Big Bikes

NMBS #5
East Coast National, Windam, Mt.

Kracked

I was on the fence about this one. The original plan was to hit the NMBS race on Saturday, which is about three and a half hours from home, then head up to New Hampshire and do the EFTA Pinnacle race on Sunday at 10AM (which is wicked, but we wouldn't end up doing it). This plan started to mess with my head and I thought of scrapping the whole deal, didn’t want to dash all hopes of having good rides at Nationals in VT the following week. by biting off more than I could chew. After a bit if encouragement from carpool mate Mo the bestest bike racer I know, I decided to stop being a god damn sally and do this thing.

The camping area was mighty dope.

Friday I tried unsuccessfully to sleep in, drank a metric butt load of coffee, and watched The Tour, waiting from Matt and Mo to pick me up. We got out there in time to pick up our packets and pre-ride the course. What struck me most about the course was how well built and maintained it was compared to Mt. Snow. It had more climbing and descending but the way it was broken it up made it seem easier in a way. There were lots of man made wooden bridges, flagstones, berms, fly over bridges with chicken wire laid down for traction, and super steep, dusty, loose downhills. The soil was odd as well, very red in hue, so different from anything I’ve seen on the east coast, I really felt like I was somewhere out west.

Matt and Mo's base camp set up. Their tent was actually larger than the hotel down the road.

I’m not a very strong camper, sleep ran from me like a kitten pursued by a four year old boy with a can of kerosene and a match. I awoke at 2AM and looked at my phone hoping it was just slightly before when my alarm would be going off, no sir, it was three hours until that time. It was still dark and cold at 5AM. I fired up the camp stove and made up the oats as I chugged my cold can of Starbucks coffee. After breakfast I spun down to the convenience store looking for hot coffee and water. The only other person up and alive at that time was a man jogging in Aqua Socks and white collared shirt. If I ran in that outfit, I would probably do it when most sane people were still sleeping too.

Sunrise spin to the convenience store.

Being a four minute bike ride from the race venue was pretty cool, although as usual I botched my warm up, riding up and down the road in front of the mountain for about fifteen minutes before the race start. I knew a few guys on the line, but most were strangers to me…they looked scary and incredibly strong. Things went off, straight into an uphill start, up and around a corner into a bottleneck entering the singletrack, some of us were off and running. I wasn’t too stressed, I knew from racing Mt. Snow a couple weeks ago that I have to ride these ski area type races at my own pace. On the first lap I did a lot of passing on the climbs, a lot of getting stuck behind people riding a little slower than I wanted to, I thought about all the energy I was saving for later and stayed mellow.
I think it was lap two when super-fast junior Seamus Powell came up behind me, I thought if I could stay on him, he would deliver me into the top ten in my race. It went OK for a while, then I realized that I was just standing and staring at his rear wheel, rocking and gasping along in my red zone. Progress was made and I moved up into the low teens with many of the top ten guys just up the steep, hot, gravel road. Early on in the race a few riders passed me on the descent, but later on I would hold my own or even close down on other riders, spinning like mad on the grassy traverses between the singletrack sections. My only real mishap involved a lowside slide out on a silly grass corner near the bottom, I went right into a 180 on one of the least exciting and technical sections of the course, it was awesome. Later I would fall victim to the same slick grass situation while walking down to the car, completely busting my ass.

The Windam "Fartfest", preceded by the Annual Windham Chili Cook Off.

Third lap the backward slide began, my legs feeling like they really only had three laps in them. I’d struggle to jam my entrails back into my mouth before each successive climb. John Burns and Michael Bartlett and some other dudes gapped up to me at some point. I tried to hang on, but I was cracking. The only thing that got me through the last lap was the quote from Jens Voigt bouncing around my brain. He was talking about he Individual Time Trial in an interview during the Tour coverage the other day, he said sometimes your mind has to tell your body “Shut up and do what I tell you to do!”. I tried it, it kind of worked, at least it kept me from walking my bike. I would come up to a steep pitch and my mind would tell my body “Ride up that thing!”. I was losing spots though, sliding down into the twenties.

Matt is Mo's team mechanic, he is wicked pro.

Last lap I rallied a bit, the caffeine and sugar from Coke Matt had so deftly handed me at the feedzone coursing through my system. I made a couple passes and saw some riders sidelined with flats or mechanicals. That’s why we don’t give up, anything can happen. I passed my friend Dan from IBC on the final approach to the top of the climb. He had driven up at 3AM to do the Expert race (He didn’t want to ask for Friday off from work to do the Sport race). His goal was to place top fifteen and qualify for Nationals. He would accomplish his goal and earn major tough guy points. One really nice thing about this course compared to Mt. Snow was that once you started going down, you kept going down. Mt. Snow throws a few climbs at you even in the middle of the descent, the bastard.
I would roll across the line in 16th place out of forty or so starters. Not super-psyched with my performance but not crushed either. Hopefully I can put something better together for Nationals Friday…and Saturday…and Sunday. I’m doing the Semi-Pro race at 9AM Friday, Single Speed race at 8AM Saturday, and the Semi-Pro short track Sunday at 2. I plan on being entirely destroyed by the end of Saturday’s event. The short track is really just to put on a show for my niece and nephew who can only come up Sunday. The XC is kind of whack as far as spectating goes, especially if you are three or five years old. “There goes Uncle Thom (that’s right, Uncle Thom, and I once lived in a cabin, literally)…
And we’ll see him again in like half an hour”. “Half an hour? That’s more than a year!”.
Anyway, I’ll wrap this uninspired piece of crap up here, take it out back of the barn and put it down like a baby with a broken leg.