Orrville wrap up

Race # 2 is in the books and that rounds out the Orrville series. Today was a good day. Weather was nice for the most part but it started to rain/sleet during the A race which made things a little messy. Quite a few crashes due to the wet areas on the course too. You would think that no-one here in North East Ohio has ever ridden in this stuff before, jeez............(Foolin')

Tony rocked the A race. He was flyin' with Jeremy, Shawn, Matt and for a little while, Paul. Matt unfortunately crashed right before the pavement on the uphill which allowed Tony to take over 4th. spot. Jeremy and Tony then battled it out for about 5 or 6 laps until Tony crashed on the last lap which allowed Jeremy to gap him and finish about 10 seconds ahead of him. Tony said he wished it could have been a sprint finish, he said he wanted to know what it would have been like to sprint with Jeremy, but 4th. aint too bad in the stacked field.....

I got off to a pretty decent start and was riding pretty good until I started to yo yo off the main pack on about the 2nd.ish lap. I rode alone for a while then John E. and John L. caught up to me and we raced around for a while. Both John's were attacking hard and the pace was very hard and fast. John E. crashed in the back of the course and dropped his chain under his 3rd. eye and that allowed me to get around him, if it wasn't for that I wouldn't have passed him, he was riding strong, Nice job John!
I came around onto the last lap and had 1 to go when Paul was just finishing. Finished the race in 12th. out of about 20, not bad for me in the A race as I should be in the Masters group. The Orrville course is a fun course but a power course that doesn't really suit my riding style. I had a problem with it last year as well as this year. It will make you a stronger rider though I think.

Nice job to my teammates too. Robert killed the C race and won again in fine fashion. Nate flatted but was riding strong. Julie won again in the Womens A, what else is new :-) Shawn 2nd., Tony 4th., Rudy 6th., Matt 7th., Derek, 10th. me 12th., in the A race.

Up next is Brett Davis' beer fest Chagrin CX on Saturday, (yea baby) and our Kirtland Park race on Sunday.

Rest up.

Cramer

Atomic Balm and Red Hot. I just bought this stuff yesterday. 40 miles on the road bike last night with the Atomic Balm on and no knee warmers and my legs were toasty. By the time I got home I was exhaling condensation, it was cold, like 44 degrees cold and my legs were warm. I tried the Red Hot in just a small spot and it might be TOO HOT. When I got in the shower after the ride it was still working, kinda like sunburn, and it was still working when I went to bed! Good stuff, so if you smell some Ben Gay sort of smell on the start line of the next cross race, it's me.

Gotta Go.

Happy

17th. today T.
Best of everything to you always!

Mom, Dad and Nick

Orrville Cross

Orrville Cycling did a nice job with this course, it was run in the backward direction from last year though with more road sections and a few more twists and turns, it was a true power course, and those barriers after the pavement hill in the back were killer!

After Spins race on Saturday and climbing the hill so many times my legs were sure talking to me during this race. I rode strong and finished on the same lap but I was in no mans land for what seemed like 1/2 the race. It started fast and the intensity never ceased. I was in a group of 3 for quite a while and going through the up and down switchbacks in the back set of pine trees I somehow let a gap go and that was it. Jared Z. and I were together for a lap or 2 and then he came off and then I seemed to get a 2nd. wind. I kept attacking the corners and hammering the flats to keep the speed up and in the end I finished on the same lap. I only wish I would have had the motivation during the first half.

Paul won, then Shawn, Jeremy, Cameron, Rudy, Dave S., Tony, Jeff Braumberger and then I'm not really sure how it played out from there. I was 12th. in a 17-20 man or so A field, no Masters class in this race.

Tony had a good race today. He was with Rudy and Dave for most of the race and said he felt much better today than he did on Saturday. I could see him on the course and it's really awesome to see him riding strong and fast with a fast group and hanging in there.

Robert again dominated the C field. Give him a few more years and he, Cameron, Tony and Drew are going to be the ones to beat in the A field.

I was reading in the paper about the young boxer from Youngstown named Kelly Pavlik. He normally fights in the 160lb. weight class and was 40-0, World Champion in that weight class. He wanted to move up to the 170lb. weight class and fight a boxer named Bernard Hopkins who has been fighting for years and is much older at 43, and is also a former World Champion. Well they fought this past weekend and the 43 year old Hopkins beat the younger Pavlik in a 12 round unamious decision. In the after fight interview Hopkins said that there was someone else in his division that wanted to fight him and he said that he better make his mind up before January because he's hinting about retiring. Hopkins said that this 1965 car sometimes has a hard time getting started and anyone that is still doing ANYTHING in sports at that age is doing good.

That put's things into perspective, at least for me it does. If I'm still able to race with the younger guys in this sport and do fairly well, Great. If not, that's part of the picture. That's why Masters racing was invented. It sure is fun to train and race though in all racing disciplines, and I don't think I will ever be too old for it!

Thanks for reading.

Spin's

Cross Your Heart Cross, or more like Cross Your Eye's Cross. That hill did some damage on the way up, but on the way down, it was great, like a really fast sled ride. Remember sledding when you were a youngster, you would really not look forward to the uphill slog of carrying your sled back to the top because it took like 5 times as long going back up as it did going down, but the down outweighed the up, that's the way it was for me yesterday, but much more fun.

Spin did an excellent job once again on this event, Thanks to all the Spin guys for this one and the Brewing Company afterwards was key. Railway Razz, good stuff!

I felt good the whole race and finished where I probably should have. I rode strong the whole race, did not bobble anything and did not leave anything on the course. The overall results weren't up yet when we left the Brewing Company so I don't know where Tony or I finished overall or in our classes. I do believe I was either 4th. or 5th. in the 40+ Masters. The overall winner Gary Pflug is a Master as well, Nice Job!

Tony was sitting in about 11th. in the A race most of the time when he hit something in the big mud pit and went down, right in the mud. His bike starting acting up, so he switched bike's and finished strong. He thinks he was 1 place behind Ray so that would have made him 17th.

Lots of clean up after this one, about $8 in quarters at the spray car wash for the bikes, shoes helmets and bibs.

Great job to everyone today on this race. The course had a really good flow to it and was fun to race, fun in a weird sense though.........

Orrville on Sunday.

Bike update

New cables, housings, removed about a half a shotglass of sand from my shifter levers and repaired innner lever, bartape etc. etc. I noticed too that my drive side pedal seemed a little loose, so I tried tightening it and it was already tight, hmmmmmm. I have the BB 30 style bottom bracket with the STI carbon cranks. The pedal threads into the crankarm by the way of a star shaped aluminum pressed in insert that can't really fall out, but it wobbles and when clipped in feels like it's going to fall out.
While going over the bike at Bike Authority on Monday, Rudy and I were brainstorming and came up with the idea of drilling and tapping into both sides of the crank arm and threading in some setscrews that would hold the insert in place and then drilling and tapping through the top of the arm and through the insert then threading the pedal in and gently tightening the setscrew so that the pedal is locked in also. It works great and Cannondale is going to make good on the defective cranks. This will tide me over until a new set arrive at the shop.

No sand this weekend, YES!

See everyone this weekend.

UCI Weekend

Saturday was Sunset Park in Middletown. Nice course with alot of technical stuff in it with a nice amount of road and also technical climbs. Got a pretty decent start, felt good over the barriers and over the run up and was over my limit for a while, but that's a cross race. Got settled into a rythym and had a pretty decent race finishing 35th. in a UCI Cat.2 race with nearly 70 racers. Great day.

Tony's race was FAST. He finished 12th. in a loaded field with a lot of fast guys in the top 10, I would say there were nearly 60 in his field also. He said he felt good, he rode strong and looked good the whole race.

Very good day on Saturday. Racing and watching the other races and the Pro's is a good day anytime. Went back to the Manchester after everything was done, got some pizza and beer, cooled down, watched some UFC and relaxed, fell asleep and dreamed of pleasant things to come.


Sunday was UCI Cat.1 Harbin Park in Fairfield. This was another story, a bad dream actually, for me, anyway. Lined up about 4 rows back, got a good start and was feeling good until the first downhill sandtrap. This is where it all get's blurry for me. I was flying into the pit, as was everyone else when all of a sudden WHAM, and I mean WHAM! I went down head first and did a summersault or 2, shoot for all I know it could have even been 3, no, Lynn said it was more like 1 1/2, in-between laughs. Anyway I picked my bike and myself up and took off after the guys that had passed me. Got a couple hundred yards out and tried to shift and it wasn't happening, my shifter was full of sand and my rear derailleur wasn't working. I jumped off the bike, banged my shifter around and found that my chain was off the rear derailleur, put that back on and off I go. I get around the sharp right hander by the staging area and go to downshift and my shifter is totally not working. I have Sram shifters and the inside lever was bent almost straight out and sticking on the outside of the brake lever! I jump off and try to bang on it a little to get it to work but that's not happening either. Oh well, my race is over!! I try to hang in there and pick a few riders off and have 4 gears to do it with. I eventually catch up to Derek and he and I pull each other along for 3 laps or so, catching a few, and eventually finish a lap down. The group was just too far ahead and too strong for us to catch being that far back. There certainly was some confusion at the end with the official also. It seemed like he pulled alot of riders and dnf'd alot of riders that were not lapped. I'm thinking he did it due to time constraints, doesn't make it right though.

Tony on the other hand had another very good race. He ended up 10th. in the Mens 3 field and the first Ohio rider in a 60 man field, 22 riders from Ohio, Nice job T.

Tony had a great weekend and is getting stronger. All the young riders are doing very well. Robert Sroka had a Great weekend too. He won at Sunset and had a 3rd., only due to a mechanical, or he would have won on Sunday at Harbin. Drew B. and Eric M. both had great races as well. It's great to see so many from our area competing in these large races and doing good. Keep up the good work guys, you are the future of this sport!

Julie had back to back wins this weekend and is a house a fire right now, keep up the strong riding. Julie is winning everything she enters!

This weekend is another 2 race weekend with Spin on Saturday and Orrville on Sunday.

See you there.

HOT and DRY

and in the mid 80's is the forecast for Cincinnati this weekend. We'll see how it goes........ Quite a few racers from around the Cleveland area are making the trip South this weekend for the 3 day UCI cyclocross festival starting today in Burlington Kentucky, moving on to Middleton Oh. for Saturday and finally Cincy. on Sunday.

Stacked fields in all categories. The elite fields in both the Men's and Women's are full and should be great fun to watch. It should be exciting in the womens elite to watch Katie Compton and Georgia Gould battle it out with Laura van Gilder and Sue Butler, as in the men's, Wicks, Summerhill, Adams, Marenchin, Powers, Wells, etc. go toe to toe, it's going to be very exciting racing.

Hopefully for us, just good hard racing from start to finish, ending up with a couple races that will be stored in the memory banks as, Those were a couple of the best cross races that we ever did. Actually everyone deserves a few good races now and then. We all put alot into this sport and it's nice to be able to say, nice, I think the training is paying off here, and for sure a little luck every now and then doesn't hurt either ;-)

Later all.

OUCH

about sum's it up for my race. I wouldn't normally have raced the A race, but since there wasn't a Masters race I knew I was in for some hurtin', and hurt it did.
The first few laps I was pretty much at my limit. The legs weren't what you would call "there" either, so I thought I would try to get as much out of them as I could early and maybe establish some type of gap that I would be able to maintain before they totally gave out on me. It really wasn't meant to be though. Each 2 laps it seemed I gave up a couple positions. I was fine in the technical sections, but the grass sections really put me in the hurt bag, not to mention the ditch crossing. I'm still not certain if it would have been easier to run the ditch and remount? I rode all the crossing except the last 2 every time.

I think where I really burnt my 1 and only match so to speak was where Derek, John E. me and a Spin rider were at the far end of the course where the grassy mud section was just before the sharp right hander to the outside of the fence. I told John, who was in front of me at that time, we have to make a move around the Spin rider, I don't think he heard me, so I attacked and got the position to head to the outside of the fence first. Once on the outside I attacked again to try to get a gap and get through the ditch section and gain more time. Through the ditches and into the grassy areas and I knew I should have probably not have done that, oh well, I had to try. My legs were really feeling it and I was really gassed. I think I held the gap for maybe 2 laps when I knew it was just a matter of time before I would try to latch onto a wheel when someone would go by. John and Dave got by and I could't hold their pace. Ryan went by and I was able to stay with him to the finish.
I saw Paul coming up strong and really was hoping that we could hold him off so we could finish with 9 laps, but he and Ernie were battling it out for 1,2 and he had the hammer down. Paul ended up passing Ryan and me right near the bleachers only a few hundred feet from the start finish. Ryan and I finished 12th. 13th. both with the same finishing time, but with 8 laps.

Tony had an exceptional race. He rode strong the whole time and he and Rudy were together for most of the race when Rudy pulled away from him with 2 to go. Tony said he lost Rudy on top of the mound section when he bobbled and Rudy pulled away and Tony wasn't able to reel him back in. He said his legs felt great and was riding back and forth for 5th. and 6th. the whole race. At the end he finished 6th. in a very strong field. Nice not to have a mechanical or a flat huh Tony?

We had a great team showing too, a total of 16 team mates raced with some very nice finishes. Robert won the C race, Julie won the Womens race, Shawn was 3rd. in the A, Matt, Rudy and Tony were 4,5,6. NICE JOB! Hat's off to everyone on this race, it was technical and hard, no doubt about it.

Great job goes out to Kevin Kimmich for putting this race on, Thank You!

This weekend promises to be more hurtin' for certain again too, I'm sure, lookin' forward to it though and lookin' forward to racing better!

Thanks for reading.

Lookin' forward

to racing again tomorrow. Hopefully we can race flat free too, we'll see, at this point I'm not ruling anything out. Hopefully there will be a good turnout for this race. We had a pretty good training week even though it rained quite a bit. I was pretty tired earlier in the week and don't know why, old age maybe? Nah, stayin up late watching all the political shows on t.v prior to the veep debate. Went over my bike and swapped out my rear brakes, they were lookin' a little thin. Jeff Craft and I rode at the outdoor Y on Thursday and I noticed my brakes weren't hookin up real good in the wet conditions, besides, Dr. John looked at em last Sunday and asked if they actually do work, I said yea, I just have to toe em in a little more.........

After the race tomorrow there is a nice little place real close to go and get a bite to eat before the trip home. I know when you get home after a race no-one really wants to start preparing stuff to eat, this place will do the trick, lotsa beers there too!

See ya tomorrow.