ain't hibernatin'

Bull City Cycling's not dead. It just smells funny.

Okay, so we've been negligent in our blogging, but it doesn't mean we haven't been riding. But speaking of not riding, one of the things we've been working on (off the bike) is round 13 of the North Carolina Cyclocross Series: The Counter Culture Cup, Saturday, January 22nd, 2011, Orange County Speedway. Big props to Regulator Cycling (sweet blog, guys) who secured Counter Culture Coffee as the title sponsor. Here's the proposed course map.

Back to the bike, Linus has made it his goal to hit all the NCCX races he can. After some bad luck with a broken wheel at Hendersonville day one, he bounced back for a solid Sunday ride in the CX-2/3 and returned to his good form with a 6th place in Statesville. For me, the Hendersonville races were kinda hectic. After a 4 hour drive to compete in a large combined CX2 and 3 field, they gave CX3 guys call-ups and left the presumably faster CX2s with the crummiest start positions. It was kind of disappointing, having to battle up past slower guys while the race leaders rode away. Not that I would have won, and not to be that guy who blames a crummy result on everything except himself, but I would have liked to see how I would have done with a better starting position. My li'l brother, who has abandoned the BCC for a local New Jersey team has still been rockin' his BCC hat to podium finishes in the NJ series. He's threatening to come down for the Durham race, so we can see the battle of the NC vs NJ CX3s.

In addition to Linus' busted wheel, Daniel cracked his SECOND Stumpjumper frame (which Specialized promptly replaced). But our most troublesome mechanicals have been occurring off the bike. I rolled into the Charlotte race with a rapidly deflating tire on my car. I ended up dropping several seasons of Dugasts worth of dough on new car tires. But this was trivial compared to Linus and Margaret's timing belt explosion on their drive back from Statesville. Fortunately they were able to get off the freeway and secure a ride home with out any major trouble, but unfortunately, they are probably in need of a new car. Subsequently, if any automobile repair shops and/or dealerships are interested in sponsoring Bull City Cycling, either with free car repairs or loaner vehicles to drive to races, please contact me. (BMW, Mercedes, Range Rover? Any of these would be acceptable.)

Cold weather is making road riding somewhat unpleasant, so many of the gang have been trying to avoid the windchill by hitting the trails on their mountain bikes. In the meantime, it means more time hanging out indoors and hopefully more blogworthy updates.

the opposite of ouch

...which is to say, here's a video that doesn't depict physical pain, although it may provide that psychological punch-to-the-gut where you realize that you suck at riding the bike:



if todd wells actually really committed to his second barrier hop, he may have been able to round out a full flip.

Ouch!

Don't try this at home.

NCCX Race 4 Salisbury - NC State Championship

Typically the Salisbury course is a decent one for me. It is fast and with both straightaway sections, winding sections and semi-technical wooded paths. There are two dismounts, one over the barriers and one up a brief stair run-up, neither of which are demanding. Anything that keeps me on the bike longer is better for me.

But on this day it simply did not matter.

I have not written up any race reports this year despite starting (and finishing) all four NCCX races this fall. After feeling pretty good on the road toward the end of the summer I had set some reasonable goals for this series of top ten finishes in the Cat 3. After a somewhat disappointing first race in the top 20 I hit near the mark in Raleigh with 11th. That was a great race and lots of Bull City bikes were on hand. A bigger disappointment followed that week with an 18th place in Boone. A nagging hamstring injury had me dragging myself up the hills on that course. The highlight of these last two races was that Linus is really performing. He is starting at the front and finishing well scoring top 10's in both races. I was not and thus have not been too motivated to describe these moments. Back to Salisbury. Chris, Linus and I hit the road from Durham. It was a beautiful, sunny day and by start time the chill morning air had warmed and everyone was feeling good after catching an extra hour of sleep that night. The hamstring injury lingered but I was trying to put it out of my mind. Linus and I lined up and both started well. Linus was up in the top 3 and I was somewhere near the top 10 on the first lap. This had me even or ahead of some of the consistent top ten finishers. On the second lap I hit the barriers, my leg cramped and I lost a place or two. Just after, on the run up a guy decided that I was going too slow in front of him but instead of side stepping he decided to ram me from behind. This was just enough to drop my chain which I realized upon remounting and spinning hopelessly as I got passed by about 8 guys. These are the moments that make or break your race. Mine got broke. I am pretty calm during mechanicals and got the chain back on. Then it hit me how many spots had been lost and suddenly I felt my hamstring again, realized I actually had not gotten that extra hour of sleep, that my kids were asking where their father was, that the last month of work had been filled with 14 hour days and I struggled for the rest of the race. The good news is that I could see Linus up front every once in awhile and I could tell he was doing well. On the second to last lap I had been riding with a guy that I knew from the races. We have generally been at about the same level. I have typically been able to stay away from him on the fast non-techinical sections but he makes up time on me through the difficult ones with really smooth riding. I put in a late attack on one of the long paved straightaways but could not really get any kind of gap. I had no power in my left leg. He passed me at the entry to the last wooded section and slipped away to finish in the top 15. I held most of my ground and finished 18th but had already decided to skip the next race and rest. Linus had a great race and finished 4th narrowly missing out on the podium. I'll let him tell you that story. Regardless he should get a call up this weekend and hope to hear he makes the podium on what should be a challenging course in Charlotte. Chris raced next to a mid-pack finish in the Pro 1-2 race. All these guys are really fast. To put it in perspective some of the top finishers in the Cat 3's who have recently upgraded have struggled in this race finishing close to the back of the pack. So a mid-pack finish is certainly good and I don't have to tell you all how strong a rider Chris is.
We stuck around long enough to talk to Geoff and Corey and watch the first couple of laps of their race and it's great for Bull City Cycling to have a presence in every category.

Rest for me over the next month is an absolute with hopes for better results come winter. You have to be excited about hosting the second to last race of the series with the Regulators out at Orange County. Hopefully everyone will get a chance to check out what is a great cyclocross series. With that I will leave it to Chris, Linus, Corey and Geoff to keep us up to date on the racing scene.

Stolen Bike

Please keep a look out for Adam H's bike (above), which was stolen earlier in the week from Duke's West Campus.

Since when the picture was taken, the front fender, bar
tape and lights had been removed. Full description is:

Light blue/green ("celeste") Bianchi road bike, lugged steel
Fixed gear (only one gear and can't coast)
Rear fender, no front
Front brake, no rear
Bare aluminum handlebars, no bar tape

If you see this bike, ask the person riding it to hand it over, or if you know where Adam can find it, contact us here.
Thanks.

HPCX

After a week of sickness and long hours at work, I happily lined up in my fifth row start position for the HPCX, aka. Garden State worlds. Ok, I made that last part up but it might as well as have been since this was like the who's who of the Men's Cs in Jersey, only with folks from PA, DE, CT, and NY in attendance. The start had us racing up a deceptively difficult slope, first on pavement and then on grass. I'd say I was at my best for the first part of this race, tri-poding through corners and passing folks to move up into the top 10--nevermind I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I guess since some NYVelocity dude ran me into the tape on the far side of the course on the second lap only to fall right in front of me and then give me the stink eye (really?! how is this my fault, when I've come to a complete halt?), I can blame this and not the fact that I blew up not long afterwards trying to chase back. But really it was too late, I watched the front trio--some skinny guy in a blue skinsuit and two larger dudes who were appropriately aboard Giants--ride off. I'd see them occasionally for the rest of the race, but less frequently as time passed.

At the end of the race, I was just happy that it was over and as I stood recounting my 45 minutes of glory with my friend Shawn, the skinny guy in blue introduced himself as the Professor's brother. It was nice to meet and hang out with Oishikatta and his wife afterwards, although I wish I hadn't spent most of that time coughing uncontrollably.

Incidentally, Oishikatta won my race--his first win, ever (I think)--which I found strangely familiar and even comforting.

Word. Here are couple of photos from the interwebs:

Past, present, and future

As Ali posted, VeloNews posted my recent exploits as the old man racing with the college kids. Once again all I saw was the "party in the back" side of Oakes' flowing mullet, though, based on his speed, obviously also consists of much "business up front". Since this hairstyle appears to give him Sampson-like powers, there appears to be only one way I can beat him:


I had to work in the forest in the morning (the "study" part of the student life) so I missed rad racing by Linus and Jay, although I did manage to catch a glimpse of Geoff, Ben, and Corey ripping through their race.

Linus already knew how to ride fast, but he learned that fancy wheels don't mean nothing if tires are not attached to them and that finishing well don't mean nothing if the referees don't record your finishing position and you don't catch them before the protest period is over. Jay was just out of the top-ten after working ridiculous hours and being a responsible father. I suspect that that his company's work at NCSU is actually being purposely slowed down by students who are also cyclocross racers (and co-hosted Sunday's race) in an attempt to keep him down, but those antics won't work. Hopefully other BCC guys will write up their race reports. We had awesome support, particularly from Chef Daniel who provided words of encouragement so helpful that I won't sully them with some cooking-related metaphor.

Weekend racing was fun and we collected some useful data we'll use to plan our upcoming race at Orange County Speedway. I've seen a decent number or courses in my 10 years or so of cyclocross racing, but to build the best possible course, we're digging back into the archives to give it a classic, old school flavor:

of course, we'll be co-hosting this race with Durham's Regulators, and we all know that Regulators can kick it old school:

Reading Soundtrack

This is the song that I like to cue up and listen to while reading about the Professor in Velonews.

Geez

Source: All Hail the Blackmarket

all, none, and some

roll call. where we at? lots of Durhamites made it out to Cary on Sunday for the first local cyclocross race. some familiar faces from the Wednesday night Forest Hills park practices, including the winners of the C race (Byron from Inland) and the A race (Paul who races for some bread company). Lots of the Tyler's/Garneau guys were out. Good representation from the Regulators and the Inland guys. But where were all the BCC guys? Of course, I wasn't expecting all of us to show, but there nearly none of us.



To be fair, I only heard about this race at the end of last week and didn't try too hard to rally people to attend. I was on the fence until Saturday afternoon, participating in only one of two days' worth of collegiate cx races in Winston-Salem. It was actually a pretty crazy course, about 2/3 hay field and 1/3 tight singletrack including a unridable combo of a creek crossing and muddy hill followed by a nearly-unridable steep descent into a heavily-padded tree, then back over the creek. I crashed kinda hard trying to ride this section on a warmup lap (I was just riding along, suddenly realizing that my front wheel had kinda lost momentum, and the next thing I knew, I was upside down, twisted through my bicycle). That race strung out into a long line and after getting behind someone who forgot how to clip into their pedals at the start line, needed to slowly pick my way back from last place. I rode okay, but was fighting a losing battle against dudes who were long gone by the end of the first lap.

The Cary course was interesting. Some grass, some singletrack, some gravel. But pavement; none. It began with a mad dash on loose gravel. Lots of sideways sliding, some folks went down, but surprisingly no major crashes. Then we were funneled into some freshly-cut, still rather lumpy singletrack. Not technical, but people were nervously trying to pass where there was no space and not trying hard enough not to crash where they should not need to try very hard not to crash. Then back to some gravel before a long, winding grass section, only slightly uphill, but enough so that it really made the legs burn. And repeat.

Since the course was kinda crit-like, my goal was to stay with the pack--the main group. I dug in at last wheel in the front group for the first couple of laps, jumping past dudes who looked about ready to pop or about ready to fall down. This went fine until our gang of ten broke in half, with me on the losing half. This half blew up and I tried to bridge up with Isaac (Three Peaks victor, formerly of Bicycle Chain fame) who dropped me and made the lead group, for a few laps before being spit back out. I yoyoed in no-man's land until rejoining with a group of 5 or so, which looked dangerously strong and seemed to be going dangerously slow. Before these other guys got the idea that they might be much stronger than me I launched an attack and broke up this group into a smaller, more tired, and possibly grumpier group. Sometime around this time I threw up. Just some. In my mouth.

Then some other stuff happened. Finally in a group of three the dude from the dentist team jumped. I couldn't close him down in the end, but held off the Mock Orange Bikes guy to take 6th. The few times I've been in the money, I make less than the entry fee. In terms of payout, I figured a 6th place would earn me none. However, the super special 6th place prize was a 6-pack of Carolina Brewing Company Pale Ale. I even had some extra to share in the parkinglot, but the BCC crew was nowhere to be seen.

So we'll rally for next weekend. The start of the NC series.

Linus Bikes

Those of us who've known him for some time or even those who have just recently met him know that our man Linus is a fashion plate: purple deep v-neck shirt anyone? So it seems entirely fitting that Linus has a line of bikes named after him and that these have merited mention in the style pages of the journal of record. A couple of weeks ago I excitedly called the Professor when I saw my first Linus Bike being salmoned against traffic by a Beautiful Godzilla like the one above. Long live Linus!

media bias

Richmond: Okay, so NC State made the headlines, but you can clearly see me in the mix.

Thank you thank you. I'll be signing autographs after the show.

Racing was fast. Dry and dusty. Gained two pounds of dirt in my lungs, but avoided being one of many people with unfortunate (and very expensive) mechanicals. Glue factories will be working overtime this week to get tubulars remounted on rims across the southeast.

Turnout in Virginia was slightly smaller than NC series races, but the Altius club, with help from VCU, ran two nice races. Flat and grassy on Saturday, steep and rocky on Sunday. My starts were still a little slow, but I quickly settled into the middle and steadily worked my way up. Both courses seemed short. We were running about 5 minute laps. There's nothing like racing hard for 20 minutes, then seeing the 7-laps-to-go sign. Nevertheless, I was happy with my form in the first two races of the season, two top-ten finishes and second out of the collegiate guys. My legs held up. The tire glue held up. Mission accomplished.

There was also supposedly some racing up in Providence.