Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Provincials '08: Bit More




The off-camber
(photo: M. Clark) and mini-me (photo from J. Safka)



Barriers before the snowy track loop.















Start of M2 race..? Proof that the sun shone that Sunday, anyway.
It was a good day on earth, Sunday 23 November 2008 (at Riverdale Park anyway).

Monday, November 24, 2008

'Cross Provincial Championships 2008

It was a wet and wild time at Provincials, where the snow melted into muddy off-camber bits like you see above at Riverdale Park. (That's Lorne Anderson in the leopardskin tights in the mixed Master 1/Senior 1,2,3 race, and he's passing Cycle Solutions' Stefan W. who's dealing with the most advanced class of racers he'd ever come across; "I have a plan", he told me before the start).

The crowds were pretty big, the falls were plentiful, and the day was altogether successful. There were 190 racers in total, including two or three organizers from the organizing club, who paradoxically won nothing for change. The Angry Johnny's/Cycle Solutions team is the equivalent of a small town in the little world of Ontario club racing: more bodies in their colours fill the ranks of various events than anyone else. Orange and blue jerseys fill podiums continually, but somehow today was different.
My race went reasonably well, as I navigated the course crash-free. I just didn't have any starting power/energy. It took me to the third of four long laps to get the energy flowing past the awful feeling of weak muscles. In the end I cruised to a 6th/35, forty-eight seconds off the leader.
It was a day of old men: Pierre Perrin (age 51)won my event by a healthy twelve seconds or so over Brian Kelly (approx. 46 years); Had Pierre stayed in M2 where he started the season, he'd have been 15th or so. Smart guy.
It was a great course though, and conditions made for a number of upsets. Peter Mogg, national M1 champion and winner of every single 2008 Southern Series M1 event he entered this year, actually lost - finishing off the podium.

All in all, it was a good first season in 'cross. I had good times and a bunch of top five finishes. I love the grinta (Ital. sort of like 'guts') that 'cross is all about, and the amazing feeling you get after the agony of the race is over, and learning to think past the internal chaos outside to the race itself.

Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Fast Times at Willow Beach



It was a cold, wet, mucky affair with a beach on top of all that. The beach was on Lake Ontario. The day was Sunday in November, a cool four degrees Celcius after 20mm of rain the day before.

It was a day for a cyclo-cross race.

We arrived with mere minutes to spare off the highway, I scrambled to take a practice lap on the winding, mostly flat and lightly forested course and forgot my helmet in the car, which preceded to leave altogether. A baker's dozen had made the drive to Port Hope in my event. Half a dozen more readied themselves for the staggered start: Beginner Men. An appeal filtered through to my competitors and suddenly a man was motioning me to follow him. "Bring your bike", he said and off we went to his house 400 metres away, smack in the middle of this circuit in the middle of nowhere.

A helmet was given over, we returned and the commissaires started the race. I let the small field sprint ahead of me towards the beach section - best to make a slower start after the chaos of the previous minutes, I thought. Eric Sanders (Wheels of Bloor) and I rode together at the back, and for the rest of the race. He was coming off a fourth and third place on successive days at the big UCI races in Toronto the week previous; in my case an 11th and a exploded chain off the hot start on the Sunday past.

I never let me get past me, occasionally pulling ahead, passing a Beginner, and marvelling at the sheer exhausting effect of this authentic 'cross grass-and-muck fest. Yet I was the nimbler, figuring to give it my best no matter how far back we were. In the end I got second place, Eric third. That's the strange thing about 'cross. A twisty course, all the concentration you can muster, and somehow you're at or near the front of it with no idea why. My best result so far.

In the midst of pre-start chaos, I'd neglected to even take my chocolate energy gel, but was able to hang in there nonetheless. When you race 'cross, you enter a tunnel of exaggerated experiences. Perceptions distort. Time seems out of whack, indiscernible, as though being held contained in a bag somewhere. The visual field is reduced to a narrow spectrum of the metres in front; the air temperature has no effect. Even the wetness of water splash is minimized in the stress of the task at hand. The key is to focus on the details of the course.

When it is over, relief is palpable and the ensuing minutes bring a continual endorphin rush. You feel excited, sometimes ecstatic, briefly immune to the cold, the dirt, the wet. Jokes and congratulations. A bike to be washed off by the waves.