Orrville

Good photo from Bob Grimm.

Orrville CX

Quick update: Tony won the B race @ Orrville in style. I felt better and had a good race with Paul and Jeremy. Here are the results http://orrvillecycling.com/OrrvilleCross.php#results

Hot

Well another 2 cx race in the books. Columbus on Saturday and Orrville on Sunday. Saturday went bad and good. I ripped another tire off, because I am fat, I mean big boned. Ended up running half a lap and finished 2nd. The good part was that my legs were good. Sunday, Pretty much got my but kicked by the Cookie Monster and Twinning. I paid for the running on Saturday. The good thing is that my shoulder is still good after 2 bumpy races. I am excited to be pain free. So for this weekend the process was workin'.

Lakefront Park CX

It was a good weekend for bike racing. The Lakefront Park course was well designed by Bill Marut, Jeff Craft and company. It had real sand from Lake Erie! How cool is that. Anyway there was good racing from all of the categories. If I can figure out how to get my video camera to download we will have some cool video this week. The B race started with a Marut family hole shot. Then Tony had the lead till about halfway then Cameron took over for the WIN. Russ was ridin' clipless for the first time and looked smooth but he still got the heavy bike award. In the C race Stu made his come back to cx after a 2 year lay off, he is hooked again. The A race was a Lake Effect sweep. Rudy and Matt were workin' it. I felt better and my shoulder held up!

Cycling: It is a process

Leading up to this race my shoulder had been progressing well. I had been training and racing for the past 2 weeks. The local results were not that great, but I was training hard going into them to see if my shoulder could take the racing. The shoulder was sore after the efforts, but nothing too bad. I was well rested going into the weekend and felt fresh.
When I registered for the New York race I was very excited. I have never been to Long Island or the “Hamptons”. I knew that this would be an excellent early season test. This would be part of the process to get fast for nationals in December. The competition was as hard as it could get: the World Cyclocross Champion was flying in from Belgium to race.
The warm up went well. I arrived early on Saturday and rode 4 warm-up laps to get used to the circuit. After this I went and ate some lunch. I got back to the race site in time to warm up for an hour and get another lap on the circuit. During warm-up my legs and shoulder felt good. The course was fast and rough. The weather was hot and dry.
The start is where things went wrong for my race. I was in the 3rd row, which was good. At the start I clipped in clean and started my sprint when my chain skipped and jerked my shoulder hard. I knew right away that something was not right. I had a sharp pain in my back. I kept going for 3 laps but I could not pull up on the bar to sprint out of the corners. I pulled out.
After I pulled out, I watched the world champion win the race in a sprint. I knew after the race that I would not be able to race on Sunday because of the pain in my back. Looking back I was pushing too hard to do this race. I need to follow the process and get my shoulder back to 100% before racing against world-class competition. The next step in the process is to rest and heal.

New York UCI

Well it time to get it on. First big race since the shoulder injury. The field is loaded so we will see what happens.