October 2018 started with the end of our trip to Virginia. I did not get much bike time on that trip and the trend continued once we got home. I just had too much work and not enough time in the day. The new responsibilities I picked up at my side job the month before turned out to be a lot more than I thought. It was good, but I did not plan well enough for the load that was coming. The few rides I did get in were pretty rough. You don't really feel good on rides when you only ride every four or five days.
Dina scored some college football tickets from one of her friends. The Vanderbilt season ticket holder gave up their tickets to us Gator fans for the Vandy vs. Florida game in Nashville, much to the dismay of their seat neighbors at the stadium. To say we were unwelcome in our section was an understatement. The game was tight early on with some questionable calls going the way of Vanderbilt and keeping them in the game. The fans were unruly. I thought Dina was going to clock the guy sitting next to her as he was just downright rude. I had a friend sitting on the Florida side and she called me at halftime to get to move over there. The section she was sitting in had plenty of empty seats so we moved in the third quarter and had a much better second half experience. Though I did wish I was sitting with some of those rude people when the Gators started to pull away in the fourth quarter. Go Gators!
Pre-game at Vanderbilt Stadium
Florida's Feleipe Franks throwing a pass for a first down.
Coach Mullen on the sidelines
Much better view on the orange and blue side
The following day was the last mountain bike race of the season. The Race to the Canal at Land Between the Lakes has ended many of my seasons. This year brought nasty weather. It was a steady rain all morning and a little on the cold side. I was not feeling very confident despite my love of these kind of conditions. I knew I had not been riding enough to win this race. This is a tough course. The climbs take their toll and I was a little overweight too. My only hope was that the weather might give me an advantage which I would need just to be in the running for a good result.
I had a decent start and just tried to conserve in the opening section, which is mostly descending. When the first climb came, I got shelled off the front group. I was just off the back at the top and was able to chase back on, but then fell back again on the next climb. I kept chasing hard, making up time on the descents and keeping the leaders in sight. I played the yo-yo game for the first 13 miles. The leaders had opened the gap on me a little more as we reached Sugar Bay and a long gravel road section. They were out of sight, but I kept pushing hard. At the top of the steep climb in this section I flatted my rear tire. I threw in a CO2 cartridge quickly and got going again. I nearly lost my glove as it froze to the stem when I added the CO2. The leak was at the stem and it did not seal as I rode, going flat again in just a couple of minutes as I came into the feed zone. I stopped there to put in a tube, but I couldn't get enough grip on the valve stem nut to loosen it. The whole thing wanted to spin and the mud made it where I couldn't hold it well enough to get it off. I struggled with it for about 20 minutes, then decided to call it a day as clearly I wasn't getting this fixed without some outside assistance. Not the way I wanted to end the day, but it just wasn't to be today. That means I ended my mountain bike season with two straight DNFs and we all know how much I hate a DNF. I really miss the rim style of the Mavic UST system in these situations. The rim had a slot in it and the part of the valve stem inside the rim was rectangular, fitting right down into that slot and never turning when you twisted the nut.
I turned to supporting Dina the rest of the day as she was having a good run in her longest race of the season, and her longest race since becoming diabetic. She did awesome with her fueling over the 36 miles and rode hard in really tough conditions to take the win in Cat. 2 Women!
A muddy rider at the Birmingham Ferry road crossing
Dina leading at about mile 23
Dina negotiating a muddy descent with 6 miles to go.
Dina coming to the finish to grab a win.
Cat. 2 Women podium
I finally got in some training time in the two weeks following the LBL race before my cross season kicked off. It would be a short season for me with only a handful of races, culminating with the U.S. Cyclocross National Championships in Lousville, KY in December. I did some race simulation rides on the road and actually started to feel pretty strong despite doing all my training alone. I attempted some of the local group rides, but nobody was showing up. They decided to change the format of the ride early in the summer. We had been doing the ride in segments with three sprint points along the 24-mile loop. Much of the group is obsessed with average speed and began to do a team time trial effort every week to go after the record. Strava has brainwashed everyone into going for records every ride. Those of us that race need more explosive efforts to prepare for what happens in races so we like to attack and go for the sprints, then recover and do it again. Attacks began to be criticized to the point that people stopped coming or didn't want to attack. Then people stopped doing the sprints in favor of going fast for the full loop. With the focus being on the record, nobody wanted to regroup anymore at the sprint points, so riders dropped never had a chance to get back on. The guys that didn't want to wait said they weren't tired so they didn't need to regroup. Well, yeah. You're not racing anymore, you're riding in a paceline steady all the time. Meanwhile, slower guys get left behind on the first hill and never see anyone until they get back to their car. So those guys stopped coming. They even started their own ride at a different location with a slightly milder pace, which pulled away a few more riders from our fast group. Once the lap record got hard to top nobody wanted to work hard enough to better it, so then those guys stopped coming. Next thing I know, it's just me out there.
Otter in a creek on one of my rides. Had never seen any around here before, but saw three on this day.
Cross finally arrived at the end of October. It was a double-header weekend close to home and I would be racing twice each day. We kicked things off with a new venue near Hopkinsville, KY as the Mud, Gears and Tears race moved from Trail of Tears Park to the Casey Jones Distillery. I had never been able to race in Hopkinsville before. I know a lot of the guys putting on this event so I was excited to go support their race. The distillery was a great host, bringing a fun course and supportive environment. I was also pumped to be debuting my new skinsuit. At the end of the summer, I was asked to join MOAB's new cyclocross team. It had been a long time since I had gotten a new skinsuit and even longer since I had raced on a cross team.
The first race of the day for me was the Pro/1/2/3 event. The 60-minute race was sure to be a tough one as the course was challenging. The opening descent was all grass and very rough with several shallow, but square-edged ditches to cross. At the bottom, the course flattened out as we made our way onto a gravel road with a big creek crossing. The water was followed by a super steep hill in the woods. There was a brief minute of flat riding on freshly-cut doubletrack on top of the hill before a fast descent back to the creek with a sweeping right turn at the bottom. The second creek crossing was more of a ditch with a few rocks hiding on the bottom beneath the murky water. We then went around a small pond before a long climb in the grass back to the top of the hill above the distillery to complete the lap.
David Rush with the Pro/1/2/3 holeshot
Me in the new kit early in the race
We had just six riders in the Pro/1/2/3 and I was the only one not a Cat. 3. I was a little slow off the line and ran 5th the first lap. It was the first time I had ridden my cross bike since March, so I was uncomfortable on it, especially descending. My main issue though was the climbing. I did ok on the shorter, steep climb as we were all running it. But the long climb to end each lap was breaking me. I just didn't have the legs to haul my heavy butt up it fast enough. I would lose a few seconds there, and then fight the whole rest of the lap to gain it back. After about 30 minutes, the gaps were set and everything stayed about the same the rest of the race. John Carr put the whipping on us and grabbed the win. I was able to get to 4th, but couldn't catch anyone else. The top 3 were just faster than me. It was as simple as that.
John Carr on his way to a win
Me hanging a turn on the descent from the distillery
This course had nice views
On the gravel road
Splashing through the first creek crossing on the course
The bottom of the climb to the finish
My second race of the day was the penultimate race of the day. They had a Fat Tire class that ran along with Singlespeed so I had to choose between the two categories. This course made the choice easy as my huge singlespeed gear would have been a nightmare on this course. I was a bit nervous for this one as I really wanted a win. I had not won a race all season and this looked like my last realistic chance to break the goose egg in that column after Montgomery Bell slipped away from me. I knew I would be tired from the first race and you never know who will race these open categories. It may be a bunch of newbies or a bunch of Cat. 1s. You don't know until you line up.
I took a lap on the mountain bike between races and was amazed by how good it felt. I should have rode this bike in the Pro/1/2/3. It smoothed out the rough descents and just felt better overall. My cross bike just doesn't fit me the same way, and now, after riding both bikes back to back, I don't think I can put out the same amount of power on the cross bike with its position.
We had just four riders in the Fat Tire class, but we had a combined start with Singlespeed and Women 3/4/5. I got the holeshot and opened up a big gap on all but one rider after the opening descent. I was able to ride the steep uphill. Dustin Weida was in Singlespeed and able to stay fairly close to me the first lap despite having to run the steep hill. He had also run the Pro/1/2/3 race and finished ahead of me in 2nd.
Video: Start clip from the combined Fat Tire, Singlespeed and Women 3/4/5 classes
After two laps of the scheduled 30 minutes, we were given two laps to go which meant the race was going to be shortened. Weida was still about 10 seconds behind me. It was obvious that barring some disaster I was going to win the Fat Tire, but I wanted to get the overall in this race. Without taking the overall I just wouldn't really feel like I won. I hit lap 3 really hard and took us into the steep hill quickly. I could hear him running behind me. I was so impressed that he could run that 20 second climb as fast as I could ride it. He sounded like a rhino running behind me. But he had to remount at the top and was gassed so that is where I put in my attack. I hit the top hard and rode the doubletrack in a full sprint then bombed the next descent. That opened up the gap big time. Once he was off, I just kept increasing the gap and took that overall win I wanted so badly. Goose egg gone! I felt so much better in the Fat Tire race than in the Pro/1/2/3. It gave me a little bit of my confidence back that I could compete with these guys in cross this year.
Climbing up to end a lap during the Fat Tire race
Getting the win in Fat Tire
I hung around after the race to help everyone tear down the course. It didn't take long with all the help we had. The Casey Jones Distillery was hosting a Halloween event later in the afternoon so they needed to get things cleaned up fairly quickly. Cross the Harpeth was the following day and it was a day full of action and fun. More about that in the next post.
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