In the 50's With a Strong Chance of Pain...

This weekend was rounds 9 and 10 of the Verge series at Look Park in Northampton, MA. Coming off a 4th place finish in a small local race the week before, I was now back in a field of 85 racers with every top guy within 400 miles ready to go at it. Absolutely perfect weather for cross. 

Day 1: Having learned a lesson from last week, I embrocated without torching my nuts. Got to Look Park early and had a really good warmup. I was feeling like I might be able to hang with a couple of guys that have been finishing a minute or two ahead of me today. In particular, I was targeting Brant Hornberger from the Bikereg team and John Meerse from the OA team. Two really strong guys who have been racing for years. Biggest problem with marking guys like that is they get a callup at the beginning of the race and get to stage in the first few rows based on points they've won in previous races. I take that back, the biggest problem with marking guys like that is that they're stronger and better than me.. The second biggest problem is that they also get a head start via the callup. Verge series points are awarded each race to the top 25. In a bit of bad luck a couple weeks ago in the pigpen at Downeast cross in Maine, I came across the finish line with part of my number obscured by mud. So my 23rd place finish that should have netted me 3 points (my first of the season) got credited to Matt Theodore's number who, as it turns out, didn't even race that day. My efforts to get the points credited to me have been futile since I didn't hang around after the mudfest waiting to see the results and therefore missed the protest period. The  reason this is such a bummer is because those 3 points would have been enough to get me a call-up in staging which means I would have been able to start in the 4th row, rather than the 7th row that I ended up in. Start position is huge at Northampton because of the layout of the course, actually start position is always huge.. Oh well. Enough whining. On to the race......

Jonny, Kevin, Kurt and Roger battling it out at the front.

As the 4 or 5 of you that have been reading my blog know, my starts have been awful this year. It seems that I become a spastic at the start and never seem to be able to get my foot clipped in cleanly on the sprint start. By the time I get clipped in I'm always bringing up the rear of the field and then have to work even harder chasing for 45 minutes trying to gain position.. But today was going to be different. I've been working really hard on my starting technique.. Well, not actually on the bike because I really didn't have time this week. But I've been thinking really hard about it and I'm pretty sure I had dreams on three consecutive nights this week where I was doing pretty good on my starts. So the whistle blows and guess what... I bollixed my start. So much for hoping I'd get better without actually spending time on it. Who knew? So with about 75 out of the 81 starters in front of me I set about trying to gain position. Marking Brant and John was out the window as they undoubtedly had more than a minute on me less than 5 minutes into the race with the gap increasing as I fought to get by everybody in front of me. I was cranking along passing people wherever I could and if I had to guess, I'd say I got ahead of about 25 or 30 of them. Time for the shit to hit the fan. The course had two really steep uphill sections in it.. One was a pure run-up that couldn't be ridden. The other one could be ridden if you had the right line, enough momentum, and enough power.. The runup was pretty nasty. Super steep and all chopped up with rocks and roots. On one lap I was going up the run-up (I say "going up" because "running up" would be giving myself too much credit) with my bike shouldered and Richard Fries, one of the top race announcers you'll ever have at a race, was stationed on the run-up doing his commentary. I went by him so slow that we could have had a chat about where we'd be spending the holidays. Huge momentum killer for me. The other steep section I was able to ride except for a couple times when one of the other racers got in my way (coincidentally it was the same guy both times). The first time, I had enough power to get to the top of the hill but apparently the guy in front of me didn't. At the very top he came to a standstill. He got a little frustrated as I tried to maneuver my way around him and he threw a shoulder/elbow into me that sent me into a stake. Didn't see that coming.. I t-boned the stake and endo'd straight over the handlebars with my bike doing a dramatic wheel over wheel flip. There were a few drunk guys partying there that really enjoyed the crash and my creative cursing. I picked the bike up, and headed off to catch the prick who just crashed me out as the brew crew who just witnessed it screamed "Go pass him!".. Uhh, no shit. 

Random overdressed guy leaning against a tree. It's possible

they may have been filming the next Tarantino movie.

I had lost a bunch of time and some turf was caught in my gears from the crash so my chain was skipping all over the place. It took the better part of a lap for the stuff to work it's way out and for me to get my shifting back again.. I spent a couple laps alone trying to work my way back up in the field. Twice I came past a point in the course where some guy would say "C'mon Alan! Go!" This made me go faster because I figured some guy named Alan was on my wheel. The second time around when he said it again I tried to speed up again to drop Alan and then I looked over my shoulder to see who this Alan jerk is that's been sucking my wheel for two laps and noticed I was alone. Apparently I was Alan.. Once again I came to that same hill that I crashed on earlier and as it turned out I was in a position to pass the same guy. I came up the hill right behind him and again he stalled out at the top. This time I had picked a different line to get around him, but he heard me coming (undoubtedly due to my asthmatic grunting) and swerved into me bringing me to a stop. I hopped off the bike, called him something that rhymes with pucking gashole and ran up over the top of the hill trying to catch him again. Shortly thereafter, I was coming into a fast section of the course where you go up and over a set of train tracks. I was hammering as hard as I could to catch racers ahead of me and I hit the tracks with a ton of speed which gave me some serious air. I came down hard with my hands on the brake hoods and the force dropped my handlebars by at least 2 inches. This sucked big time. Now I was way stretched out and leaning in a very awkward way over my bike which put my lower back in a ton of pain as I was chasing as hard as possible. 

Sand, much like mud, continues to kick my ass and cost me valuable time.

On the last lap I absolutely crushed myself catching and passing the guy who sent me into the stake. I also caught and passed a couple others and had two more right in front of me, but nothing left in the tank to sprint past them as I came across the finish line 46th for the day.. Considering the bad start, endo over the handlebars, bobbles on rideups and sandpits, plus the mechanical issues I guess it could have been worse, but I was very dissapointed nonetheless. 

On my way to my buddy Meiza's for the night in Springfield I popped in Exile on Main St by the Stones and the race became a distant memory. It occurred to me how much the music today pales in comparison to anything the Stones did in the early 70's. You might say, "wait a minute, that's just your musical taste.", but you'd be wrong. Liking blue better than green is a matter of taste. Don't confuse your inability to recognize genius with a perceived lack of taste on my part. Genius is genius, and what the Stones put out from 69-72, culminating with Exile on Main St., was absolute genius that nobody before or since has been able to touch. But I digress....

Best album ever! I refuse to argue this.

Day 2: What a gorgeous day. Another mishap free embrocation application and I was starting to feel like my luck was changing. Today would be the day I would nail my start. I had a good warmup on the course, which had changed quite a bit from Saturday and was going to be fast and, as always, fun. The steep ride-up from the day before was now a ride-down followed immediately by a jump over train tracks at about 25mph. There would be some serious air today. After my warmup I practiced about 50 starts. Just easy starts getting clipped in. I also tried a new position on the bike for the start. I was hitting it cleanly about 80% of the time. Today was going to be a killer start for me. I also had a very aggressive attitude after getting knocked around yesterday. If there was going to be any bumping, I was going to be ready for it. 

See me in the blue? Of course not, I'm 7 rows back!

The whistle sounded and I nailed my start. I passed at least 2 rows of racers and came into the first turn in the middle of the pack. Perfect! Couldn't have asked for a better start from the 7th row staging position I had. My marks of the day were going to be either of the Bikereg guys, Steve and Brant, or Dan Coady. All guys that always finish ahead of me by anywhere from about 45 seconds to 2:00 minutes.. And they were all in my sights. This was good. No, this was great! I was going to crush it today. I was riding beyond myself, my heart was exploding, my back and legs were screaming. I couldn't get nearly enough air into my lungs to support the effort. At one point I came down the steep hill, without slowing I hit the tracks and went soaring into the air, landed and flew into a wide sweeping 180.. Too fast. Both wheels went into a full slide as I tried to hold the bike upright completely expecting the tires to come rolling off the rim. But they held (thanks to my expert glue job) and I came out of the turn intact at full speed to the wild cheers of the massive crowd. I was at full gas bridging gaps from one group to the next, again and again until i was in a group with Coady. It seemed each of us took our turns attacking, repeatedly trying to shake one another. On the last lap I left it all on the course. Everybody was at their limit and I attacked, dropping the group I was in except for one rider. 

My final attack, dropping all but 1...

I was inside out and it was excruciating. I bridged up to a lone rider who had about 50 yards on us when I first attacked. The guy that I had brought with me was still on my wheel and he stayed on to the sprint finish where he slingshotted out of my draft in the last 50m to take 35th.. I ended the day in 36th place, a mere 39 seconds out of the points. A very solid and satisfying effort. My best result in a large and very strong Verge field. In similar races earlier in the year I've been in the 60's, 50's, more recently in the 40's, and now I've worked my way into the 30's. I finally feel like I'm competitive and I'm only going to get stronger. Just a few more weeks of this season, but the future is looking very bright for upcoming seasons now that I have my focus, am getting some much needed experience, and I'm gaining confidence every week.

Off to Plymouth....

Turning Up the Heat...

Last week at Orchard Park in Hampton Falls I ended up with a 4th place finish in a small field at a great local venue through an apple orchard.. The 4th place finish got me a call up onto a "deep" podium that included the top 5 finishers. I think they did this because the 5th place finisher was from Nor'east Cycling Club and they were the sponsor of the event. So they added two spots to the podium to recognize the Nor'east rider. Whatever, I took my spot on the hay wagon, raised my hands with the strong guys in the top 3, and walked away with the $30 in cash and two Hammer Energy gels for prizes. Two energy gels!! As Rick Flair would say, "Wooo!". 

I'm the short one...

The race was a very strong effort for me. After a very sucky start where I ended up behind the entire 35+ field as well as most of the 45+ and 55+ fields which started with us, I proceeded to pick people off one at a time and some in groups until I was all alone.. There were only three guys left ahead of me with too big a gap for me to even contemplate reeling any of them in..

Like a gazelle over the barriers

 Kurt Perham (my coach) who won by a very wide margin, followed by Mike Rowell and Aaron Millet.. All three of these guys are among the strongest Masters racers in New England. A couple quick notes from the day... One of the other racers in my field came up to me after the race to let me know that he was trying like hell to stay with me. In other words, he was marking me. 

I was also being marked by freaks, look closely in the background

This was interesting to me for two reasons. First, there's lots of better guys to be marking. Second, I thought I was the one that spends his time marking other people, now I was among the people being marked.. So I guess that's kind of cool.. The other interesting thing that happened to me was a mishap with the embrocation prior to the race. Embrocation is a muscle warming balm you rub on your legs prior to cross races.. A lot of guys do it, a lot don't. If you ask me, when you're out racing in short pants when the temps are in the 40's and below, anything you can do to keep the legs warm is a good idea. So I applied the embrocation earlier in the day prior to putting my kit on.. Then I thought to myself, "Shit, I should have put my kit on first because if any of this stuff ends up on my soft parts I'm screwed".. I carefully put my bike kit on, but apparently not carefully enough.. "Chestnuts roasting by an open fire" played in my head as I spent the next two hours writhing around with a case of fire ants having a field day in my crotch. It was awful. After 5 minutes I knew it was going to be trouble. As the heat grew and grew I kept saying to myself "well it can't get any worse than this...", as it continued to get worse and worse for about 30-45 minutes.. Luckily, by the time the race started the heat had been turned down to a simmer and was surprisingly cozy. All I can say is thankfully I was using Mad Alchemy's Medium Heat Embrocation and not the "Madness" that I will use when the temps are in the 20's.. Pretty sure if I make the same mistake with the "Madness" I may die (or wish I had)..

Off to Northampton for Week 5 of the Verge Series on Nov 7 and 8 where my only chance of getting on the podium is to jump up on it when nobody else is looking :) Gotta love the small local races, but to be fair, I am definitely improving and getting stronger pretty much every time out. It was nice to finally have a top 5 finish...

Best,

kevin

Now We Know

Believe it or not, it's been 1 year since Dynamic Strength and Conditioning has opened it's doors. Hundreds of people have made the climb to the top of 100 Factory.. Those who have stayed have gotten in better shape than they've ever been in. They've experienced increases in strength, endurance, energy, mobility and best of all, quality of life. Trust me, I'm not overstating the affect that Dynamic Strength and Conditioning has had on people's lives. We've become increasingly more active, have gotten healthier, and are enjoying our lives more than before we started coming. That's what sets us apart from every other gym around. We change lives. We've created a family of diverse people from all walks of life, put them in a room together for an hour at a time where they absolutely work their asses off, feed off each other's energy and support. We've created a bond. We know something that other's don't. We've found the secret.. I remember when I had a job that used to suck the life out of me on a daily basis. I didn't eat right. I drank too much. I didn't sleep right. My workouts at Planet Shitness sucked... I would be driving to work in a haze at 6:00 or 6:30 in the morning. It would be November and it would be dark and cold. I'd see a guy almost every day riding his bike. Flying down the road. Covered from head to toe braving the elements. I would ask myself "what does he know that i don't?".. Now I know. Everybody that comes to our gym knows. They come in at 6:00am. The gym is 52 degrees and people are shivering waiting for the warmup. We warm up and the layers start coming off. We loosen up our joints with some mobility exercises and get into the workout. We're swinging kettlebells, jumping rope, jumping on boxes, crawling around on the floor, throwing medicine balls around. We push ourselves to our limit, wanting to stop before the timer beeps at 40 seconds, but out of the corner of our eye we see the woman next to us still going strong and there's no fucking way we're stopping until the timer tells us to. We join the 90 Day Challenge because we're sick of our workouts that don't work and our diets that are just plain stupid. We want to be able to move like we did when we were kids. We don't want to be a bulked up mess of blown up pecs, biceps, and deltoids. We want real strength. We get in a room full of people who all want the same thing. We work ourselves harder than we ever have in a gym. We lose so much fat that our clothes start to fall off. We laugh at ourselves when we see how uncoordinated we've become after years of sitting behind a desk, lifting weights and walking on treadmills. We surprise ourselves as we move from doing jumps on a 6" box to a 12" box. We throw a tire on the top of the 24" box and make it a 36" and do reps for 40 seconds. People cheer. It's so cool it gives me chills to witness it sometimes.

Wednesday afternoon it was 40 degrees and raining like hell. I had a 2 hour ride with 30 minutes worth of intervals that needed to get done so I covered myself head to toe to brave the elements and headed out the door. At one point I was coming down a hill at a little under 40 MPH and it was absolutely pouring out. A dump truck passed me at about the same speed I was going so it took him a while to actually get by me. Know how much spray a dump truck throws off in torrential rain? You've seen it on the highway.. So he's passing me about 2 ft off my handlebars. And he was there f..o..r..e..v..e..r... It was like going through a car wash on a bike at 40 MPH for about 200 yards. I could see absolutely nothing, my bike is shaking all over the place, and the thought ran through my mind that this might be my last bike ride. Well, I made it to the bottom of the hill, the truck pulled away from me, and I was able to compose myself. Then another dump truck blasted by me for good measure, but at that point I was slowed down to about 20 and I just kind of laughed at it... As frightening as it was, it was also incredibly exhilirating.. I'm out on my bike on a day when virtually nobody else would even consider going for a bike ride. I'm in nasty conditions absolutely drilling myself with intervals and having near death experiences with dump trucks. But this is also why I'm now in better shape than about 99.99% of the people on the planet. I started thinking about years ago when I would see that bike rider on my way into work. When I would ask myself "what does he know that i don't?". I don't have to ask that anymore.....

Best,

kevin

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........

Is it Mental Toughness, or Just Plain Mental?

This past weekend's kick in the balls came courtesy of the Providence Cyclocross Festival, rounds 5 and 6 of the Verge Series. Saturday was an incredible Fall day and we were racing on another course laid out by Tom Stevens, who is a genius at course design. I wasn't completely sure that I would be able to race in Providence so I waited until pretty late in the game to register. Unfortunately for me, in the Verge series the staging order goes by top 25 in points then registration order. I know several people that are top 25 in points, some of them on a first name basis, but apparently that doesn't count. So they're staging everybody until finally there's me and one other guy standing there looking at each other when they call up "the rest".. It's going to be a long day.... As I've said before, the start of a cross race is one of the most  important parts of the race. Have a bad start, or end up staging near the end and you are spending a whole lot of time trying to chase a whole lot of people down. For me I guess it's not as significant as it is to others since I spend all my time chasing people down anyways.. And on the bright side, if you're in the back at the start there's nobody left to pass you, right? Last weekend on Day 2 in Gloucester I got an excellent start and was able to ride with a bunch of guys who are typically way stronger than me in the field and gave me a middle of the pack finish which was my best Verge series finish of the year. I celebrated my 42nd place finish out of 80 starters with a 4.4 lb lobster freshly caught off the Fort Stage Park shores.

The race begins and I have a lousy start, again not getting clipped in cleanly. Wtf! I really need to work on that. Once I'm clipped in I bury myself on the sprint, pass about 10 racers and enter the fields. Picking off people, one here, two there, I work my way up until I'm probably ahead of about 20-25 guys by the time we come around on the third lap with three to go. I'm dehydrating badly in the heat and my heart is redlined as usual.. Now a typical cyclocross course is mostly fields, dirt roads, and trails. Then there's some paved sections or gravel sections. 99% of all crashes occur on fairly forgiving grass or dirt sections since it's mostly on some off-camber grassy hill or a slippery chicane that's going to get you. But that's not for me, I prefer laying it down on the tough stuff.. I'm coming hot into a 90 degree corner off of a paved sidewalk onto a dirt section and both wheels just slide right out from under me. I went down hard on my hip and arm and slid to a stop into some fencing. People (maybe 2 of them) are yelling at me, "Get Up! Get Up! Get Up!" but there's a voice in my head saying "Why? I'm about 50 riders back, my hip is on fire, and the next group of riders ahead of me have about 30 seconds on me?" (which is now increasing by the second).. I drag myself off the ground, straighten out my shifter which got bent in the crash, throw my leg over the bike and carry on, much to the delight of the two people who now feel as if they personally willed me on to continue. I don't know, maybe they did. You know how in the movies when something like this happens they might show it in slow motion to add dramatic effect? Well, this was just like that except for two things. First, I was literally moving in slow motion, and second, it was really lacking in dramatic effect. Then something strange happened. My bike started shifting itself.. I thought, "Cool, maybe it will start pedaling itself too". I tried to shift, but I got nothing. The chain kept automatically working it's way down to the hardest gear. So I get to the bottom of a hill, get off the bike to see what's going on and realize my day is over. I lost my rear shifter cable and am stuck in the hardest gear, this is unrideable for the race course I'm on. All the people I worked my ass off to pass are now passing by me. This is very demoralizing. I noticed there was a team tent right off the course where I stopped and there were a couple racers there so I asked them if they had a 5mm wrench. One of them came over with one and we got the shifter cable back on, adjusted the shifting so it was rideable, and off I went.. This is grounds for disqualification but something tells me the officials aren't really paying attention to me at this point. OK, so what exactly am I riding for now? My 3 laps of effort wasted by a nasty crash and mechanical issue and I've just lost at least 4 minutes. What's left today for me? Maybe I can hit a tree or a skunk or something. This is where my unshakeable mental toughness comes in. At this point I figured that I would attempt to finish on the lead lap, only half-heartedly expecting to be able to do so. I've lost too much time, I'm riding alone, and I have half the race to go.. Whatever, I buried myself. I put everything into it and started re-catching riders that I had passed earlier, sprinting past them like they were standing still. 

Chasing so fast here that even the advancements in today's

digital photography can't keep up with me.

I was so dehydrated that I was spitting cotton balls that would just stick to my lips and cheeks. I came around the finish line with 2 laps to go and knew I just had to make one more lap to finish on the lead lap. I can hear the announcers screaming about the fight going on with the leaders.. I end up making it around again with a minute to spare before Bold and Aspholm come across the line 1, 2. I don't let up for the last lap though as I can see a group of riders with about 1 minute on me up ahead.. I catch them just before we get to the finish line and roll across with that group. For the day I ended up over 8:00 minutes off the winning time, 47th out of 71, which to me was astonishing considering the crash and bike issues I had. I still finished ahead of about a third of the field..

After the race I was riding over to the pits to pick up my spare wheels and I was badly in need of some water. There was a 30x20 big top tent setup so I rode into it looking for something to drink. There was a woman who seemed to be in charge of the tent so I rode over to her and asked her if they had any water to spare. I figured that since I had enough cotton on my cheeks to spin a t-shirt she could probably ascertain that I was pretty parched and had just raced so I also probably didn't have my wallet with me. She gave me one of those big phony smiles like you get from a bank manager and informed me that "Sorry, this is the VIP tent.".. I slowly looked around.... The tent was empty except for coolers full of water, beer, soda and two "VIP's" over in the corner of the tent wearing jeans and t-shirts drinking a couple beers. I then turned back to the woman and blazed a hole directly in the center of her forehead with my lazer vision before riding away on my bike.. This would never have happened in Gloucester at the race being run by my club, ECV :)

Day 2: Got up in the morning and my hip, which had a 4x4 patch of road pizza on it, was in quite a bit of pain. So was my shoulder and chest which felt like I must have stretched out some muscles and tendons in the crash. At least I didn't have to deal with fixing my bike in the morning, I spent an hour on that the night before. Thanks to SRAM for designing shifters that require bar tape removal to replace a fk'n shifter cable effectively turning a 5 minute job into a 30 minute job... Anyway, a good breakfast in me, a handful of ibuprofen, and it was back to Providence for day 2 of the festivities. Can't be worse than yesterday, right? I get to the grounds and I'm riding over to the course to get a practice ride in on the course and I notice a woman on her bike with a big hole in her bibs exposing her ass. This was a big hole, probably 3 inches in diameter right over the crack of her butt. Now typically, a hole in a national champion woman's bibs exposing her ass, might be cause for a little excitement by the predominantly male contingent at these races, right? But when it's the Over-65 Women's national champion, not so much. I took a couple warmup laps on the course and then spent some time working on my starts. I knew today I would be at the back of the bus again in staging and I wanted to make sure I at least nailed my start this time. 

When the race started I nailed my start.. I worked my way right up into the middle of the pack. Excellent! Things were going to go much better for me today, I could just feel it. About 1 minute into the first lap, the congested field came into a tight corner with a PVC crossing gate on it which I remembered from my warmup could cause some problems. Don't I get squeezed into the outside of the corner and T-bone the gate? My bike coming to an abrupt halt, I calmly removed the PVC from my handlebars and huck it 15 feet in the opposite direction while the rest of the field rudely race on without me. This effectively negated my great start. I composed myself and sprinted myself back into the mix. My heart was racing like a blender on ice crush for 45 minutes as I turned myself inside out to hang with a group of riders that are usually a minute or two ahead of me in the standings.. At the end of the day I finished 4:57 off the winning time, 41st out of 75 starters, and about 2:00 minutes ahead of guys that I was about even with at the beginning of the season. It was one of my best rides and I'm now able to hang with the middle third of these really strong fields when I'm having a good day. Things are looking up.

It's always imperative to finish in front of the guy in pink

After the race we headed over to Bristol to pick up Michele's son at college and took him to lunch at an oceanside restaurant that was right next to a big top tent where they were holding a wedding reception for an extended family of beached whales who were undoubtedly going to return to sea at the end of the festivities. It was all I could do not to put a stack of my business cards on the tray of bacon wrapped twinkies they had for hors d'hoerves. As they stood around outside sipping champagne, smoking their cigarettes I could hear their arteries slamming shut over the crashing of the ocean waves in the distance. I then listened to my own body, which was buzzing from two days of maximum efforts. It's amazing the peaceful feeling I get after putting absolutely everything I have into these races, regardless of where I place out overall. Crashes, bike problems, mud bogs, inexperience, whatever else may get in the way never really matters. I always leave knowing I did my best and I didn't give up, even when there are times when it doesn't appear to make any sense to continue. Every time I come out I get tested at the highest level. I put myself in incredible pain, I have things happen to me that would make it easy for me to quit, I fight like it's a matter of life and death for 42nd place. Some might call it mental, I call it mental toughness.

He Can't Mean Exercise is Going to Make Me Fat...

There was an article in Time magazine over the Summer titled "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin". I just recently stumbled upon it and, while my initial reaction was to immediately condemn it, I've decided to look at it with more of an open mind and see if what the author is saying has any merit. The author gives us 4 pages of drivel with lots of references to studies funded by various organizations with agendas as well as a person who is the "chair of health wisdom" at a prominent college, in addition to references to his own workout routine that doesn't produce results. Shocking that he is still admittedly overweight considering the "cardio" day he spends with the elliptical machine and stair climber, I know. His point is this, people that exercise at a level more strenuous than simply walking, will eat more to compensate for the strenuous activity and will spend more of the rest of their time not moving at all. This will counteract their weight loss goals with most people either not losing weight, or even gaining weight.

Remember now, this is me keeping an open mind.. The author is right about one thing, and we see it all the time. You walk into Starbucks and you see the overweight group of people in their workout clothes having obviously just come in from a walk or jog, munching on muffins and scones, drinking those big foamy lattes. Go hike an easily accessible mountain peak (easily accessible means anybody can get up to the top) and watch the mountain buffalo unload their backpacks with packages of cookies and chips, washing it down with 20oz bottles of Gatorade. These are people who are burning maybe a few hundred calories, think they're burning about 100x more than that because they're actually doing something active, and compensate by eating crap because they "deserve it". They take in way more calories than they're burning with the result of either no weight loss or even weight gain.

The author of the piece points out the obvious that strenuous exercise makes you hungry, blames people's self-control (which he compares to a muscle that gets weaker every time you use it) when they eat too much effectively over-compensating for the bout of exercise, and comes to the conclusion that little to no exercise more strenuous than walking or gardening along with not eating extra crap will get you the weight loss you desire. Genius! I would also like to throw out there that if your body's metabolism requires 2000 calories a day to maintain the weight you're at today with your sedentary lifestyle and that you eat nothing but 1500 calories worth of Twinkies every day, you will lose 1lb of fat per week until you die of diabetes, cancer, or heart disease. Whichever one wins the race. Hmmm, maybe I'll write an article for Time regarding the weight loss benefits of the Twinkie diet.

The problem with articles like these is that it gives people yet another excuse not to work out. This article was brought to my attention the other day in a conversation by somebody who said "I haven't been in the gym since I read the Time article that said strenuous exercise is bad for you and makes you gain weight.". Sounds retarded, I know. But for most people, if there's an "out" to having to go work out they're going to latch on to it.

The biggest part of the problem is related to lifestyle. If you want to keep the same type of lifestyle that got you fat, and think that 3 or 4 workouts a week is all that's needed to fix it, you're wrong. It gets even worse when people think the 3 or 4 workouts a week are going to allow them to increase the poor choices they've been making.

Strenuous exercise makes the body strong. It makes the mind strong, it increases your energy levels, it defends the body from heart disease and cancer, it increases your metabolism. It makes everything in your life better. Alternatively, lack of strenuous exercise makes you weak. Why would you want to be weak? But strenuous exercise is only a part of it. The nutrition part is huge and so is the lifestyle. If you have a healthy, active lifestyle, make the right nutrition choices, and exercise hard then it is an absolute guarantee that you will not be fat and weak.

People who write crap like this piece in Time are pandering to the population's never ending search for the easy way out. It sells magazines. Nobody wants to hear that they have to actually work hard to get in shape and stay in shape. Nobody wants to hear they can't eat ice cream, cookies, cake and drink as much wine and beer as they want. So they eat these articles up, they latch onto the bogus message that, "if I just don't exercise too much I'll stop gaining so much friggin weight.". People need to stop looking in magazines to reinforce their lack of self control, willpower, and commitment to an active and healthy lifestyle. If you want to be strong and healthy it takes hard work and self control. Anybody that tells you different is full of shit. There are no shortcuts.

Best,

kevin

Stuck In the Mud

This weekend brought the Verge series of Cyclocross out to Gloucester Ma for the Great Brewers Gran Prix of Gloucester. This is one of the most popular cyclocross races in the country, having been on the National Gran Prix circuit a couple times. It always attracts the top talent in the country and this year was no different. International superstar Jonathan Page was here, Jamey Driscoll, Tim Johnson, Jeremy Powers. Big time racers. In the masters field the top guys are all here, Aspholm, Bold, McCormack decided to join the masters. Guys who would legitimately battle for top 10 positions in the pro field. The race is put on by my team, Essex County Velo, so I was out Friday to help set up the course which was designed this year by Tom Stevens. It was a technical course that was about to absorb 2 inches of driven rain over the course of Saturday's races.

On a day like I had today I don't really even know where to begin. So let's just start with the forecast. Rain, lots of it, and wind, lots of that too. The course is right on the ocean and was getting crushed by 30-40mph winds off the surf. It was a nasty day for racing, but this is part of what makes cyclocross so damn cool. We're out playing in conditions that drive most people to the comfort of the fireplace with a latte and some cookies. I've told you before how badly the masters field crushes me and how hard I'm working towards becoming competitive with them. Today I actually was saying to myself that this weather was going to help me compete. Why? Good question. I figured the weather would kind of even out the playing field, slow everybody down, which would affect the really strong guys more than it would me, because honestly, how much worse could I do? Ummm, let's go to the videotape and see....

Off-camber mud in Gloucester

Let's just start at the staging area. At this point I've been out in the rain for about an hour alternately warming up and freezing my nuts off. I was OK during warmups, but when I stopped I would be instantly frozen from the wind driven rain while wearing nothing but a skinsuit and a light rain coat. So I would try to keep riding my bike to stay warm, but eventually you just have to stop and get to the staging area. I was in the staging area shaking like a chipmunk that just drank a 6 pack of Red Bull. I decided that maybe walking around at 5 or 6% bodyfat isn't such a good idea sometimes.. Like now. The race official starts the countdown... 30 seconds. Everything is quiet, tense.. Except for the incessant chattering of my teeth. 3...2.....1.. The field explodes off the line, all 82 of us.. Well, 81 of us.. I don't know what the hell happened but I missed with my left foot trying to clip into the pedal on the sprint and it took me about 3 times to get in while trying to pedal my way back into the group... "Go on without me boys! I'll be right there!" haha... Shit! I wasn't quite in last place heading into the narrow section of the course, but I was pretty damn close. Now here's the part where the mud was going to slow everybody else down more than me.. Great! One thing I forgot was that I've never actually raced in the mud like this before so I really had zero experience with it. Holy crap, I was screwed. I was all over the place, all over my bike, all over the course. I came around a corner, hit a root, came unclipped on the right side, came down awkwardly on the top tube of the bike almost turning myself into a girl (luckily my new skinsuit was holding everything in high and tight), caught myself before going down in a heap, and made my way like nothing ever happened. Good save. Ok, so maybe the conditions are going to slow me down more than I thought... We got through the first section of field, down a long straight away and into a 45 degree wall of ankle deep mud about 60 feet long that we had to run up carrying the bike. Being the first lap, it was a traffic jam and there was about 40 people on the mud wall at the same time so the run-up was actually a walk/slip/slide up. I got to the top, remounted my bike, slid around a little, took a 180 turn and tried to catch the people in front of me. I looked over my shoulder to see how many people were still coming over the top of the run up and there weren't any. Huh, I already had a gap on some of the field. Nice! Then I looked again, but still nobody. Before I turned into the next section of the course I took one more look and still nobody. I realized I hadn't actually gapped anybody. I was DFL (dead f'n last).. I'd rather have a DNF than a DFL. I looked directly ahead of me and there was a fatass ahead of me. There's one heavy guy in my field and I'm behind him. A thought flitted through my head that maybe I should ride my bike off the seawall and into the ocean next time around and just end it. Ok, so this was the worst start of my life.. On the bright side, there wasn't anybody that was going to pass me. Time to get to work. I passed fatass and three other riders. I came into the next area where we had to dismount and run over barriers and up a hill and I overtook a few more. I was working like crazy trying to manage my bike through all the mud. It was like riding in quicksand. I tasted salt from the ocean being blown across the course by the 40 mph gusts. It was brutal conditions. But I kept my head in it and I kept picking off riders one by one trying to make sure of two things, I finish on the lead lap, and I finish ahead of one particular rider who I'm not going to call out by name here, but let's just say he's a jackass of the highest proportion, has an unlimited amount of excuses why he and his $10,000 bike don't do better at these races, and just walks around at these races like the self-absorbed, pretentious tool that he is. I passed him on the second lap. Riding around the course you get a lot of encouragement from the crowd, especially since this particular race was run by ECV and I was wearing ECV colors.. I hear people yelling, "Go on Kev!", "C'mon ECV", "Go get 'em, Jack!".. Jack is a friend of mine that also rides for ECV and I get mistaken for him regularly. He's about the same height, rides a green bike, and wears the ECV kit. We don't generally ride in the same field but that doesn't deter people from calling me Jack. I have to remember to ask if he ever gets called Kevin. Typically I hear people calling for Jack when I'm about 30 yards from them on the approach and then they realize they have the wrong person as I get closer.. Then they yell "C'mon Ja... Oh.. Let's go ECV!".. Yesterday I was coming into a group of people and this one woman was calling me Jack as I approached... as I was right next to her... and as I made my way by. I was either too caked with mud for her to make a positive ID that I wasn't Jack, or she had spent too much time at the beer tent. Then there's the possibility that, "Lady, you don't know Jack.". On the second to last lap I was coming into the ankle-deep run-up side by side with another racer and there's this woman screaming at the top of her lungs for me to "Gap him! Gap him! GAAAAPPP HIIIIMMMMM!". I felt that if I didn't put some kind of gap into this guy that she was going to do something awful to me so I dug incredibly deep, sprinted up the run-up like the pros, and remounted at the top with an amazing 30 foot gap on the guy. I need to find that woman and see if she can start following me to all my races. On the last lap I passed 8 more, my endurance in these races is good, my starting power blows. That's where I need the most work.

I came across the line on the lead lap. 82 started the race, I finished 63rd. Not bad considering how badly I started. My friends Aaron, Ryan and Jon finished really well with Ryan and Jon both top 20, and Aaron just one spot out of the points. All really strong. I need to train more with these guys.

Aaron picking his line

After a race like this, everything is caked and covered in mud, so now you have to go over to the bike wash area and stand in line to wait for the hose. I thought I was cold before the race started. Now, having overheated for the better part of an hour, and having been standing around again in the wind driven rain for about 20 minutes, I was shivering like that same chipmunk on Red Bull, which has now succumbed to an epileptic seizure. There was a guy, in full rain gear looking really warm, behind me watching the earthquake going on in my body so I stated the obvious, "I'm fuckin freezin".. To which he replied, "My father said all you need to do is picture yourself some place warm like Hawaii". I've never been to Hawaii so I fondly thought of Hell and it's eternal flames gently caressing my body. This didn't make me any warmer. Nice try though.

Another tough race for me but I'm determined to get stronger. I decided I'm hiring a coach next year. Not sure who yet, but I'm looking at a couple guys. Roger Aspholm is one of them. By sheer coincidence, I ended up parked right next to Roger and we were both getting ready at the same time before the race so I went over and introduced myself. The first thing that strikes you about Roger is how lifelike he appears for an indestructible cyborg with superhuman cycling powers. Even his teeth look real. I introduced myself "Hey Roger, I'm Kevin Buckley, I get my ass kicked regularly by you in these races.".. This is actually giving myself too much credit. To get your ass kicked by a person you have to generally be in the same race competing against this person. And while I start these races in the same field as Roger, he is typically in his street clothes and on his second pint in the beer tent by the time I cross the finish line. Anyway, Roger and I had a quick conversation and I may hire him as a coach for next year. I also want to talk to Kurt Perham who is another cycling coach that is a super strong cross racer and is top 10 in the Verge points so far this year. The plan is to continue to work my ass off and get stronger while trying not to get too discouraged by being in the bottom end of the elite masters field. Keep reminding myself that for me, in my limited amount of experience, finishing on the lead lap with these guys is a victory in itself. Oh yeah, and have as much fun as possible.

Having Fun!