I’d had every intention of making this a two race weekend, with the Canton Cup on Saturday, and Orchard Cross on Sunday. I was looking forward to Canton because last years edition was my very first cyclocross race. However, I had registered before we had finalized the date for my club’s — NorEast Cycling — race. No worries, I’ll just get to race twice as much. Awesome!
After two years of promoting the Amesbury Cross in September, Brian Croteau felt that it was a little too stressful dealing with the town of Amesbury, and we needed to find a real home for the race. Through connections within the club, he was put in touch with the owners of Applecrest Farm in Hampton Falls. It is a site with facilities already in place, plenty of parking, and an owner who was more than happy to host an event that promised to bring hundreds of potential customers to his door. He gave us the run of the property, and we were able to come up with a challenging course in pretty unique surroundings. It is the perfect place for a cyclocross race.
However, getting up at the crack of dawn to race at Canton, then coming back to set up the course that afternoon, then going into Portsmouth for the Halloween parade that I’d promised some friends I’d attend was a little too much for one day, if I wanted to have any chance of doing well on Sunday. So I bagged out on Canton, got a decent nights sleep, and headed over to Applecrest on Saturday afternoon to help set up the course.
We got the course staked out pretty quickly, and so we all changed into our ultra-manly lycra and jumped on our bikes to get some practice in before it got dark. As I came around to the end of the lap, I hit the spot where we had routed the course across a heavily furrowed pumpkin patch, [The pumpkins had been removed, of course] which created a very rough washboard section. I managed to get all the way across the section, turned right to continue up the course, dug the front wheel into a hole, and promptly crashed. One of those really awkward low-speed crashes, too. As I lay on the ground absorbing the cheers and applause of my teammates who were standing just a few feet away, I heard a familiar voice shout, “That was the best thing I could have seen, today!” and looked up to see Dylan McNicholas just getting out of his truck. Perfect timing.
I found out later in the evening that my crash had done some damage after all, because as I stood watching the Halloween parade in Portsmouth, my right hamstring started to tighten up. Very painfully. That’s the thing about low-speed crashes … you can really get twisted up trying to stop yourself from going down. I must have hyper-extended my hamstring, and there was also a small bruise right at the top of my calf. So I went home and iced it up, hoping it would be OK in the morning.
And while icing my leg, I whined about it on Facebook. Predictably, I was told to man up and race. Dylan promised threatened to give me a pre-race rub down if that’s what it took. Personally, I think he was just looking for any excuse to touch my smooth-shaven, yet manly legs, but I’m not here to judge.
Sunday morning we got the course tape up in record time, and I headed out for a practice lap before the first races of the day got started. My hamstring was still a little tender, but it felt OK while I was pedaling, so I breathed a sigh of relief. As I waited near the staging area for my race to start, Dylan came riding up, and I stuck out my leg, hiked up my shorts as high as they would go to make it as creepy as possible for him, and shouted, “Start massaging, Biiiiitch!”
Having successfully made everyone in the starting area supremely uncomfortable, I headed into the staging area and lined up. I was racing in the Cat 3-4 masters field, which was further broken down into 35+, 45+ and 55+ age groups. The 35+ field started a minute before me and Cap’n Gassypants.
It’s an informal tradition in any bike race to call the members of the host club up to the front row, so the Cap’n and I were treated to an unobstructed start at the head of the field. Unfortunately, instead of moving to the middle of the track, we stayed over next to the snow fencing on the right side … y’know, so we could shoot the shit with our fans and get our pictures taken. This would quickly prove to be a mistake.
We were only half paying attention, and were caught completely off guard when the official, instead of blowing a whistle or shouting “GO”, just kind of casually muttered, “ok … go ahead.” Half of the field launched right past us on the left, and I frantically clipped in and sprinted for all I was worth. I actually managed to hit the first turn in about eighth place, and as we sent into the speed sections on the far side of the course, I worked my way up into the top five or six.
Soooooo … this is what it’s like to ride at the head of a race. Pretty cool! I’ll put in a hard effort, let it string out, and I should be able to ease up a touch on the second lap to recover a bit, and still be up amongst the leaders. As I rode along congratulating myself on finally getting a decent start, we came to a tight 180 degree left turn in the mud … and my front wheel went right out from under me.
I just managed to get my left foot down and keep myself from crashing — bashing my right quad into the top tube in the process — but now I was at a dead stop in one of the few mud puddles on the course, and trying to push myself with my left foot to get going again. As I flailed spastically — looking not unlike Gollum trying to hump a Hobbit … and the Hobbit was really fighting because they were probably in a prison shower although I’m not sure there were prisons in Hobbiton or whether Tolkien ever even touched on the existence of prison rape in Middle Earth and … what the hell was I talking about?
Oh yeah … I was flailing spastically — rider after rider after rider went by me. I finally got going again, but instead of running in the top five, I was now barely in the top twenty.
So, it was back to my usual strategy: kill myself working my way through the field to get where I should have been from the get go. An additional challenge this time was that I was racing against Cat 3s as well as 4s. The presence of faster riders, combined with a high speed course, made working my way past riders much more difficult. There was more dicing back and forth with riders — real racing — than in any race I’ve ever done. It was really fun. And really exhausting.
I came around to the barriers near the end of the first lap, and entered “The Gauntlet”. This was where 90% of the spectators were, including a huge number of my friends and teammates. If there is anything we NorEasters are good at, it’s heckling the ever-loving shit out of our teammates.
My races are usually early enough, and far away enough, that there’s never anyone there to cheer and/or heckle me. Consequently, I’ve never been subjected to the torrents of abuse that I delight in unleashing on my teammates who race after me. Not so, today. There was an army of NorEast jerseys lining the fence — many of whom I had been heckling just a few minutes earlier while they raced — and they unloaded on me as I dismounted for the barriers.
“Stop sucking!” “You’re embarrassing us!” “Don’t screw up the barriers, Bob!” “Why are you going so slow?” “Bob, you’re doing a great job … of not winning!” Music to my ears!
I almost gave them a great show, too. As I cleared the second barrier, I started to set the bike down and the rear wheel hit the barrier, throwing me off-balance at the same time that I lost my footing. I braced myself against the bike to keep from falling down. So there I am, my chest against the top tube, running/stumbling next to the bike — like a drunken Gollum trying to have another go at that Hobbit — while the crowd roared.
“Don’t fall down, that would break our hearts!” “Terrible technique!” “That was the ugliest remount I’ve ever seen!” “God, you suuuuuuck!”
And that was just the first lap.
Stay tuned for part 2.











