Colt's last post reminded me that I had some wordsmithing to do to represent some Mid-Atlantic racing. Here is my account of the first race in the Mid-Atlantic Super Series. Swing on over to my blog page (http://fancyshpants.blogspot.com/) for working links and slightly better formatting. Enjoy.

This past Sunday marked the commencement of the Mid-Atlantic Super Series with the opening race at Fair Hill in Elkridge, MD. After a solid week of riding, I was feeling good and ready to race. However, feeling good does not always equate to a good day, as I was to find out during my race.

On Sunday morning, Martin Kell, Clay Chiles, and I packed up the car and started the three hour trek into the flatlands (ie MD). Clay was racing the Sport SS class, while Martin and I were doing the Elite and Expert classes, respectfully. Unfortunately, this discrepancy meant we had to arrive a number of hours early for the Sport race start. After watching the Sport field start, I returned to the car for a quick nap.

Clay is the one in the lime green Freeze Thaw Cycles kit and the green fork.

After my rest, I decided to start warming up for my start. I rode the first half of the 7.5 mile loop and was still feeling pretty decent by this point. The course was stupid fast, with minimal hills and nice, hard-packed dirt. Most of the corners flowed very well and there was almost nothing to make you scrub speed except for one or two rocky entrances to creek crossings. It was going to be a "full throttle" style race.

I met up with Clay as I was heading to the start line to learn that he had won the Sport SS class. After words of congratulations, as well as some heckling, I left him to gloat in his well deserved victory. I received some well-deserved heckling of my own at the start line, when I was berated by members of the SS class I raced with earlier in the year for putting those clicky-hang-down things on my bike (that's central PA vocabulary for "shifters and derailleurs"). I then progressed to my start line, and tried to mentally prepare for the whooping I was about to subject myself to.

We left the start line at a balls-out pace. I was in the upper quarter of our field, sitting about 5 or 6 wheels back. The first mile and a half was open fireroad and riders were constantly battling for position and moving back and forth within the field. I entered the singletrack in the top 10, but my body decided it would start falling apart then and there. At about 2 or 3 miles in, my side started cramping up. This resulted in a distinct reduction in power, and the awesome "scared cat" arching back positioning to reduce stress of my respiratory muscles (it works... sort of...). Luckily, the cramping subsided about halfway through the lap. However, in my attempt to make up for lost time I made a very elementary mistake. As I said previously, there is not much to this course technically. However, there was one decent sized log on the half of the course that I did not preride. And in my haste, I assumed the back side of the log was built up as well as the front side (this log came on a slight uphill, so the back was not visible until you were cresting it). It was, in fact, not built very well on the back side. I came over top of it in very poor form, not being able to decide if I wanted to roll it or jump it, and end up wiping out pretty hard.

As you can see, the crash didn't produce any severe carnage, but it certainly did not help me. The creek crossings also did a fine job of reminded me I crashed by washing out the cuts with every pass...

After quickly picking myself up and hopping back on the bike (and waving to the group of spectators who watched my crash) I continued on with my lap. Having lost a fair deal of positions due to the side cramping, and a couple seconds due to the crash, I had planted the seed in my mind that I was just going to pull out of the race at some point. As I finished my first of three laps, I convinced myself to go out for a second lap. Unfortunately, my body was not happy with this decision, as my lower back started to hurt, further reducing my power. I felt absolutely terrible, and was not able to put any serious effort into the course. At every junction I tried to convince myself to DNF, but somehow I kept overriding the idea and pushed through it. With the weak back, I was passed constantly by plenty of riders. The back issue persisted through the third lap as well.

During the second half of the third and last lap, Ryan Delaney (Potomac Velo Club) caught up to me from the SS category which started 2 minutes back from my start. I got a little bit of motivation and was able to tag on to his wheel for the next couple miles. We passed a few riders, which felt really good after doing nothing but getting passed by other people throughout the race. Finally, we got down to about three miles left in the race. I passed Ryan on a rocky uphill section and somehow found enough strength to push through the back pain and put in a little effort to finish out the race. With a final hard effort through the line, I finished the 22.5 mile race in just over 1 hour 43 minutes. The leader of my race finished in about 1 hour 32 minutes (full results can be viewed here), meaning I was a good deal back. My lap times were very showing of what mental and physical shape I was in during the different portions of the race:

Lap 1- 32:42
Lap 2- 36:24
Lap 3- 34:20

But even more telling are the pictures that go along with the different points in the race:

Here is me during the early stages. Calm, collected, aggressive, good positioning, and just overall well put together.

Now here is me a little later in the race:

Jersey open, not as aggressive in the corner, worn out face, and just in general really sloppy.

Usually I do not dwell on the "if" situations of the race, but IF I had not had the problems with the side cramps and the back giving out, I think I could have finished at least three minutes faster, bumping me up from my 17th place finish to about 13th. So it goes.

The only consolation to the race was that I finished it and did not succomb to the temptation of dropping out. Unfortunately, my bad mood about the race would be perpetuated upon return to central PA, where the dreary 40 degree and raining weather would greet me for the next three days. Between the weather, the bad temperment about the race, and school, I managed to get in a single day of riding, and only rode for a little over an hour due to some hip flexor problems. With basically no riding in me for the week, Greenbrier is going to be a hell of a race this coming weekend...

I was able to get some relaxation time to accomodate my artificial "rest" week in the form of the Penn State Cycling club cookout, where these shananigans took place:

With a group of drunk cyclists, a unicycle, and a trampoline, what did you expect to happen?

Hopefully I can get myself out of this little stagnation period of riding, cause it is going to be a long year if it lasts. At least Greenbrier will have rocks, which is more familiar to me than these fast dirt courses in the flatlands.