2013 NE Rapha Gentleman's Race

Question: How long does it take a person to forget how bad a 9 hour, 138 mile ride/race/deathmarch with 7 hours spent in total back spasm?

Answer: 23 months. 

In 2011 I was privileged enough to be part of Lehigh Valley edition of the RGR. It was beyond hard. 2 hours of beyond steep climbs, followed by 4 trips over Hawk Mt, ending with a zig zag of choppy dirt roads on the way home. We were pushed to the limits mentally and physically but finished it off. 9/20 teams were able to complete it.

When I sent the email to my team proposing we try it again in 2013, I hit send with a bit of trepidation. Is this worth it? We applied, we got a spot... this was happening again. We knew the course would be in George Washington's playground. Everything I know about GW I learned from this video (probably NSFW... unless your work is awesome). I also knew the top secret donut stop.

Myles, Chris, Craig, Steve, Kyle, and I were selected to represent Ciclismo. The way RGR starts, teams are ordered by slowest to fastest, separated by a few minute stagger. We were seeded last to start. This is obviously not ideal. I don't know what I did wrong. Here is what I wrote to the race director:

"Craig Lebair: Cat 2 road, Elite MTB and CX. Member of the "Try not to get lapped by JPow Club" in cx.

Kyle Centrella: Cat 2 Road, Cat 1 Mtb. Cat 2 CX.

Chris Pagoda: Climbs Mountains (Denali) Doesn't race much anymore but strong.

Steve Ordons: Elite MTB and CX. J Pow has yet to lap him.

Myles Lund: Young and newer to cycling, trying to be a lawyer. Strong. 

Mike Festa: Cat 2 road, Elite MTB, Elite CX. JPow lapped me once, but never again. "

I guess used the word "elite" too much and forgot to mention we all go to offices on Mondays hoping no one notices we are half asleep from our attempts to win $18 for 25th in a UCI race. 

8:45 am we set off. We quickly met up with some teams on the road. We quickly realized only 1 of the 3 Garmins we had with the course loaded on it was working correctly... and it happened to be on my bike. This meant I got to yell out the 150 turns we would have to make. I also spent a lot of time staring at the little device on my stem. 

How could we get lost?

Photo Anthony S

My recollection is all a bit fuzzy. Somewhere we had to hike through a stream. Then we climbed a hill that had us at 40 rpm for a while. We had plenty of dirt. We got filmed by the film crew a bunch. We had to hike through the woods and another stream to go around a out bridge. We got bagels. The top secret donut stop was out of donuts.

Abigail Thomas Photography

At around mile 80, Kyle's 2003 Dura Ace shifter tired to eat its own cable. We fixed it in maybe the best spot ever, a quickie mark in front of a hardware store, next to a bike shop. Around 4.5 hours I ran a lil low on the old blood sugar and things went dark. I demolished 2 Honey Stinger gels and a waffle and got it moving again with my normal level of hyper. I hit every pot hole on River Rd during this period. 

Fixing some cables at the quickie mart.

Craig and I probably making jokes or singing 90's pop songs. Abigail Thomas Photography

It may sound trite, but the rest wasn't that bad. Of course it was difficult though. We found good company in the Bicycling Magazine team. it turns out the one and only Bike Snob was among the group, and we didnt even realize it.

Abigail Thomas Photography

The course ended with a trip through Sourland Mountain, and a big climb that turned to dirt just in time for the descent. Arguably the worst dirt descent in the race, long, full of washboards. It was tricky with tired eyes and bodies. The course failed in its one last attempt to foul us, and we were rewarded with smooth sailing on valley roads back to the start/finish. Basically the opposite of 2011. In the end, smiles were abundant, beer was consumed, and 7 medium pizzas were consumed by our team alone. 

We were 4th out of 26 teams. Time outside was 8 hours, 14 minutes. We spent about 7 hours 40 minutes of that moving. 

1/2 Serious

Not so serious. Abigail Thomas Photography

Never had to even use the paper cue sheet.

ZOMG DATA TIME:
Strava file.
Training peaks SRM data.
130 miles. 7:43:32 moving. 5038kj. 418 tss. 

Game Notes:
Myles wore bright green pants and Nantucket red shorts.
Kyle has informed me his shifter is from 2009 not 2003.
I wheelied a few times. 
The Dunking Donuts guy rang be up wrong, only charging me 13 bucks for 10 waters and 6 bagels. 
Song list: Spice Girls. All of us sang it. 5 of them, six of us. Same amount of talent.
Times we cursed course designer Jed K: Too many to count.
Flats: 0.


Up next... more bikes... a day at the MASS Iron Hill Endurance Race 

MASS Bikeline Fair Hill XC

Roadie friendly mountain bike courses are awesome. I'm not ashamed to admit that. I like to pedal (it is a bike after all) and courses that allow me to pedal often translate to an not completely shitty result for me. Fair hill has a lot of pedally parts, as well as a lot of turny parts where you can pretty easily hit a tree. 

Here is a great picture of me pedaling and not hitting trees. http://marshcreektraditions.smugmug.com/Sports 

How it all went down. 3 laps total. 22.5 miles. We started fast. There were awkward pacelines, as mountain bikers do best. Everything shook out and I found myself at the front of a group of 5 or 6 people, in places 8 to something-teen. Most importantly I had a teammate (Steve) in the group! Steve and I pulled the group around, sitting up a bit in the open sections to see if anyone would come around. it stayed like this until the last lap. 
Early on, somebody fell right behind Steve on a rooty uphill section, blocking the entire trail. Being the gentlemen we are, Steve an I surged to get a gap. we had a pretty good thing going until I messed up on a rocky stream crossing and had to dismount and run. I then whacked Steve with my bike (I was not carrying it like a javelin) and slowed him down. The group caught back on, 7 riders strong. MASS payouts go down by 5 bucks a place, so there was like 30 bucks sitting in the group that I wanted to buy beer with. I was determined to win this group. 
I knew in the last section of swoopy trail (with little pedaling) I wasnt quite as fast as one or two fo the guys. I wanted to lead that section. All I had to do was get to the top of the steep climb first. Well in one of the fields an attack went off, I followed it, but lost my first wheel status. I then couldn't overtake the Scott rider (Zack Morrey) on the climb. We did get the group down to just 3 at this point setting up for the last few minutes of racing. 
Zack did a great job dismantling the last bit of swoopy trail. I struggled to hold his wheel and not hit a tree. After the rock garden, I was able to make a pass and surge by. I got a decent gap on my 2 chasers and was nearly certain I was safe. I kept waiting for the turn onto the finishing straight... which seemed to take its time in appearing. 
And then Ethan Frey closed the gap to me... not good. I was a little blown from the surge and had misjudged how much trail was left. I was going to have to sprint. Sprint. In a mountain bike race. After my initial panic, I remembered I race road bikes. "YOU GOT THIS". I sat up a little to recover, knowing I wouldn't be passed in the narrow trail. I picked the right gear, locked of my Lefty fork.. picked the smoothest line... set everything up perfectly...launched my sprint... and promptly got out sprinted. I wish I could say it was closer, but he got me pretty good. 9th place. Plenty of beer money.

Yep still there. http://marshcreektraditions.smugmug.com/Sports

Lauren... being still very new to mountain bikes, had a simple strategy. Go full roadie on everything she could pedal on, and not die by hitting any trees. Sounds kind of like what I do. Well it worked pretty well. She took the holeshot... and in the parts she couldn't pedal, only 1 girl ended up passing her, putting her second overall. 

Shredding the Gnar. http://delmarvaphoto.com/

Hitting the Low Low Switch. (Lower Providence)

That title reference really has nothing to do with racing a crit but this gif is amusing none the less.

It up and down motion of the car actually does have a lot to do with my race though. 35 laps of 4 turns. 140 right turns. 140 sprints. Some mini, most not. ½ over 700w (that’s a lot of watts). 35 laps of yo-yoing on the back. Crits are hard. 

Going Slow: PC: Douglas DiBella

Going Fast: PC: Douglas DiBella

Game Notes:

There were fast people who don't have cube jobs in the race.

We went fast.

2 people fell down. One left in the fun wagon. 

We got neutralized for 27 minutes.

We went fast again.

I didn't get dropped.

My finish place started with a 5.

THE Intergalactic MASS Relay Thinger with Mountain Bikes on Kuhn's In Law's Farm That Involves Logs and Is Awesome and Against All UCI Rules.

With a title like that, you don't even have to read any race reports you already know the deal! Funny part is my fake title is nearly as long as the actual name of the MASS relay, that by now nobody, Kuhn included really knows what the hell its called. 

Craig, Steve, and I were signed up for a 3 man team this year. We pre-rode the course together and quickly came to 2 conclusions.

1) It was fun. 

2) There absolutely nowhere to pass. 

About 20 minutes before the start we all changed the registration to the solo class and set out to ride 4 hours of the 2.8 mile log infested course... in a paceline... wearing skinsuits... with no tools... and like no food. #YOLO.

Things you never see: Craig taking a pull. aelandesphotography.com

This ended up being way, way more fun then we suspected. The "moment of regret" never really came. We rode around talking (at tempo) for 4 hours. Stopped every 4 laps or so... graciously accepted cookie handups from "Big Show". Heckled those who passed sketchy... that deserved its own section actually:

To all of you that passed a little kid, female racer, or hell group of 3 UCI license holders without announcing, leaving enough space, or worse, heckling an 11 year old girl... What the hell? Were you in a rush to get home to beat your dog or something? Did you think the Cannondale team had scouts there to sign you up if you went all Strava on that shit? Maybe you just hate your life and this is your outlet? I don't know, I do know one demographic over all overs made the most ridiculous errors of etiquette above any other. It wasn't a scientific study, but being out there for 15 laps, it was obvious. Old dudes, comon you are better than this... chill. /rant

Back to the fun stuff. Abe (aelandesphotography.com) was there taking pictures. My wife was busy learning all about gravity (maybe sometimes falling down), and the other Ciclismo team was turning some fine laps.

I give to you a comparison of myself... Steve... and finally, Craig.

Me leading a bit 

Aero Steve.

This is Craig. Notice he's still drafting. 

 The rest of the day was spent pulling very consistent laps (if you pull our rest stops out, our fastest lap and our slowest was only a 45 second difference. The only thing more persistent that our pace was our conversation. We never stopped annoying the living shit talking the entire day. 

Talking some.

Blue Steel

The start of the best section. Logs and bridges!

Sup Steve?

West Virginia Training Camp

"Four years, and seven inches ago..." No, no, that's not a opening line from the yet to be released adult movie entitled "Boinking Lincoln", its just some nonsense joke that we cracked on one of the countless climbs in WV. 

Ciclismo revisited Raw Talent Ranch for the 4th straight year. I had one real goal related to watts and stuff:

1) Go up hill quickly. I feel as though I did this. We tackled all 3 popular approaches to the barn, the front side, back side and dirt hell death side. Watts were measured. VAM was calculated. All is well.

My other goals related to having fun. I did a few things to accomplish this.

1) RAP VIDEO IN THE BACK. Most times when I finished a pull on stretch, I would rotate to the back and act like I was in a rap video. It looked like this a lot. To supplement this I also rapped on the climbs, mostly to annoy Joey. #messingwithjoey

Busta, Bust

2) Wheelies. Everywhere. Not really good ones though, pedaling reduces your ability to get rad.

3) Not dying on descents, but also not being a biggity bitch. 

4) Jumping over a bonfire (on foot). One rider did jump through the fire...

5) Eat Ice cream

I think I did all of those things and more.

Judge Rye Rd Photo Jay Moglia

Recovery Ride

Ciclismo

Apple Orchard. Photo Jay Moglia

BONFIRE

Winter.

Winter is a poor time for blogging. Instead, a picture of me counting watts while watching TSE GO-PRO footage...

MAC Limestone Cross at The Kiln.

Last race of the year! After equally frustrating and unimpressive days at Kutztown (filed under pretending it didn't happen) Lauren and I aimed to end the season on a fun note. 

Define "fun". Well fun if you race cyclocross is 42 degrees and raining. Add in bikes with brakes that don't really do much and tires that are intentionally kept uselessly small and you get Sunday. Daylight savings has put us on the trainer after work instead of outdoors and fitness dwindles with the factor of mentally checking out. Long gone are the legs and violence of Nittany. 

Lauren really wanted to win a MAC race this year. The best she had done was a relatively close 2nd at HPCX. Simply put Lauren went out and did it. She rode smart and smooth, and for riding a cx bike maybe 3 times in mud ever, put in a very impressive ride. Riding in the mud is about minimizing mistakes and not putting it down on the ground, while focusing on where you can put power down. She did all that. It was a perfect ride. 

Photo PJ Freeman

Photo PJ Freeman

Photo Dennis Smith

I didn't take my own advice. So I'm going to write down some of the tips I ignored during my race. 
1) Wear your glasses. 10 seconds in a chunk of mud flew up and hit my right eye. It stayed there for the next 68 minutes. 
2) Keep pedaling even if you cant see. I went from first row to back row in the first minute. 
3) Look where you want to go, not where you don't want to go. If you stare at it, you will hit it. Even with one eye.
4) Don't use the front brake and turn at the same time. 

Photo PJ Freeman

Photo PJ Freeman

Number 4 is sort of important. On the last lap, with absolutely no one around me, holding down my office as the Mayor of No Man's Land and no reason to go fast I let a little more speed than normal go on slick grassy descent with a left at the bottom. I started to turn with a full blast front brake. A few summer salts later I came to a stop sort of half on my head and shoulders. Just in time for my still sliding bike to chop me in the knees. 
"Wow this grass is cold... Lets get up... Shit why am I dizzy...maybe just hang out here for another second."

And with that, The Lauren and Mike Take Back Cyclocross From the Hands of Elderly Cadillac Drivers Who Live In Mobile Homes World Tour (LAMTBCFTHOECDWLIMHWT) is complete. Thanks for following along.

Crossasaurus Awesome: Safely Out of the Money

"Promoter Legs". Steve, Craig and I all had them Saturday as we rode in the course. Steve and I spent 2 hours trying not to drive as fast as possible and not crash my R32 into the 8000 Penn State THON kids as we unsuccessfully looked for step in stakes (PRO TIP: They only stock step in stakes in the summer at Home Depot). Craig was stuck straw bossing the setup of the course. 

Sunday was some more work, then finally RACE TIME. 

Photo Myles Lund, or Myle's Mom, I don't know.

I started out pretty good. I set up for our newly added run/ride up/ mound of dirt. Right as I hit the base of it Patrick "YOLO" Bradley and another rider came around on opposite sides and then collided immediately in front of me. I don't think I violated the newly enforced "No Cursing at Crits in 2012" rule but I did express my frustration with both parties with a variety of rhetorical statements like "Really???". Much to the chagrin of everyone behind us that had to stop...life went on and we resumed racing. I was dangling onto the money when AGAIN Cole Oberman caught my group and caused a split. Leaving me on the "you're not getting anything" side of the payout. I still wanted to race though so I fought pretty hard not to get dropped by Mike Green and ProBikes guy whose name I don't know. Mikey Had a bit of a crash and we gapped him. With 2 to go I couldn't shake Pro bikes dude. 
Hilarity ensues. I lead him over the barriers. I had issues there 4 out of nine laps... dropped chain, bounced wheel on second barrier, missed pedals, clipped inside pedal on entry... well you get it, every mistake I could have made I made once. Including this one... I made it over clean, put the bike down for the remount, and was a little distracted as I felt him behind me and I didn't want to get tangled up or passed. I completely missed my saddle. I went straight into the back wheel, thigh first and fell on top of my bike. Silent, I got up, noticed slightly bent bars, but an otherwise functional bike. ONWARD!
Probikes dude must have had an issue or something because he didn't immediately take off and drop me. I found his wheel, and now fueled by massive amounts of post crash adrenalin, attacked a couple times and got away. All this to safely secure the patented "Mike Festa 2 places out of the money spot" This race, marks 3 in a row I have been safely 2 spots out of the payout. 

A wise man once told me chicks dig the hop. Always hop. Photo Myles again.

Lauren did about the same as me, also 2 out of the money... but with a little more back pain. Lauren doesn't take my path and whine about stuff on the internet though, so shes not totally a Festa. She did pretty well at Fair hill the day before, placing 3rd, but taking another Festa trait, getting beat in a sprint! 

Braids of Glory: Photo Anthony Skorochod

Sometimes when Lauren gets the holeshot she gets sleepy. Photo Dennis Smith.

And then there was the single speed race.
I didn't race, I prefer to watch and generally interfere with the event. The highlight for me was pushing Myles through the sand pit... on foot.
Here are Zach's higlights.

Watch more videos on CyclingDirt


Long live the Crossasaurus. 

Game Notes:
Newport borrowed the Camia/Festa pass around pit bike and placed 10th in the B race, in his first cx race. 
Selene dropped everyone.
Ali Flis flew in from Utah to do our race. Sort of.
Several roadies rode road bikes to the cx race to heckle. Next time bring bigger tires!
I managed to get made fun of for the javelin several times despite not actually doing the jav.

Stoudts CX: The Return of The Javelin

Its a rare occasion when a bike race occurs on the actual grounds of a brewery. I think the main reason is because the risk of a riot after all beer is consumed is great. Fortunately it was way to cold to be riot weather.

It was good bike racing weather though. The problem with cycling attire is while somewhat comfortable while racing, its freezing when not racing, before or after. 

There were a lot of photographers out at this one, which is good, because it makes for good blogging. Blogs, about cycling exist for only a few reasons 1) Bragging about how many watts you put out. 2) Whining about how you didn't win. 3) Making fun of yourself. We're going route number 3 on this post.

Somewhere along the way I re-learned how to hold my bike bike a javelin. People noticed. Heckling ensued. Thanks guys, without your help I may have never realized the error of my ways. Rumor has it teammate, Craig has also been photographed doing the jav.

Photo: Broken Spoke Photography

Photo Joe Bacinski

Speaking of heckling. Here's a great shot of me exiting the heckle pit. My common heckles : Crap about my wheels (since they broke a few weeks ago) and crap about my brakes, because I used them in order to not crash into whatever was burning back there. 

Photo: Broken Spoke Photography

Great shot of Geronimo waiting for me to get out of the way.

Photo: Broken Spoke Photography

 Jamie Harris does not like his bike and tried to destroy it. Here is proof.

Photo: Broken Spoke Photography

The highlight of the day was the mudpit before the long long run up "Goat Hill". Goat hill did have goats. The mud/ goat poop at the bottom of the hill  was on the course. Delicious. 

The goat. Captured (on film) by Dennis Smith

Lauren had a good ride, placing 5th in the Elite women's field. Being from Florida, Lauren loathes the cold more than most, making her ride a bit more impressive. Here is Lauren deep in thought mid race. 

Photo: Broken Spoke Photography

Instead of warming up for my race, I mostly sat in the car with the heat on getting out in various states of undress to cheer for Lauren. Apparently not warming up for your race works, as at the start of my race, I took the whole shot. What not warming up doesn't help with 2 laps later when you start to slow down. I back slid a bit, riding in and out of the payout, until finally I settled in 10th. I was able to fend off the bicycle therapy duo of Mike and Dan while bringing back Cole, ending up 9th. Safely out of the payout... Hard but fun racing. 

Photo Joe Bacinski