I figured that I would get a race under the before I put any updates into the blog. Things have been going ok here. Oddly we had a little snow the other night up here on the hill. All the flakes were tiny and the ground wasn't cold enough for anything to stick. Still blew my mind, I didn't forget where I was by any means, just still not used to seeing snow, let alone in November.
This past week was a blur, nothing really exciting happened. Played with my position a bit more. Decided to go all the way and slide my cleats back and take the dremil to the rubber and make some more clearance. The position feels pretty good. I don't really feel like I've lost any snap, which you're supposed to lose when you put the cleat more towards the center of the foot. I also feel like I'm balanced better, but maybe that's all in my head.
Kept it local this weekend and went to the race in Putny, VT. on Sunday. I took Eli and Emerson with me. Eli is a young kid who rides DH and is into video production and editing. He came out to the NoHo races and I think he's hooked on cyclocross now. Can you really blame the kid? It's fun getting all the gravity kids into other parts of cycling culture, so watch out Sam Smith, this kid might have your number soon.
The drive to Putney was short, just about an hour north of us. I was thinking the drive would be pretty uneventful, what the hell can happen in an hour? Well a fair amount apparently. Emerson and I got onto the subject of how racing this cross season has gone so far. He was talking about the shit luck he's had with mechanicals when a really loud CRACK came from the top of the car, I looked back in my rear view mirror and saw Emerson's bike pressed against my rear window! I pulled over pretty quickly and got out, Emerson forgot to hook the wheel strap down. No biggie, it scared the crap out of me and thankfully didn't break my window, no harm done. We continued on to the race, which surprised me to see that it was directly off the highway. This would explain the lack of directions on the flyer.
When we got there the course was frozen over. Sadly, that didn't last long and made a lot of the corners a bit slick. The course was a ton of fun. A sweet downhill, some fun bmxish aspects, and a killer run up. What more could you want? How bout no corn fields for starts. They lined us up at the bottom of run up and off we went. Some man child hot tubes kid almost took a bunch of us out because he decided he was just going to ram someone. Luckily no one went down, I was grateful because I was right behind this action, which meant I got a bad start. A group formed at the bottom of the downhill going into the corn field and I was slightly off it. I jumped hard out of the corners on the cornfield to get over to the lead group. When I got over to the group on the road they were recovering to prep for the run up, while I was hurting a little bit. When we hit the run up it piled up a bit, I was the jerk slamming into the back of the group. At the top I got popped off the group and started to float around, not something I wanted. The rest of the race went down like this. I had a ton of fun on the bike, the position change is good, but I'm lacking tons of fitness. Pretty much I was on for 2 laps at a time, not good. I had fun ripping down the descent and getting the bike sideways in the mud slicks at the bottom transition. I ended up 14th and with a big craving for candy. Guess that's the only thing I can give to explain why I woke up at 5am searching for one of my stash bags of candy.......
This past week was a blur, nothing really exciting happened. Played with my position a bit more. Decided to go all the way and slide my cleats back and take the dremil to the rubber and make some more clearance. The position feels pretty good. I don't really feel like I've lost any snap, which you're supposed to lose when you put the cleat more towards the center of the foot. I also feel like I'm balanced better, but maybe that's all in my head.
Kept it local this weekend and went to the race in Putny, VT. on Sunday. I took Eli and Emerson with me. Eli is a young kid who rides DH and is into video production and editing. He came out to the NoHo races and I think he's hooked on cyclocross now. Can you really blame the kid? It's fun getting all the gravity kids into other parts of cycling culture, so watch out Sam Smith, this kid might have your number soon.
The drive to Putney was short, just about an hour north of us. I was thinking the drive would be pretty uneventful, what the hell can happen in an hour? Well a fair amount apparently. Emerson and I got onto the subject of how racing this cross season has gone so far. He was talking about the shit luck he's had with mechanicals when a really loud CRACK came from the top of the car, I looked back in my rear view mirror and saw Emerson's bike pressed against my rear window! I pulled over pretty quickly and got out, Emerson forgot to hook the wheel strap down. No biggie, it scared the crap out of me and thankfully didn't break my window, no harm done. We continued on to the race, which surprised me to see that it was directly off the highway. This would explain the lack of directions on the flyer.
When we got there the course was frozen over. Sadly, that didn't last long and made a lot of the corners a bit slick. The course was a ton of fun. A sweet downhill, some fun bmxish aspects, and a killer run up. What more could you want? How bout no corn fields for starts. They lined us up at the bottom of run up and off we went. Some man child hot tubes kid almost took a bunch of us out because he decided he was just going to ram someone. Luckily no one went down, I was grateful because I was right behind this action, which meant I got a bad start. A group formed at the bottom of the downhill going into the corn field and I was slightly off it. I jumped hard out of the corners on the cornfield to get over to the lead group. When I got over to the group on the road they were recovering to prep for the run up, while I was hurting a little bit. When we hit the run up it piled up a bit, I was the jerk slamming into the back of the group. At the top I got popped off the group and started to float around, not something I wanted. The rest of the race went down like this. I had a ton of fun on the bike, the position change is good, but I'm lacking tons of fitness. Pretty much I was on for 2 laps at a time, not good. I had fun ripping down the descent and getting the bike sideways in the mud slicks at the bottom transition. I ended up 14th and with a big craving for candy. Guess that's the only thing I can give to explain why I woke up at 5am searching for one of my stash bags of candy.......
