Jackson Park Cyclocross - Venez Nombreux!

Amazing turnout for the first CX race of the season. Four hundred and change was the number - making it the biggest cross race ever held in Illinois. Congrats to XXX and CHiCrossCup for bringing out the crowd and growing the scene remarkably. My experience of Chicago is that you need to charge more in order for people to appreciate it The extra bikereg fee and proposed late fee appear to have done the trick.

Plan for the year was to do a few cat 4 races, actually see the head of a race at least once, hopefully sneak a top 10 placing somewhere and then cat up as packfodder to the 3s. I had been looking forward to this for several months; last year I was bubbling under the top 10, this year - definitely stronger - I wanted to break through.

Manged to drag myself out of bed early enough to eat some oatmeal and make the 2.5 hour drive to Jackson Park in Chicago. The field for the Masters 30+ was relatively small, so decided to jump into that as a second race and use it as a warmup mission. After standing in a non-moving line for 20 minutes the XXX folks kindly brought me to the front and got me registered with 15 minutes to spare. Took me a full five minutes to pin on my number, hit the portapotty and get the bike together. I rolled around the parking lot a couple of times feeling pretty dead, saw Damon from Beverly, who busticated a rib on a major rut during warmup, and headed for the line.

I just took a place at the very back of the 30 starters and decided to take it easy for the first couple of laps to get to know the course and not to kill myself. At the whistle I stayed out of the starting shenanigans, felt pretty awful, and took it fairly easy. Good thing I did because I was all over the place on the first couple of laps. A mighty twisty course had me braking like crazy and heading into the course tape several times. I just wasn't getting warmed up and rode tempo - passing a few folks who crashed or dropped chains - and maintaining about 22nd place. The course was bumpy as heck, so between the excessive braking and the difficulty of building up any speed it took me forever to get in the zone. Eventually, after 4 laps I started to feel ok and was able to downshift a couple of gears, dial in the turns, lay off the brakes, and maintain a higher speed. The higher gear is always much better for bumpy courses, and the surface was starting to break in from all the bikes and gradually get faster.

Troy from Mission Bay - who had beaten me in every race last year - passed me then so , of course, I had to test myself. We hammered it for the last 3 laps. I'd pass him on the spiral of death, he'd get me on the barriers and I'd pass him again half a lap later and try to put some distance on him. He'd catch back up and get me on the next barriers. This race within a race really got things going, I forgot about my worsening back from all the bumps, and we passed what seemed like a bazillion 40+ backmarkers and lapped a few 30+ to boot - all in various states of blowing up and just ready to be done.

I got a small gap in the final lap and maintained that to the end. Crossing the line knowing that I had at least raced for a full 15 of the 45 minutes. Of course, the results got messed up and we were listed as close to DFL. I couldn't be bothered protesting, especially when the 40+ racers were getting mighty perturbed over some major scoring errors in their race. Maybe they'll recheck the 30+ while they're doing the 40+ and figure out that we weren't actually lapped, but it's not something that I'm going to worry about - and it's a longstanding cross cup tradition.

The course itself was a bit weird. They had clearly put a lot of thought into the design features - nice use of elevation change with a couple of tricky off-camber hairpins to keep you honest, plus a groovy spiral of death that I always enjoy trying to rail and the best part - a 3 log barrier that gave you a choice of riding or running; but the overriding theme was turns, lots of them, all requiring extreme braking and just enough skill not to crash. There weren't any long enough stretches to get back up to speed so it was a sequence of brake, accelerate, brake, coast around twisty bits, brake accelerate etc. If you really hammered into the start/finish you might pick up a big enough head of steam to catch someone going into the sand, and maybe another one coming out. But that was about it. It felt like it was designed by a mountain biker who had a complex against going fast and wanted to get his revenge against every roadie who had ever passed him. Therefore hairpin turns were placed at every possible opportunity to ensure momentum was killed and to negate any possible advantage one might have from going faster or railing a turn. There's a good reason you see very little of this at the UCI races - it makes for remarkably boring racing. Twisty but not technical - great for causing logjams and congestion. Not my kind of course, but I appear to be in a minority of one on that.

Meanwhile, after rehydration, hanging around meeting old acquaintances and taking in the following races - three hours had gone by and it was time to suit up for the 4a race.

The race was decided before the whistle even went. A hole shot into a set of hairpins meant the scramble for starting position would decide everything. I managed to muscle my way into the the 2nd row, but I doubt if anyone not on the front row got into the top 10. I was lucky enough to be on the faster-starting side, moved-up rapidly, rubbing shoulders and wheels into the hairpins and was in about 15th wheel hitting the sand - a pretty good start for this diesel. That's never high enough though, as someone between 7th and 10th always goes down and creates a logjam. The first seven got through cleanly to fight it out, a couple of fast-twitchers lose it and get tangled up and all those on one side are forced to get off their bikes and run. Lost about 5 places here. We roll around till the first hairpin barrier, I take it very cleanly but on the remount find that someone has optimistically placed their front wheel over my pedal and I'm trying to clip into his spokes. I get swarmed by about 10 riders before I can remount again and that was it. Stuck in a convoy through all the chicanes and turns. If you could maintain a certain minimum speed it was not possible to be passed unless you crashed. No choice but to resign myself to the parade until things would space out on lap 2. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. We continued on in the procession - passing maybe two riders per lap and losing or gaining a place on the barriers - until half a lap to go. Finally people started to tire, daylight appeared and I was able to get past a couple more riders for the final spurt to the line.

Very short race - The winner crossed in about 25 minutes. Last year we did six laps for 8 miles., this year four laps for 6 miles. It was the first cross race ever that I can say I just did not enjoy. I've raced in larger fields, but on courses that were designed to allow races to spread out and that didn't consider going fast a crime. I felt that I just didn't race. My result had nothing to do with how fast or slow I was, merely to do with starting on the second row. A third row start and I would have been ten places further back. Fourth row and I would have finished in the forties. So it goes.

A pretty deflating way to start the season. Once you get that top 10 callup it's very difficult not to maintain that placing. I need to forget about series points and callups and just take as much as I can get from each race and enjoy the experience.

We suck it up and move on. I'll be heading for Madison this weekend - that should be very different. I'll make sure to enjoy it more.