#493: CX Masters Worlds, day 1-2
After spending the beginning of the week in St. Louis for a work training class, I drove east to Louisville on Wednesday night and Thursday morning (over-nighted near Evansville, Indiana). I arrived at the venue around 10:30 am and scoped out the place and later prepared to pre-ride the course. Unlike the last time I was at this venue (October 2010), the course was muddy pretty much along its entire length. By the time, I got out ont the course mid-day, some of the off camber stuff was nearly (effectively) unrideable. The rest of it was a mud slog power course. So I rode around for 2 laps which ended up taking about 30 minutes at the pace I was going. Then came the power wash. The cleanup continued back at the hotel after checking in and I probably put about 2 pounds of mud/sand down the drain cleaning off my kit. By the time I left, it had started snowing, but was staying a bit above freezing and it was not icy anywhere.
Andrea arrived that afternoon after fighting her way up I-65 in near white-out conditions. The only thing that was visible at times was the still bare pavement. Anyway, we went down to pick up our numbers and used the rest of our parking meter time to have some Mediterranean food at a restaurant near the host hotel. The temperature continued to drop into the 20′s and in the high teens overnight…. pretty much exactly how it went @ 2007 CX nationals at Kansas City (KS). The result was the same. Icy ruts.
My heat race was the second of the day with a bit of open course before the first race. So I used this time to get from abject terror riding to some way of getting around this course in one piece (and hopefully faster than a few). My start draw (done at registration) was #79. Which meant dead last in my heat of 29. Great.
The start stretch was a straight piece of road with a left hander at the end down a hill where the fun began. I am not sure why I started in small ring, but I did and wasn’t able to improve my position much/at all on that section. Once we hit the ruts, I passed a handful and then suddenly it felt like I was alone. The gaps between the riders were pretty significant as riders white-knuckled and crashed around the course. I took out at least 3 step in stakes. The first one I slowed, which was a mistake. After that I just kept trucking along breaking the stake in 3-4 pieces as parts of it were chopped up by the bike. (What is the difference between a stake that is broke in half and 3-4 pieces… probably easier to stuff in a trash bag in smaller pieces). Generally, I felt like I was getting better riding in those conditions but there wasn’t much time for that, 2 laps and done. 17th out of 21 that toed the line. Yikes. Not good at all.
Probably the biggest issue that slowed me up is not really having a good feel for how fast I could go. Every time I pushed it (either during pre-ride and during the short race), I would end up flying through the course tape or crashing. During the pre-ride, one was a bad one that sent me to the ground on my left knee and my left hip (crash was when I playing around with keeping weight off the front tire, probably over did it. This is probably the right technique and just hoping for the best). EXACTLY the same places that I tore up last Saturday. They were mostly healed, but now they are reopened. Nice.
My race tomorrow is at 3pm. The forecast is for above freezing temperatures. The exact timing of how that “warm” front comes in could mean more of the same (or worse, if it is just wet ice!) or back to Thursday’s conditions. Probably a bit of both or no change if the 25F temperatures hold through the day. The weather forecast has missed the mark today with actual temperatures about 5 degrees colder than expected so far.
During Thursday’s pre-ride, I must have injected mud into my bottom bracket. Andrea, always the good wife and a great mechanic, was checking over my A-bike when she noticed that the BB was frozen. She commandeered a BB tool and swapped it out for hers so I could race my carbon bike/carbon wheels. That bike was running Challenge Fango’s 33 at 23/25 psig. I had the same pressure in my B-bike with Challenge Grifo’s 32 when I crashed hard. I am not sure that made a difference, but maybe it did. Andrea swapped back the BB’s after rehabbing mine. It probably was just literally frozen with water + 20F temperatures.




































