Because It Sucks the Most...

A few weeks ago as I was coming off the course at the end of the Downeast Cyclocross race, covered in mud, cold, wet, and wheezing, I was riding past my friend, and fellow ECV'er, John Adamik. John was smiling at me and asked me "Did ya have fun?". I looked at him and thought the question over for a second before answering.. "No. No I didn't have any fun at all.". I wasn't lying. It sucked so bad from start to finish that I started wondering why would I possibly do something like this to myself on a weekly basis for 3 months from September to December. There's nothing fun about cranking your heart rate up to it's absolute max, forcing your muscles to work as hard as they possibly can until the lactic acid is practically seeping from your pores, and maintaining that level of pain for 45-60 minutes. It's about suffering as much as you possibly can for about 45 minutes. If that's your idea of "fun" then you have issues. But if you think it sucks, that's OK. It's supposed to. I've competed in different sports my whole life, football, hockey, soccer, baseball. I've raced road races, criteriums, circuits, hillclimbs, and cross.. I like cyclocross the most, quite simply because it sucks the most. It's fun to watch the races. It's agony to compete in them. But that's why we do it. If it was easy we wouldn't do it. The more it sucks, the more deeply gratifying it is when you're done. The more pain you were in during the race, the greater the sense of accomplishment when, at the end, you're collapsed over your bars with your chest heaving like you're being hit with a defibrillator. Fun is hiking the Whites on a Summer day when there's not a cloud in the sky, or playing touch football in the mud on Thanksgiving morning with your friends and family. Cyclocross is, as the title of Brian Vernor and Willie Bullion's cyclocross documentary implies, "Pure Sweet Hell".

See how happy I am now that it's over?

For what it's worth, this is exactly the same reason the people come to Dynamic Strength and Conditioning. Because the workouts are hard. They force people to challenge themselves. There's suffering involved to be sure. There's nothing fun about doing 100 burpees or doing a kettlebell bear crawl across the gym 3 or 4 times. In fact, it sucks a lot. But that's why we do it. If we wanted useless, easy workouts that out of shape, mentally weak people do we'd head down to the local chrome and fern palace, pop in the iPod, and bust out 30 minutes on the treadmill or elliptical. Maybe throw in a few sets of biceps curls and lat pulldowns while we're at it. 

So last Thursday when I was looking at the weather forecast for Saturday that called for a ton of rain in the Plymouth MA area where the weekend's races were, I said to myself, "Wow is that going to suck... I have to be there.". So when my daughter's soccer game got cancelled due to the monsoon I loaded up the truck and headed South. As I was driving down I was excited about what a great power wash my bike was going to get on the roof of the truck on the way home. I was figuring the race conditions would be miserable. They were difficult conditions, but a little short of miserable. There were long spongy momentum killing grass sections and some thick mud in the woods, but it could have been a whole lot worse than it was. And the best thing about this day was that I finally had a set of tires that were going to help me in the mud. I put a set of Michelin Mud tires on my spare set of wheels which are supposed to be real good in the mud. How can they not be with a name like "Mud"? I've been riding on Tufo Flexus which suck in the mud. Actually, they suck in anything that's not dry. But if I had done my homework I would have known this because the Latin to English translation of "Flexus" is.... "sucks in anything that's not dry".... Oh well, lesson learned. Next year I need a good set of tubular mud tires, like the Dugast Rhino.. Ever seen a Rhino in the mud on the Discovery channel? Awesome! Those tires have to be great mudders. But for now I'm on the Michelins. Problem is they're clinchers which are susceptible to pinch flats at low pressure.. As evidenced during my ride over to the pit area to deposit the Tufos which were going to be relegated to pit duty for the day. I rode my bike up and over a curb and then as I was going up a slight incline the rear of the bike started careening around like it was on grease. I looked down and the rear tire was flat.. Are you shitting me? OK, at least it happened now and not during the race. I put the Tufo Slippo (as my buddy Geoff calls them) back on the rear and headed out for a quick warmup lap. I realized pretty quick how nice it would have been to have two mud tires on as my front tire had really good traction and my rear tire had none. I guess I never believed how huge a difference a tire would make in these conditions.

Because I had taken a warmup lap right before my race I ended up at staging last.. Not a huge deal since there was only 15 guys that showed up to brave the elements today. But you know that they were going to be 15 strong guys because who else is going to come out in these conditions. Curtis Boivin, Mike Rowell, Sammy Morse were there.. All top guys.. Matt Theodore was there, the same guy who ended up mistakenly getting my Verge points from the Downeast race a couple weeks ago because my number was covered in mud. Matt's been finishing a minute or so ahead of me in the Verge races, I was thinking I would do my best to stay with him as Boivin, Morse, and Rowell are still much stronger than I am. I got in behind Curtis at staging because I knew he'd be right at the front from the beginning. The whistle blew and I had a great start. Up the incline, past the finish line, and onto the field. By the time we hit the woods I was probably in 6th position, maybe 7th. I passed a couple and ended up in a group led by Boivin. Not for long though. Curtis pulled away with Sammy and Mike glued to his wheel. They put a small gap into Theodore who also started putting a small gap into me as we hit the woods. Theodore went down on a muddy corner and I caught and passed him putting me in 4th. From there it was me and Matt as we stayed together for the next 5 laps. Curtis, Sam, and Mike were gone. Matt and I were going to fight it out for 4th place. We increased the gap on the guy behind us to about 30 or 40 seconds by the end of the 2nd lap and it pretty much stayed that way to the end. Theodore was killing me on the barriers. Gaining ground on me every time through. We were equal on the power sections but I was making up time through the woods in the technical sections. There was a hill before the finish line that I should have been able to ride if I had any traction in my rear tire, but with the Flexus on there the rear wheel would slide out as soon as I started going up so I was relegated to running the hill every time through. Theodore had some mud tires on and was able to ride the hill every time. I was running it just as fast as he was riding it, but he had all the momentum going over the top while I was remounting. He would open up a 30 yd gap on me every time over the hill. I would pull him back in and then he would gap me again on the barriers and I would work my ass off to pull him back in again. I was dangerously close to blowing up from the efforts of repeatedly pulling him back. On the second to last lap he opened up about a 50 yd gap on me and must have thought it was over. I buried myself to reel him back in and as we came out of the woods onto a long paved stretch I pulled myself right back up onto his wheel. He looked over his shoulder, saw me and yelled "Fuck!" knowing there was one more lap of pure hell in his future trying to hold me off. We went up the hill one more time, he opened up a lead on me one more time, and we went through the finish line for the bell lap... I pulled him back in and as we came out of a wooded section I passed him.. Not for long though. We hit the barriers and he effortlessly cleared them passing me on the remount and leading me back into the final wooded section. At this point we knew we were coming into the final hill together and we both knew he was going to try to ride it and I was going to run it. If he could ride it without screwing up then he would take 4th. But if not then I'd take him. I thought about trying to ride it, and in retrospect, with a 30-40 second gap on the guy behind us I really would have had nothing to lose because even if I slipped up again on the hill I still would have had plenty of time to recover and get 5th. But I was too cooked to think at that point and just went with what was working for me. We hit the hill together and he cleaned it and went on to take 4th. I got a 5th place, just a couple seconds behind a guy who has been beating me by close to a minute for the past few weeks. I was also about a minute closer to guys like Boivin and Rowell who only finished 2mins and 1min ahead of me, respectively. It was a day of pure sweet hell, but deeply gratifying.

This week I'm off to Lowell for a nice local race. I'm very excited because one of our very own from Dynamic Strength and Conditioning, Roni, will be competing in her first ever Cyclocross Race. She's going to suffer, she's going to kick ass, and she's going to love it!

Best,

kevin