Had for the longest time heard a lot of positives on how fun the MN State CylcoCross Championships were. Figured a nice little drive down to Crystal MN & spend a few days racing some of the best ‘cross racers in the Midwest. Alternatively, it required me to miss some of the best ‘cross racing to my East. UPCross in Upper Michigan, as they had their State Championship races.
They had “category” racing day one, age group racing on day two. (Thank to Chris “Smithers” Smith for putting it together that way, Nice job Chris!)
The first day, I didn’t come mentally prepared & aggressively minded to race around & through people in some cases & was stuck in the mid teen’s til what had become a seasonal mechanical theme… a rolled tire. I went on to finish 26th.
Day two—if you’ve ever had a bad day of racing, you can go in the next day saying “gee, I suck” & have a repeat performance or go in with a balls to the wall attitude and nothing to lose.
I had a nice chat with Barry Tungseth before hand, a guy on any given day can ride with the best of them, on how the different racers excel at the different disciplines. Someone like Brendan Moore, who dominates the MTB races in MN, no one really challenged him for a win this past year. But in a ‘cross race, there’s gonna be guys that he’ll dust in a MTB race who’s wheel he won’t hold in the cross race. Jesse R., CJ, Chris Fischer will all outlast him. On the other side, take someone like Pat Lemieux, ‘cross races great, road races maybe even better. MTB racing with single track? Just different enough to make him struggle and the above named guys will probably outgun him. The last top end guy to excel at all 3 disciplines, MTB, Road, Cross? Very easily Doug Swanson, and sure there are others probably not to Doug’s extent to be able to win all three kinds of races in the same season. Another extremely well rounded racer back in the day I’d even give a nod to is Hollywood Henderson.
So back to the race I chose the later approach. Despite a third row start, I got into the mid teens by the first sent of U turns & once it opened up it I wound up with another drive to get to the front group of 7.
Half a lap later, I was playing caboose of this fine company…
Hollywood Henderson, Chris Fischer, Josh Roeser, CJ Faulkner,Jessie Reints, and Belgium's very own Oliver Vrambout & finally Owen Thoele.
Here’s where I took a hard lesson in cycling strategy— most races have periods of hard effort followed by lessor effort. The key is to not get doubled up on doing two straight hard efforts. Having to catch up during the “lessor effort” I put in a hard effort, catching them just in time to, only to get put on the ropes by a second hard effort. Being out of sync like that it’s hard to recover & then stay with that group.
Hollywood was the first to drop, but considering how well that guy can still ride given the little time he has to train running his own bike shop it’s always admirable to see him out there pounding nails.
I followed MN ‘cross rider of the year Champ Josh Roeser, who looked like he was dogging it until he shot out of a cannon & took a flyer to the front of the group.
It wasn’t much later on lap 2 (of 7) through a monster long sand pit that being out of sync with the surging efforts to stay with the group I decided to back it off a notch to preserve a 7th place position & not risk blowing up letting a charging duo of Paul Krumrich & EZ Taylor run on past.
The next 3 laps were pretty uneventful, but the LONG Stair climb RUN UP was getting to be more than annoyingly difficult. Normally, I like running & it’s one of my strengths in ‘cross racing, but this run up was double in length & distance of any race I’d ever done. It one of the few times I’ve felt like a course was overwhelming me.
But backing off the lead group on those 3 laps offered just enough recover to put in a surge the final two laps to distance the chasers & catch a fading Josh Roeser to grab 6th on the day. Finally a result closer to where I felt I was capable of racing. But in the back of one’s mind comes the question of starting position, not having to fight out of the back row, how different does that race play out?
My contention throughout this all isn’t that ‘cross racing is inherently screwed up. Rather it’s a system with challenges due to the nature of the sport that make it difficult if not impossible for capable racers in large fields to get a fair go of things.
I don’t mean this just in a situation I’ve found myself in, but on a bigger scale there’s an example of it that will occur at the World Championships in Kentucky in the Elite Women’s field, an Olympic medalist, Georgia Gould, at this past summers games -- will end up starting behind racers she’s been way faster than all season – simply because she chose to stay state-side racing cyclo-cross rather than racing in Europe where other Americans raced. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Unfortunately, there’s no easy solution.
As Sunday’s race ended, CJ & Chris had a die hard sprint to the end with Chris edging it out for the win. Just like he’d said the day before after finishing 6th . “It’s always better the 2nd day!” Congrats to Chris, CJ & Jessie for rounding out the podium.
With at least one good race in the bag, the ‘cross season wasn’t feeling lost or a waste. Traveling to Madison for the WI championships the following weekend would determine in large part how much longer I wanted to push on… more to come…
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