S4: E5: Juniors Day at #cxnats

Boys 13-14 Start

A few weeks ago during the Christmas to New Years week I found myself glued to streaming video from Europe watching the Christmas week races astounded at how fast the Belgians rode and how utterly ridiculous they make the rest of the world look, sans a select few. As I watched sketchy descents, slimy mud riddled uphills, and wicked off camber I came to the realization that if we want to be as fast as the Belgians we have to ride in those conditions - cold, wet, muddy, crazy disgusting days where it is way easier to pull up a Family Guy repeat on Netflix than it is to get on our bike and trash it riding laps at Kings in mud puddles. I even downloaded a preview of the Dutch Rosetta Stone thinking maybe I should dig in and listen to the announcers - that they would hold some secret to understanding how they do it.

Ed Fritzinger on his way to 3rd place

Today our juniors competed in arguably the toughest conditions I have personally witnessed on a cross course - and in recent years we have witnessed some crazy stuff. From 10 degrees and a foot of snow in Bend, mud puddles as big as a lake the following year in Bend, and mud to your ankles last year in Madison seemed really harsh - until this year.

We awoke to a hazy fog - that cool, damp, misty fog you get when the temperature warms up and the 12 foot piles of plowed snow start to evaporate. It had rained about 3/4" in the past 12 hours, putting more water on a frozen substrate, combined with the snow and black ice that was already on the course and basically turned the course into three courses. You could ride in slushy snow, black ice, or slushy half frozen mud - you had your choice. The only issue was that you didn't know where or when either of those existed.

This is the experience we need in America.

Boys 15-16 before pit #1

The trick to the course was knowing when to go fast. This is what I believe the Belgians know way better than America knows, and I am only beginning to understand. To ride the course this week you had to have a patience that surpassed your emotion. Time after time you would see guys power up big to go fast, only to end up on their backside kicking the bike back off them. The Belgians understand this - they understand that smooth is fast and that smooth is a matter of interpretation. And they have ridden that instance enough to know how to ride it again and again.

Spencer Petrov being interviewed

Practicing in these elements and repeating this for 11 days of insanely difficult races around Christmas has become their secret ingredient. For the US this is the second year of racing Nationals after the New Year and in line with the European Nationals calendar. For the sake of the future of our juniors we have to remain on this date. The experience they got today gives them a taste of what Christmas Week means in Belgium - our own little one-day EuroCrossCamp if you will. Each of the last two years it has been these elements.

It pains me to say that. I liked having it over before Christmas and being able to move on to road season. But the Belgians aren't going to change their ways - Christmas Week will live on, and we will continue to send our juniors and seniors over to compete against them. To compete on that stage we have to continue to build this skill, build this ability to ride on days when we don't want to ride - the days that take hours to clean up kits and bikes.

It is the only way.

Oil, Summer’s Ice

With the accuracy of a laser pointer Jaden stuck a finger out along his left leg.  Averting a flat on a raised crack, the group flowed to the right along the gutter.  A few miles later, somewhere near the former home of Big Butter Jesus, Rachel shook her hand on her right side.  Deep gravel.  It was an 80 mile ride and I’m sure we exhausted every gesture in the group ride hand vocabulary handbook. 

Big Butter at Solid Rock Church

There’s a sign for everything: a sweep of a right hand behind the back for a parked car, a quick double finger off the hoods says “hi” to a passing rider, a finger moved forward and backward spells out crack in the road, two fingers spread out at the ground usually means double pot holes or a pair of raised gas main covers.  A finger pointed and twirled in a circle at your helmet means the rider in front of you is an idiot.  For the few instances where a hand gesture won’t do, there are a few verbal-only warnings, like “car back, passing, car up, ice and low branch.”  Unfortunately for Don, there’s nothing in the cycling vocabulary for oil slick.

On rides we keep an eye out for the obstacles that could cause a crash or a flat and point only those out to our companions: glass, a topless sunbather, a cake-pan deep sewer cover, a raised metal plate, a pothole filled with water.  Other than that, hands belong on the bars and mouths are for breathing.  Being more of a listener than a talker, the silence of cycling is one of my favorite aspects of the sport.  In probably 15 years of cycling, from crack-fast Kentucky farm dogs to hand-carved riverfront cobblestones, you’d think I’ve pointed at it all.  I’ve never thought to look for oil on the road, in a corner, on a slight downhill.  Oil is like summer’s ice and Don went drifting.

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It was your typical 4 way intersection with a light.  Approaching slightly downhill, we had the green for a right hand turn.  There were six of us probably traveling north of 23mph.  Riding 3^rd wheel, I followed the two leaders on the inside to outside line.  By the time Don rolled through, he was at the mercy of two factors: looking through the turn and having the added man-momentum of gravity. 

Like us, Don never even saw the last 10 meters of the road before the turn.  Like the veteran cyclist he is, he saw the green light and then his eyes watched the exit of the turn.  Having at least 40 pounds on the women in front of him, he brought more speed to the corner and swung a bit wider to avoid touching wheels.  Schoop!  There it was.  I heard the metal pedal scrap the ground and turned to see Don laying in the road at the corner of the intersection.  While the first three of us skated past on the oil’s inside, Don crossed the slick like angled railroad tracks in the rain.

As Don dusted himself off, flexing the pain out of his hand, I futzed with his bike.  I put the chain in a smaller gear, spun his wheels testing for trueness and saw it.  A 10 inch section of his rear Conti 4000 was covered in thick oil.  I looked at the road.  The slick was thick, as if every car for the past 10 years had leaked oil waiting at the light.  If we had a ruler the depth was probably measurable to a 2-3mm.  Still, none of us saw it.  How could we?  It was black ice.

Aside from plumping like a Ballpark Frank overnight, Don’s hand turned out okay.  He blamed the miserable first three holes on his crash, but still managed to stay within his handicap on the golf course the next day.

Groundhog Sees Shadow Now “Must Die!”

(Not Reel News: 2-2-09 Goobers Knob, KY)

“I haven’t rode my freaking bike outside since November and this stinking Groundhog must die,” exclaimed an irate cyclist with pent up frustration from the unusually cold and snowy Midwest winter. Immediately after the groundhog, appropriately named Sucksalottie Bill saw his shadow, signaling six more weeks of indoor cycling, the maniacal caped handlebar-moustache wearing Grand Poobah of Midwest Cyclists ritually raised the sacrificial hog over the heads of the 13 thousand cyclists gathered on Goobers Knob in Northern Kentucky and flung the cute and fuzzy poor defenseless creature into a burning pyre of old inner tubes, carbon fiber bike frames and tires. The crowd with their heads hung low then dispersed, reluctantly returning to the tobacco barn for another six weeks on the trainer.

This story is completely fictional. Duh. No cute and fuzzy ground hogs were flung into a pyre. But, cyclists are frustrated over the weather.

Midwest Winter Ice Storm Cycling Stud

A layer cake of death is what the morning DJ’s on Cincinnati’s Q102 radio station called it. Cincinnati is in the midst of getting pounded with 4-6 inches of snow, a half to three quarters inches of ice and then another 4-6 inches of snow on top of that. Combined with Cincinnati’s small snow fighting force, hillbillies with bald tires on their pickup trucks and steep Ohio River Valley streets, “Layer Cake of Death” says it all. With the ice, I thought riding would be either impossible or miserable. Yada, yada, yada. I woosed out and considered shoveling three times to be my workout. A buddy of mine, did not woos out. He sent an email after his mountain bike commute Tuesday morning. The following is not the email. It is completely fictional, any resemblance to actual people, events or mountain bike studs is purely coincidental…kind of.

To: The Best Bike Blog Ever
Fr: Cincinnati Storm Stud
01/27/08

I thought I was in trouble when I spun my mountain bike out my driveway and into the automobile tread-troughs heading down my street. It was soooooper-slippery on the hardpack. I quickly discovered that traction was best when making fresh tracks in the powder, which did not offer much resistance. So I rode sidewalk the entire way to work and really only had to torque the cranks hard in sections where the snowplows had thrown the crusty granola chunks across the sidewalk. It was a fun and peaceful spin through the gently falling snow in the pre-dawn darkness, with cars creeping by on Riverside Drive not all that much faster than I was moving.

I got three "You must be crazy!" shouts from motorists and one woman in a Suburban with outdoorsy good looks shouted "You're a stud!"