Welcome Back! (Cyclocross Pre-Season)

Between House purchasing, spinning wrenches, and a variety of band performances, i have finally returned to the blog!!!!!!! It has been a year, but i promise more Cyclocross, Profanity, and Punk and Classic rock References.

CYCLOCROSS PRE-SEASON!

So Cyclocross is back... early....no not like last year.....earlier..... I know what yinz guys are saying though. "Back in my day, Granogue was the opener and there was 12 inches of mud and we had to run the barriers both ways and they were made out of drift wood rather than treated lumber". I could not comprehend waiting deep into october to get to crossing.

I had a mild freak out last week amongst the throws of building tubulars, gluing tubulars (it was like a fucking craft fair), recabling the bike, training, and then realizing i hadn't jumped onto a bike in 10 months. YIKES. In addition, the "first race" was a week away. Gosh Golly Darn, and in Ohio as well. This being my 4th?(4th....fuck....) season of cyclocross racing, I havn't ventured into Northeast Ohio racing ever before. Last year I missed the race before the Nittany Cross opener and years prior i have simply focused on MAC and MABRA. So now that both MAC and Lake Effect have moved back a week simultaneously, I would simply adorn this as Cyclocross Preseason: Warming Up.

I have heard many negatives thrown around about Ohio. "This Guy's a Jerk", "That Guy reverse scrums" "anything goes in ohio" "sounds like jungle cross" " pittsburgh is really good at Ohio Cyclocross" . All negatives (and ALL OF IT WAS TRUE!)

Manatoc park was hosting a mountain bike race weekend festival with Demo trucks, kids races, open riding the trails and course and the mountain bike race novelty of of all mountain bike race novelties a Cyclocross race, sorry trials riders. When we hit the parking lot, there was a fair amount of visable grass and race tape, a good sign. After registering and pre-riding all of it became true. Three turns into the race course, we entered the first of 5 sections of rooty singletrack. Narrow, not MTB technical, but certainly CX technical, singletrack with gigantic root cluster consuming the center of the trail, highlighted (literally) by little roots on the sides of the singletrack. In all seriousness the roots that were highlighted by orange mark-it were of little to no worry, while the clusters tested the strength of your rims, the integrity of a glue job, and the pressure choice in your clinchers, hell the pressure choice in your tubulars. The only dismount was at the end of the course, S- turn beach volleyball courts followed immediatly by a 180 to double barriers.

Carolyne raced the C race, placing 17th on her single speed cross bike. As I and the other pittsburgh guys complained about the root riddled ride (great alliteration) Carolyne thought it was the most fun part of the course. It seems though that the Mountain Bike classification, road classification, cyclocross classification is a tangled web that we weave....I feel that in events like this (MTB festival cross, or MTB series cross) is on a different level. The Beginner race is most certainly a BEGINNER's race. The B race, which is usually a rough and tumble 2/3/4 race, is very much a sport race, thus making the A race a PRO, SEMI PRO, EXPERT 1/2/3 race. Very disjointed, it always seems to come up pittsburgh even though it is clear that the ABC system of Mabra and MAC and even OVCX are not for Lake Effecting.

In my race, i got seventh. I am pleased with my result. Up the road 3+ minutes ahead were my Pittsburgh Cross Practice alums, and i rode in no mans land for the majority of the race. It was relatively uneventful for the most part, you know, preseason. I practiced cornering, spinning different gears, different lines through the roots: really testing the capabilities of the third and fourth string cyclocross moves. At one point, i almost collided with some speedgoat dude that was preriding the sandpit, which i must say was pretty beat seeing as i was actively racing in the race in 7th place with 2 laps to go. Either way, didn't crash, didnt roll a tubie, pleased with my results, ready for more

A Race seemed pretty rough, two mountainbike dudes were off the front, killing it in the single track, bunny hopping barriers and taking Gu handups...well only the one guy was, the second guy cracked super hard, zombie arms, pablo picasso guernica kinda shit. Brody, Eric, and kevin wahila were all looking pretty good. Montana Miller looked Great, as he was bringing some of that Fabio shit.

Overall, it wasn't a great race, but a good preseason warmup. Getting loose, dialing it in, soul carving.

Playlist:
Zounds-discography
Ramones-Ramones
NOFX- Punk in Drublic
Operation Ivy
The Blood