Strength, Speed, and Experience

This past weekend the Verge series moved to New Gloucester, ME for a good old-fashioned downeast bogtrot. I wasn't able to make Saturday's festivities, but by all accounts it was top 10 on everybody's list of most miserable events they've ever taken part in.. Temperatures barely tipping 40, torrential downpours, and a field full of mud. So cold and wet, that even with the incredible effort that a person puts in for the 45+ minutes of a race, the competitors were still suffering from hypothermia and pulling out of the race midway through.. So as I headed out the door Sunday morning looking at a 2+ hr ride to New Gloucester I was happy that the sun was shining and figuring that the course would be dried up some and at least it would be warmer. On the contrary, temps in the low 30's and another 2 inches of overnight rain made sure the course was not only not dried up at all, but many racers who had done both days said it was even in worse condition on day 2 than it was on day 1.. Well like I said, at least it was warm. It was actually a gorgeous day, sun shining, 60 degrees. Incredibly picturesque race venue at Pineland Farm complete with Holstein Cows at the staging area. 

I got the bike out for a warmup lap on the course. Holy shit, was this going to be tough. As I found out in Gloucester, I'm not very good in mud. I was all over the place, without actually going anywhere. It was crazy. The mud at it's shallowest was over the rims of the wheels and at it's deepest (in seemingly bottomless puddles) was over the cranks. There were uphills with no traction and downhills with no control over the steering. Brakes were merely for decorational purposes made even more ornate by the softball size clumps of mud and grass

that they collected. By the time I finished my warmup lap, which was a painfully slow slog around the course, my bike was covered in mud, my drive train was trashed, and I was thinking about what a great fucking day it would be to be a photographer... I caught up with my buddies Jack and Aaron. Jack was racing in the same field with me this time which was really going to screw up the spectators who can never figure out which of us is which even when we're racing in different fields. Jack took a look at my bike and asked me if I raced already. When I told him that was from the warmup lap he got a look on his face like he smelled something bad (maybe it was the Holsteins... we were standing downwind after all).. So we decided two things, we didn't have our cameras so we couldn't be photographers and we drove too far to turn back now. And honestly, the only way to get better racing in the mud is to race in the mud.. Nobody practices in this shit unless they regularly ride their cross bikes around pigpens with barriers in it, plus it destroys your bike. So the only way to get better in mud is to race in it. So we warmed up on the roads a bit and headed over to staging. Difficult to hear the instructions from our staging position at the back of the bus over the mooing of the cows in the barn next to us. Cows apparently dig muddy guys in spandex.

 

Off we go. I have a decent start and I'm right in the thick of it. Right behind John Meerse of OA who I decided I was going to try to mark today since I know he's typically about a minute faster than me. As we come around a corner, a mud patty (or maybe a cow patty) the size of a silver dollar pancake gets flung off Meerse's tire right into my left eye. The mud covered my entire eye socket like a pirate's eye patch. We're still in the first minute of the race so it's balls to the wall all-out battling for position. We haven't even hit the woods yet. I'm frantically trying to blink the mud out of my eye since I can't take my hands off the bars because I'm going as hard as I can trying to hang on to Meerse's wheel. Did I mention it's the first minute of the race? This is bad.. Left eye rendered useless, my other eye starts to water and I'm temporarily blind. I sit up and start wiping the mud from my eyes so I can see again but now the field has a little gap on me. I sprint as hard as I can to catch and I get back on by the time we hit the downhill in the woods. I have absolutely zero control of my bike as it takes me in whichever line it wants to the bottom of the hill.. Man, is this going to be a long day. The guys who are really strong and really know how to ride mud leave the rest of us behind. I'm slogging through the mud with the back of the field. We must look like a group of 97 year old guys with walkers trying to maneuver our way across a sandy beach. Fucking comical. As I mentioned earlier, it was a great day to be a photographer and this race had, hands down, the most photographers stationed around the course that I've ever seen. I wonder if any of them caught my first crash, coming around a 90 degree corner where my wheels slipped out from under me like I was on grease.. Or maybe they caught my second crash coming down a hill where the bike led me into a gulley off the side of the track where I hit a stump and wiped out.. Or maybe they caught me in the 2ft deep puddle where I was moving along and hit some underwater farm creature that just halted me to a dead stop as I fell over sideways in the mud.. Or maybe they caught the crash where I was coming out of the barn (yes, the course actually went through a barn). I was coming out the other side of the barn where the course turns 90 degrees immediately upon coming out of the barn. The floor was concrete and covered with wet mud, I started my turn a little early and went down like I had been shot.. If you had been standing outside the barn you would have seen a couple bikers ahead of me come flying out of the barn and then you would have seen me sliding out of the barn head first on the ground with my bike still attached to my shoes.. Graceful! I was a streaming outburst of expletives as I struggled through the laps and my frustration mounted. For the first 3 laps I was going at it with Gary Aspnes of Horst and Paul Cox of CCB.. I would alternately pass them, crash or get bogged down by a momentum-killing line selection, get passed by them, bust my ass to catch up and then pass them again.. It was like Groundhog Day. I finally passed them for the final time on the last lap and then outsprinted one more racer who wasn't really expecting to have to sprint for a position having already been lapped by the #1 and #2 riders of the day. I did get lapped by Roger Aspholm and Kevin Hines with about a minute to go before I crossed the finish line, but really there's no shame in getting lapped by the likes of those two on a day like that. Roger is a cycling cyborg, I'm positive his bionic circuitry was starting to short out in the mud, I know I saw sparks shooting out of his knee as he passed me.. Hines is one of those freaks of nature like Ned Overend. Older than anybody else in the field and kicking everybody's ass. And for all my misery and the comedy of errors that have become the standard for me racing in the mud, I ended up finishing 23rd out of 40 starters.. Which, get this, put me in the points! hahahaha.. My first Verge points ever...

After the race I met up again with Aaron who didn't have his best day but still finished top 20, all things considered a really good finish. I told him how Roger and Kevin went by me on the last lap like they were riding a different race course than the one I was on. I asked Aaron a rhetorical question "how the hell do they do it?".. His answer "Two things... they're strong, fast and experienced".. I didn't point out that that was three things. Aaron was fatigued from the double race weekend and his bout with hypothermia on Saturday.... Strength, speed, and experience, eh?.... I have a lot of work ahead of me in all three categories. On the bright side I have a whole lot of time, determination, focus, and drive. There is no doubt in my mind I'll get where I want to be.

Up next Hampton Falls on Sunday.. 

Until then........