Campton Cross

St. Charles Mudfest 4b’s

This will be brief, for the most part ;-) Ok, well, as you all know it was muddy and wet. We had a field of 71 start. There must have been 20 something call-ups, the top 10, costumes, Flannel Mike, Greg (the guy in blue), and all the bicycle heaven guys. Jason Knauff was funny on the line. After the call-ups he started off the race instructions with…

“Gentleman, welcome to today’s MAIN EVENT!….THE 4BEEEzzzz!!”

We were all laughing, it was classic!

 The course was wet, muddy, and very as Bear Grylls puts it “slippy”. The first lap I was able to ride everything. I was forced off the bike in the off camber chicane before the path every other time. The long drainage ditch climb on the backside was brutal made much worse by the time change! It was facing west and the sun was sitting right on the edge of the crest and nobody could see any sort of line due to the reflection. The first and most crucial part, the beginning, of the climb was completely blind. The big mud pit/water crossings were interesting. If you took them at speed (which I did) you were fine. The last lap I hit the second one so hard I could see the mud and water fly up past my head in my peripheral vision.

Going into today’s race there was a big ? mark on me. This was my worst cross performance to date, cue the ? mark. I had been, still am a tad, sick for a week and a half prior. I managed to get 45 min on the trainer on Sat before the Sun race. I really wasn’t worried about my legs; I really didn’t know what kind of output I was going to get out of my lungs though. In cross, the lungs are just as important as the legs if not more so. You go anaerobic as long as possible then a short dip into aerobic for recovery (briefly) then right back into the anaerobic zone. I can usually go a good distance while anaerobic, provided I can get full lung inspiration. I had about 70% of capacity. Not nearly enough to push hard.  I was out of it halfway through the first lap, just couldn’t get deep enough into my lungs. I listened to the advice in the article Jim had sent us and just rode it out and stopped pushing super hard because I knew I didn’t “have it” that day. I ended up 52/68 something; and I’m fine with that after being sick and all.

A Tail of Two Bikes...

I thought my legs were going to have a lot of lead in them today, wasn’t too sure what I had in them. You see, yesterday, Jerel and I did 60 miles with Quadzilla and J Deisel…pretty easy ride for them (me thinks), moderate for me, and pretty tough for Jerel. Which leads me into today…

I had two races on the docket today. Fall Fling crit at noon and the DeKalb cross race at 3.

Fall Fling

The course was pretty much an oval with a slight rise after the start/finish up to the first of 2 roundabouts which we were only allowed around one side…thank god! I can’t even imagine cat 4’s trying to navigate a left right option! I can see the massive crash in my right now!

Anyway, when I found Greg before our race I told him I didn’t know what to expect from my legs today since doing 60 yesterday. I did a couple hard efforts in my warm-up and they felt kind of funny, I thought “oh well, we’ll see what happens”. Greg and I talked a bit beforehand and we agreed that if I was there at the end that I would jump up front, lift the pace as hard as I could as long as I could. Well, low and behold I was up there in the end.

I spent most all the race in the pack. There wasn’t a whole lot going on, a couple moves went up the road a couple times but they were never really going away from the pack. In a another move about mid race I looked up the road and thought one of the three kits looked like ours, I noticed a white dot in the middle of a black butt and red on the kit, that’s when I realized Greg had bridged up to the two that made the move. I thought, crap! I should be up front trying to slow the field or something. I immediately swung to the outside of the pack and booked it up to the front and when I got there Greg and his buddies were coming back to us fast….too late, sorry Greg.

When we came across the line and heard the 2 to go shout, I calmly moved up the front on the rise and as we went down the other side and turned into the headwind, I went! I swung out wide into the wind and stomped on it simultaneously. I gave 10 hard cranks and moved back over to the middle; put my head down and just followed the center line in the road for a bit, not sure how long but a WDT guy came around my and I just grabbed his wheel. We kept at it, passing a few guys, not sure if they were getting lapped or the remnants of an earlier move, but they couldn’t hold onto us. I assumed I was dragging the entire pack, looked back and we had a gap!! I didn’t have much in me though, the red light was blinking rapidly! We stayed at it a bit longer and I looked back again and the pack was about 30m behind us single file…I told WDT “dude, we’re $%&ed!!” WDT and I led the bunch across the line for the start of the bell lap. I knew I had burnt all my biscuits so I just let everybody ease by and jumped on the back and just rolled it in from there. I was happy with that, I had done what we pre-planned and surpassed my goals for the race that I thought about when I woke up this morning.


DeKalb Cross



This was my first cross race ever in life! I did it on my MTB as I don’t have a cross bike. I did get some 1.6 tyres from a buddy so I had that going for me!

Well, I have done a few MTB races in my time (wink) so I had a pretty good idea what needed to happen at the start. The old cliché’ to not judge a book by its cover does not apply at the start line of a 4b cross race, I leaned on my MTB prowess here. I looked around at the bikes and equipment and new exactly who I did not want to be behind in those first few crucial turns so I wiggled and sandwiched my way in between two guys on the front line when we rolled to the line…I was right! I hit the first turn in the top 15 and heard the mess behind me that I knew was gonna happen. I finished the first lap in the top 20 but was dying fast in the soft grass sections, I absolutely flew through the technical sections like a true MTB’er would. Problem was, after a technical section where I would pick off a guy or two we would hit the long soft grass sections and I would get passed by a guy or two, sometimes more…that was the problem more would pass me in the grass than I would pass in the technical spots. Those grass sections felt like I was riding in glue! Sucked cuz I was just housing guys in the technical twisty fast off-camber bumpy tight tree turns stuff!! So, I just stayed in the fastest rhythm I could and drilling it where I knew I was strong.

I ended up 42nd out of 73 and was the second MTB across the line (as far as I was told). It was a lot of fun, the crowd was awesome, the only dudes I ever really heard were the guys beating on the snare drum. Whom requested a wheelie on lap 2, to which I obliged on lap 3 and they just lost their mind banging on the drum, then I passed a crosser after the wheelie and I thought those guys were going to break the drum beating on it then…it was awesome! (I did hear you Kathy and Jerel, just barely once, sorry, I was zoned out on that climb).