstone to my cyclocross season (which effectively ended back in mid-November).  I plan on making No. 3….just need to put a 34 tooth up front and eat more.

Daytripped Columbia CX#3 today with Andrea, our dog Turbo (our JRT was left at home), our CX bikes, a Trek Madone for Jeremy (he got one of the team bikes-delivered to a shop in Memphis), and Andrea’s Blue frame from a few seasons ago (she sold it)….

Weather was much better than two weeks ago, much warmer.  Able to wear only a base layer and a skinsuit with arm/knee warmers.  Andrea’s race (2nd race of the day), was still in the dry for most part.  As usual she won the W1/2/3 and beat a good chunk of the men in the combined CX3 – Masters 35/45+ – Womens field.

Just after her race, during the short 10-15 break between the races, it started to rain… cold, cold rain.  I ended up re-donning the knee warmers (had took them off getting ready for the race) and keeping the vest on.  We had a small race in CX1/2, just Jeremy C. and Dustin.  Adding to that were two singlespeeders that started just behind and would race for less time.

Maybe it was the cold, the rain, or whatever, but I wasn’t ready to go when the word go was spoken.  I was gapped off the line still fumbling with my Garmin (which I didn’t stop and reset for the race) and wondering how I was going to get my vest off.

I ended up riding the first lap with the vest on and tried to pull back Jeremy and Dustin, but was unable to close the distance and they started to walk away from me on the course.  I manage to pull off the vest (turned out to be more ackward than I thought, probably the rain soaking it.)

The 2nd time up the run up, I felt like I might be doing something and maybe pulling them back…  that thought didn’t last long as the gaps were clearly increasing, meaning that I was riding my own race for 3rd.  I focused on riding the laps as good as I could especially trying to improve my speed through the increasingly slippery turns.  In the end, Jeremy took the win, followed by Dustin 30-40 seconds back (I think), and by me 2 minutes behind him.

Not a great race for me..  Bad start notwithstanding (vest, etc), those guys just rode away from me.  It would have been interesting to see how long I could hang, but it didn’t work out that way.

Next weekend, I am headed back to No. Georgia with Andrea for the rescheduled Southern X.  Because the date was changed, I am now able to make it and so I bought a registration from a rider that couldn’t make the new dates.  My fitness is much like it was last year, so I have very little expectations other than it promises to be a good training day in the saddle.

On the way back to Memphis, we plan to hit the finale of the Cross the Way series.  No TBAR points on offer, but there is a few bucks and it should be a good race in any case.   This will be last race of my 2009-2010 cyclocross campaign.  I have a work trip planned leaving the weekend of the Tennessee State Championships, so I won’t be able to race it (it is the extreme far eastern end of Tennessee as well).

After that, the road training begins in earnest with Marx & Bensdorf team camp and other road training rides leading up to Rouge Roubaix in early March.

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Here are some random photos of the CX4 and some of the CX3/M35+/W123 race.

Andrea and I daytripped up to Columbia for the Saturday installment of the Columbia Cyclocross (weekend 1).  Temperatures were cold (26-28F), but at least it was sunny out in the open field (and the wind never really picked up).

It had been 6 weeks since I had even thought about cyclocross and it showed… I didn’t really warmup before the race and my remounts were a bit choppy.  In any case, the race was only Travis Book and I in CX1/2.  He was rocking the one cog, but that usually doesn’t matter much for him (unless there is a long uphill or something).

The course started off on the pavement going downhill and looping back through a picnic parking loop to a big drop off the pavement.  My lack of warmup had me about 10 feet behind him but holding on and coming back to him.  Over the 6 closely spaced landscape timbers (dismount), I tried to get back on the saddle quickly and burped out all the air out of my rear wheel.  Since it was over a mile back to my pit bike, I rode the flat while all the single speeders passed me (they started ~30 seconds later than the CX1/2).  Got my other bike and yelled to Andrea to change out my rear wheel (with a tubed tire).  I rode my backup bike one lap and repassed some of the singlespeeders.  Back at the pit I took back my A-bike with a tubed rear wheel and the front tubeless wheel.  Rode a good lap on my A-bike and started my fourth lap.

I went hard down the pavement and looped back up to the off-pavement transition.  The drop off the asphalt was probably 8″ or so to a short flat section down to an ackward upward turn up the hill.  I must have hit it harder or torqued the tire wrong, but as I pushed up out of the ditch I burped out the front wheel.   So I shouldered my bike and started running…  It ended up being about 1.2 miles of running back to the start finish line to retake back my backup bike.   By then, Travis lapped me and the single speeders were finishing up (they only did 30 minutes).

I rode the next lap pretty hard out of pride mostly and completed two more that weren’t as fast.  Really disappointed that the race played out like that, it probably would have been a good showdown between Travis and I looking at the lap times we both turned out.

I don’t know if this is my last ‘cross race of the year, but I definitely not going to use my Dura Ace road tubeless wheels with Bulldog tires… They were loose going on and came off pretty easily under pressure.  I am sure the cold didn’t help things, but the way they burped, I don’t think the sealant would have stopped that.

Here are the lap times I posted up:

1. 9:17 (rode flat for 2/3 of the lap)
2. 7:49 (ran to pits, and rode B-bike the rest)
3. 6:59 (back to A-bike)
4. 14:09 (ran most of the lap after front tire)
5. 6:58
6. 7:40
7. 7:37

Travis did most of his laps in the 6:55-7:10 range.  I am sure we would had a good race.

I haven’t touched my X-Fire since the Outdoors Inc race in mid-October…  in fact it is still rocking the Michelin Jets from that race and has been sitting up in the trainer room (real estate agent had called it a bonus room…) since then.  A few things had got in the way, namely mountain biking, road riding, and a little thing about getting married.

In most cyclocross areas of the country, I would imagine that ‘cross season is wrapping up or over by now, but in Tennessee, there are races until late February in Knoxville.  During January, there is a pair of weekends in Columbia (south of Nashville), a Chattanooga weekend, a Cross the Way weekend (Nashville), and the state championship weekend in Johnson City.

What I can do, remains to be seen.  My January promises to be a tough one at work, so I probably will have to race when I can.  All of the weekends are compelling in their own ways (Columbia and Cross the Way are well run and day tripable from Memphis); I lived in Chattanooga for 5 years before Memphis; and JC is the state championship race (although you couldn’t get any further away within Tennessee.)  And then there is Southern X.  I raced it last year, but I am about 90% sure that I will not be able to make the date since it would mean taking off Friday and heading to North Georgia.  Andrea does plan to race it and looks to improve on her heartbreaking 2nd place.

The road season for 2010 is still a bit fuzzy, but I am looking forward to joining a solid group of Cat 3’s on the Marx & Bensdorf cycling team.  We should do well and take our game up the Cat 1/2 by the end of the season.

Andrea and I ordered a pair of Trek Madones with SRAM Red.  With one of our own the regional rep for Trek, it was pretty obvious who would be our bike sponsor.  Maybe if we step up our game, they will give us the frames….  We are looking to sell a couple of frames/ complete bikes.

• 54 cm (medium) Blue RC7 (2008 model, blue paint job, frame/fork)
• 52-53? cm BH Connect (Red/black, 2009 model, SRAM red build)
• 58 cm Felt FC (Black/grey, 2008 model, SRAM Red build or bare frame)

I will probably make a more detailed post about the Felt in January, but if you are interested in any of these, let me know (website@roadcx.net).  Make a reasonable offer.

First race in the new kit (Marx & Bensdorf) and last race of my Fall campaign, it was good to do both at a race in Memphis. Andrea and I headed down to the river to race the 23rd annual Outdoors Inc mid-south cyclcocross championships. This year the race is not the Tennessee state championship (which it has been for most of the last decade). With increased racing statewide, the state championships has moved around, this year to a late season race in Johnson City. I guess that is payback for last year and other years where it was held in Memphis.

Since my lightweight tubular wheelset is out of service (front tubie rolled off, rear one needs a little spoke wrenching after the crash last weekend), I decided to put some Michelin Jet tires on my Shimano DuraAce carbon / aluminum wheelset. The course is pretty much grass or hardpack, so these were perfect… I ran them down at 30 psig front, 35 psig rear, so I was taking a risk with that low of a pressure with tubed clincher tires, but it was the right setup.

Andrea raced her teammate Casey in the Womens race which started behind the CX4 / Beginner Masters “B”-race. She won and rode a good race (I let her race my above mentioned DuraAce/Jet combos since her tubeless burped out some air on our preview lap.)

The A-race was right after it. This race was most of the rest: CX1/2, CX3, and Masters 35/45+. Lined up 2nd row, right behind Russ (M&B) and right next to Will (also M&B). Got a reasonable start, staying close to the leaders maybe in 6th – 7th spot. I started to move up when I could and after a while (maybe 2 laps), 2 leaders had a decent gap on Russ and Bert (35+ racer) and they had a gap on me.

I started to make some separation to those behind when I ran under the course rope going down a hill and had to push hard to regain the gap. By mid-race, I ended up catching up to Russ and we worked together going down the long straightaway.

The laps pretty much went the same way, he would get up the steep ride-up to the sidewalk better than I, I would catch back by the timber stairs. He would ride the timber stairs…I would run them… chase.

Repeat, repeat. On the last lap, I was little slower coming back to him and had to navigate around a lap rider at the top of the course. Over the log barriers to the finishing stretch, he had a few second gap… I big-ringed it (for the first time all race) and started to come back. Russ spotted that move before it was too late, so we finished 3rd and 4th (me).

Andrea took all these photos, I edited them and put them up in a gallery.

I’ll make this short and sweet.

(1) Andrea and I are getting married, December 12th.

(2) I am changing teams… from Memphis Velo / Smith & Nephew to Mrax & Bensdorf cycling team. The change is going along with my plans upgrade to category 2 in 2010. This year should be a good year to go on top of 2009 (which was my best year yet).

This weekend completes my Fall cyclocross campaign with the Outdoors, Inc Cyclocross race on Mud Island (Memphis). I will race a couple more times this winter, but this is the last of 5 weekends in a row… It will be nice to finish it up with a race at home. (I decided not to race the Lock 4 – six hour mtb race this weekend).

With only 2 races under my belt (as far as TBRA points go), I am actually 2nd in the series in CX1/2. I am miles behind Jeremy Chandler and basically tied with a few others with similar totals, so it doesn’t mean a whole lot. We’ll see how that develops….

After heading back home, hitting the Memphis Velo team dinner… I was already pretty tired from the race…we manged to hold it together and be social. We got up in the morning and made the trek to McEwen for day 2.

I was a little worse for the wear for racing today… I had some scuffing and soreness due to the tumble yesterday, but mostly it was my hip. Nevertheless, I planned to race the CX1/2 (+CX3 + Women 1/2/3) race in the early afternoon. The combined field meant we started with about 10. Some of the field had already raced (either Masters or CX3), but there were a few pairs of fresh legs in the group.

The course was nearly identical to Saturday’s course…except it was run in reverse with a slight modification incorporating a run up (or a small hop + ride up if you could pull it off).

Run up (ride up) [photos by Marsha White]

Unfortunately the sketchy up hill off camber turning into a downhill version of the same.. I never really figured that out…..

Sketch corner

We started out and quickly it started to develop like Saturday. Andy was well out front, a group of 2 behind (Jeremy + Jeremy), and then a group of 4 (my group). The first lap or so, I wasn’t really in a groove yet and would fall back from this group and rejoin them after long grass sections. One of the times down the hill, I tried to pass on the inside… on that sketchy downhill. Rather than take out a large group as the line closed, I rode into the tape and left a huge gap. I took nearly a lap to get back to the group. Once back, I started to attack where I could. I generally sucked the descent (maybe gun shy from the previous day’s crash?).

By 3-4 laps to go, I was successful at dropping the rest and tried to chase down the Jeremys. I was able to hold the gap, but didn’t really make up much ground. 4th place.

Finish

I had already signed up for the “Hoss of Cross” race at the end of the day, so I got resuited up even though I was pretty spent from the race. The idea is a 2 lap race for a wheelset (and other prizes) with all categories racing together and against each other for one winner. The start was staged by average lap times of each category’s winner. This meant that I would start at the back.. The junior went first, then 45 seconds, then Andrea. Another 45 seconds, the Cat 4’s and the S/S’er. After 25 seconds, Barrett (CX3) and I were allowed to go.

Barrett started out fast (my lack of warmup was showing here). I ended up coming back to him and lead us into the run up. At least that was my plan. I suspected that he might ride it, so I was trying to go outside…that would have been great if I would have unclipped. I ended up on the ground before the log at the bottom and Barrett basically half-crashed into me. Nice. We managed to pick up the pieces and start the run up pretty quickly. As I pushed my bike up the hill, the rear wheel was dragging…the brack shoe had pushed past the rim. I took a second and dislodged it. By the time I got going, Barrett was well ahead, but I stayed close enough to him through the back section of the course passing one CX4 along the way.

We passed the next CX4 (part of a larger group) going to the run-up the second time. He rode, I ran it…. When I tried to remount, I was overgeared (dumb) and stalled going on the pavement. Fail. I was passed back the CX4 racer and had to ride behind him. I didn’t overtake him until half-way around the course (messed up the decent again and then was jammed up a few times). By this time, I was all over anyway, so I just rode it in. I think I ended up 6th? Barrett did well to get up to 3rd place to take a prize. The grand prize… the Junior took it. Andrea dropped out when her chain dropped below her chain watcher effectively ending her race.

After the race, we stayed around, helping finish off the keg and (at least somewhat) helping teardown. Actually we didn’t do much with that. All-in-all a good weekend, even though I had a mediocre weekend of racing (results wise)… Sketchy stuff (in the dry) isn’t my strength. Andrea and I will have to return there for some mountain biking… maybe the weekend after next…

One more weekend of cross. Outdoors, Inc on the island. At least it is a hometown race!

Well, I rolled the other one. Probably shouldn’t have used those used tires, but it looked to be a good glue job. One hard corner and I was in the dirt.

I am writing this as we head back to Memphis (Andrea behind the wheel). I got one of those Verizon MiFi portable access points… So far, so good. We will testing out the coverage map in rural Arkansas in the coming months. It worked at the race venue (rural Tennessee where my AT&T iPhone didn’t work at all). Yeah, AT&T sucks. (I had 3G coverage where my iPhone didn’t work at all, no voice, no EDGE, certainly no 3G.)

Back to the race. Raced the CX1/2 + 3 race at the McEwen CX festival. We had a decent sized field (maybe 10 at the start). I got an okay start, Andy Reardon showed up and walked away from our group of 5. We were traversing an offcamber section when Jeremy when down in front of me…. I tried to cut up the bank and joined him on the ground 10 feet behind him. We both recovered and chased back to the other 3.

On the second lap, I attacked up the hill and caused a bit of a split and tried to keep the pressure on leading the group up the 2nd hill section. At the end of thiat section, the course went on and off the pavement twice and had a sweeping sketchy turn at speed. This is where I rolled off my front tire. I went down hard on the hard pack dirt. Throwing off my glasses in the process. Will and another nearly ran me over (there were right behind).

I picked up my bike after see the tire had rolled and walked / trotted to the pits.

Over the barriers. Injuries from the crash made suitcasing the bike not a fun activity. photo by Marsha White.

John Carr saw me running and gave me a bike change to my pit bike. At this point, I was sort of half in the mood to race and i probably took me a lap to get back into the grove. I had 8 more or so to figure it out. I picked off some of the people that passed me when I was running (mostly the women that were on the course at the same time as us). Ended up 5th of 6 finishers. (Jeremy also went down overcooking that corner and snagged the course tape ending his race.)

Chasing… photo by Marsha White.

After the race, it took a while…despite several beers out of the Yazoo keg…but that really hurt. Not much broken skin. Some light abrasions and a bruised hip. Racing tomorrow will either be awesome or really, really suck. We’ll see.

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What when wrong, an attempt to make sense of it: basically, this tire was a used tired when I got these wheels (was Tufo taped on). The tape bond on the front was strong, but after my rear one failed (Beat the Freak #2), I cleaned these up and reglued. The rear one came unbonded the next weekend (although I caught it before it rolled and put a new tire on instead). For the front, it looked to be in good shape after a pretty good glue job.

I think what killed it is that the base tape wicked up some of the nasty mud that we have been living with in Tennessee this year, before I sealed it. I think the Aquaseal on the base tape would have saved this tire, but I put it on too late (only the week before last). My plan is to clean up the rim and put it on a hook until next year and glue on a fresh tire late next summer. I only have two more races and both are dry courses (grass, etc). I will use a clincher tire / rim. I have plenty of both.

Since we were in Nashville overnight and it was Halloween, we met up with a group for dinner at Rose Peppers in East Nashville. A few from the group headed over to the Red Door Saloon a few blocks away. The place was packed with lots of people in costumes of all sorts. It was a pretty good time. That is one good thing about racing CX1/2, your race is not until after noon.

In the morning, I felt pretty good and decided to actually warm-up using the trainer and wheel we had lugged along for that purpose. During Andrea’s race, I spun for about 30 minutes on the trainer and my legs started to come around. The course was exactly the same in terms of layout and barriers, which meant that it would be a hard 60 minutes. What wasn’t the same, by the time we raced, is that the laps were lot faster as some of the spongy sections had dried out. I had a good start, leading the group into the first mud section…

On the first little hill after the mud, I was overgeared, stalled out and had to dismount and run…that put me in 5th (a.k.a. last) chasing since I had a little trouble getting re-clipped in on the uneven / off camber ground… We entered the long climb more or less all together. It would be a bit further into the 1st lap before I moved up to 4th coming through the finishing stretch (mud section).

By then, Troy had a good lead, Travis was chasing, and Jeremy C. was just in front of me. I passed him on the way to the woods on the 2nd lap–Travis on his S/S was quite a bit ahead. That gap was rapidly disappearing as he had to run up all the hills where I could ride up them in the 39×21-23. I passed him on the hill on the 3rd lap(?) and tried to hold him off as we maneuvered through the tight turns and down the descent to the muddy 180 to the 2nd barrier. Through the long mud stretch, I gained some time and continued to build on it as we hit the long hills.

So at this point I was 2nd. Troy was 1 minute or 2 ahead of me and the gap stayed until the end. A much better day indeed. Yesterday I was hating the course, but I think the pants were the biggest problem. Today went much better. I think I will have to rethink the custome for next year (something that uses shorts at the minimum!)

Two more weekends in my five weekends of Cyclocross. McEwen CX Festival is next, followed by Outdoors Inc CX race.

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Here is the course laid out in Google Earth as recorded by my Garmin. Start / finish on the lower right side of the loop, course ran clock-wise.

Hard, hard race… soggy ground and mud which was okay. Two big hills… not so fun. I decided to dress up as Shaggy for the race… a period wig, some brown pants, and a green shirt from Goodwill.

We had 9 at the start of the CX1/2 race. I didn’t get a great start, but soon was up in 4th place where I stayed for the first 3 of the long laps. Matt ended up passing me as a I took a bike change (unassisted in a fast part of the course, so not so good). The new bike was clean, but that probably changed about 100 yards later. I mostly wanted that 36 tooth little ring (39 tooth on my “A” bike). I passed him back, but soon made a few mistakes and then got hung up on saddle a few times (damn pants!). He built a pretty good gap on me and earned another lap (they stopped me at 5 laps). 5th place. My pants probably had a pound or two of mud on them. Not the best thing to race cross in… but it was worth it… Tomorrow is another race, might double up depending on conditions (I will not if there is a bunch of climbing).