Forgive me father, it has been 20 days since my last race. I missed the SSCXWC race because I thought it was single-sped only, but turns out that was not the case. Then I missed the King County Cross and Fort Stillicum races the next weekend because I was sick. To add to the excuses, I also wasn’t commuting as much as usual because I was under the weather. So my physical performance wasn’t so hot going into the race. But I was finally officially sporting the Recycled Cycles Racing blue and gold jersey.
Rob clearly not working hard enough at Maris Farms
Then I got to Maris Farms and discovered a whole new excuse–the course from hell. It had been raining pretty heavily leading up to the race and the pumpkin friendly soil at Maris Farms is a dense clay-like dirt that does a great job of absorbing all that water. Beverly Park was soggy and muddy, like really wet cement and it sucked the life out of me. Maris Farms was soggy and dense, more like cement getting ready to dry. It made Beverly look easy.
To further complicate things, the friendly team at Seattle Cyclocross setup a course that had lots of slimy switchbacks, lots of uphill climbs and a ridiculously deep mud bog. I did one warm up lap and found it to be so hard that I decided my warmup time would be better spent doing laps in the parking lot.
When they made the announcement for callups, I headed down to the staging area and waited for my name. Last time they called everyones name, so I laid towards the back, but this time they only called the first three rows. Since I learned start position plays a big role in finish position, I tried to sneak up a few spots on the outside, but the officials booted me to the back. So I started dead last.
I gained a few spots out of the gate because I chose to run the first couple hundred feet and was able to jockey my way around a lot of people. From there I was holding my spot, but after the first lap I was starting to feel wiped, gasping for air. Then in the second lap I heard the announcer say “four more to go” and thought to myself WTF I’m never going to make it. Normally we do four laps total, but apparently this course was shorter even though it felt longer. At this point I had to dial it back a little so I could pace myself enough to ensure my result wasn’t DNF.
I chose a couple of riders to track my pace with and kept with them for the rest of the race. On the last lap, we got lapped by the leaders of the regular Cat 4 field–they blew my doors off. And then next thing I knew the bells were ringing and there was only one lap to go! I finished towards the bottom of the pack, 42 out of 61 who finished, but the first 25 did 5 laps and I only did 4…so not sure if that finish even counts…
we hung out with the family and my buddy Joel for the next few races and then we headed to the kiddie course to get Thomas and Charlotte warmed up. I pulled the cranks off Charlotte’s bike to turn it into a pedal bike, but she didn’t like it. Thomas on the other hand was amped up in his cycling kit taking hot practice laps. I can’t wait to get him one of those mini-cyclocross bikes like the bigger kids.
Let's race?
Concentration
Silver Lake Cyclocross
I’m almost starting to lose track, this was my sixth race. Seems like just yesterday I was doing my first race. This week’s race was up north in Everett at Silver Lake. My Snohomish County master plan involved going pumpkin hunting after the race, so I hitched a ride in the Recycled Cycles team van so I could take off with the family after the race.
This week I didn’t do any bike wrenching the night before the race, I waited until seconds before the race for that. I pre-ran the course on the same setup as last week and decided I didn’t need the mud tires, so I swapped to the file tread tires. Those wheels don’t quite line up with the brakes, so I had to start monkeying with the brakes which turned into a horrible feedback loop. When call-ups came, I gave up and made them really loose and focused on getting my clothes on instead. I made to the staging area just in time. The only thing I forgot to do was turn on my $3 helmet camera.
This weeks course was pure hell. The whole thing might as well have been one big sand trap because that is all I remember. From the start, we had a brief stint on the tarmac then we hit the sand. You could ride it a little while, but then it got too thick for me and it was time to run. I suck at running and I really suck at running in sand carrying a bike. The first lap had us skip the far side of the course and double back through some more sand, but after that we headed into the perimeter of the park for a run-up with a single barrier then up and through some trails where I spent my time focused on trying to regain my breath after the sand. After some nice trail running, we were back on the tarmac and headed to the sand trap we were diverted to on the first lap. I was able to ride most of this sand except for the last 20-30 feet by the pits where it got really deep. From there we headed back onto the trails and up hill–hard to believe it, but riding uphill was a nice cool down after the sand. Then we winded through the woods, up and down and around. Hit an uphill double set of barriers then we climbed back to the top of the park for another technical descent. I played leapfrog with this guy from Old Town the whole race. He’d pass me in the sand and I’d pass him here. Once we got back to sea level it was a few turns and we’re back on the tarmac to the finish line. Rinse and repeat three more times, then keel over.
Considering the course was geared towards people who know how to run and have big lungs, I was really surprised to see that I came in 38/81 this week. My first time above the 50th percentile!
As usual, my favorite photographer, Dennis Crane Photography took this shot of me.
Kids Race
This week’s kids race was really well organized. They broke the field into three groups: training wheels, self selected 5 laps and self selected 10 laps. Charlotte did the training wheels course and Thomas did the 5-lap course. Charlotte was having some issues with the bike this week, but Amanda helped her make it to the finish. Thomas rocked it again with excellent cornering and started to get a lot more strategic about going around traffic jams. I tried to convince him to do the 10-lap race, but he said he was exhausted after the 5-lap race.
Charlotte coming into the finish
Thomas' mounting technique
Determined Thomas
Thomas enjoying his winnings
Seattle Cyclocross Beverly Park Analysis
Even with the insane weather, I had a great time at the muddy Beverly Park Cyclocross race.
As usual, I was curious how I stacked up against the other riders in my category. This time I did even better, 36/68, almost above the halfway mark.
I was also curious as to how I stacked up against what appeared to be the much faster riders that went after me.
I grabbed all the result data from Seattle Cyclocross and loaded it into Tableau and found some interesting stuff. The Cat 4 races had the fastest average lap times–even faster than the Cat 1/2 elite race. The most likely explanation was that Cat 4 races were the first race of the day when the course still had some terra firma left, where every race after the 130+ deep Cat 4 field was in soupy mud. Plus we only had to race for 30 minutes. The Cat 1/2 guys had to go for a full hour in way worse conditions. It’s amazing they were as fast as they were!
You can check out the data via the interactive widget below. You can filter the race categories by clicking on the right and if you click on the data it will show you all the results below.
Please leave a comment if you experience any display errors with the Tableau Viz widget below. I’m working with them to debug a random logged in Google screen showing instead of the Tableau Viz.
Beverly Park CX: Sunday Bloody Sunday
The forecast called for monsoon rain all weekend, which translated to our first real muddy cyclocross race, or the first real cyclocross race as I came to learn.
Last Minute Wrenching
The muddy forecast meant that my new tires were going to get their first workout. Since I was going to swap tires I thought now would also be a good time for a little other bike maintenance.
My canti brakes hardly stopped on dry pavement plus the front chatter was frightening, so I installed some tektro rx5 mini-v brakes front and rear. They went on pretty easy, but my front wheel is out of true and I couldn’t get it dialed, so it took a while to get the brake adjusted. I never could get it wide enough, so I had a little spot that rubbed. Only complaint is that they don’t really engage until near the very end of the pull just like the discs on the Big Dummy. Otherwise, they stop great!
I’ve been meaning to rerout my cables to the top tube from the bottom of the downtube to keep mud out of the cables and to make it easier to carry. While I had the brake cables off I thought it would be a good time to tackle it. The K2 has two standard cable mounts and one hydraulic line mount. I used a full length of housing to fit in the hydraulic mount. The routing went well until I realized the front derailieur wouldnt work being pulled from the top. I raced over to Recycled Cycles where Spoony found me and old XT derailieur and a chain keeper. I came home and futzed with it for a while, but could never get it perfect. It’s just the wrong part for the job. I really need to stop last minute repair/upgrades.
Race Day
I woke to the monsoon rain on Sunday and loaded up my junk and headed to Beverly Park. I was early enough to score great parking, but late enough to hit a giant line in the rain at the pre-registered table. After getting signed up I did a practice lap–the course was painfully slow; wet, soggy grass and mud. You couldn’t stop pedaling, otherwise you’d come to a stop. I was getting a little worried about having enough energy to make it four laps.
The course got worse as time went on. By time our race started at 9:15 there was no little virgin ground left and when our 130+ rider field finished the course was a disaster.
The race started on the Beverly Park field. We did a loop around the field on the grass and then it was on. One barrier got us onto the track, once across the track we had a giant, thorny and muddy hill climb. My shoes generally suck because my heel is always pulling out, but they sucked even more today in the mud. I was slipping and ended up halfway falling down, but my bike got wedged between the ground and my lip so I was able to keep moving, but didn’t know what happened to my lip. I could taste blood, my tooth was in one piece and it didn’t hurt so I figured it couldn’t be that bad and kept rolling. From there we had a couple of switchbacks then into the back field where it was super wet, soggy grass–the super slow part of the pre-ride. There was a set of barriers that you could come in as fast as you wanted and it didn’t matter because as soon as you unclipped you would nearly stop. After the barriers we slogged our way through a bunch of switchbacks and finally hit pavement for a brief moment–it was so nice to wind it up and then coast for a second. From there it was back on the course via a little slick, cambered, uphill turn that you could hit fast, but the risk of running into a tree was high–I avoided that fate. The grass was under some trees at that point, so it wasn’t too slow, but then we came into a set of switchbacks on a muddy hill which if you missed you ended up in a tent–typically the tent next to ours. Then headed to a mud bog 180 turn to a hill climb that led to another 180 that started the descent back to the track. A little fast track time, then it was back onto the grass along the outside of the track to the end of the track where all the standing water lived for a few more switchbacks. I was really impressed with my new tires being able to pedal through all the water and mud in this part of the course. Many people were just running it, but I was able to pedal as fast or faster than them. After burning all my energy in the mud we were dropped back on the track for a few seconds of recovery before going back on the soggy field for some switchbacks to the finish line. Then we only had to do it three more times…
Here’s a self portrait of me after the race. My lip doesn’t even look that bad.
And here are some awesome shots from DBC.
Post Race Show
After my ride I hung out at the Recycled Cycles tent and took a bunch of pictures, 1,100+ to be almost exact.
You can check out all the photos for the 10:15, 11:15 and 12:15 races here and the 1:15 Cat 1/2 race here.
I also did an analysis of the average lap times for this race.
CX Race #4: SCCA/Starbucks GP
This weekend was the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance and Starbucks GP at Five Mile Park in Federal Way. MFG Cyclocross organized the race and I was a little worried based on my Rad Racing GP experience, but I was pleasantly surprised with their performance on this one–they did a great job!
After reviewing the schedule, I decided the extra 33% (10 minutes) of racing time was worth an extra 50 minutes of sleep so I skipped the 9:30 Cat 4 masters race and went with the 10:20 regular Cat 4 race.
I arrived at the park a little before 9 which gave me plenty of time to register. I skipped pre-registration because it didn’t make a difference at the Rad Racing GP, but they had the place dialed this time. No line and I was registered and on my way in no time. They didn’t even charge special day of event pricing like they did at the Rad Racing GP.
I headed back to the car and put my numbers on and hopped on the bike for a few test laps. I’ve only done one MFG race before, but the course felt very similar to the other one–flat, twisty, beach sand and tall barriers. It was a fun course and since it hadn’t rained in a while I decided to keep my file-tread tires on not test out my new mud tires. Once the Cat 4 masters race started I headed over to visit with my new pals at the Recycled Cycles team tent and watch the action. Then I wandered down to the Baron Bicycles tent to get my pre-race espresso on thanks to Geoff. I also finally met Jane from the twitterverse.
I tried to jockey for a mid-pack starting position to test my starting position theory, but they played some silly game where they sorted the pack by the last number of your bib number. It was a little chaotic, but I still ended up somewhere around mid-pack of almost 80 riders. Then I got called out for having my side number on backwards–they help you flip it over, but it would be easier if they just put an up arrow on the number.
I still had the helmet cam mounted on the back on my helmet from Saturday’s kid rides, so I turned it on for the race and was able to capture the first few minutes until it decided to turn off. I can’t complain for $12, but it’s a little irritating that I still have almost no footage.
The race went well. I only had one mechanical and it was my chain falling off after someone bumped me around a bumpy turn. I really need to get one of those chain holder things. I didn’t wreck, but I got caught behind a couple of pile-ups in the sand. Like this one Dennis Crane Photography caught.
Amanda and the kids were cheering near the playground and caught this action shot. I think this was the lap before the woman master lead caught up to me and we had a sprint in front of the playground where she said she wasn’t even in my race, but I said I had to rally for the kids.
I ended up finishing 55th out of the 77 who finished. Somewhat above the bottom 25%. Which I think is good considering I’m usually in the Cat 4 Masters which is usually slower than Cat 4. Bottom line: It wasn’t a DNF and I had fun.
Kid Race
The best part of the day was the Little Kid Race, which I’ve declared the Cat-K race. I surprised Thomas with his own cycling kit on Saturday and he pretty much wouldn’t take it off all weekend–he was amped up for the race as was Charlotte who brought her big bike, not the trike this week.
The course this week was a short course of the real course, unlike last week’s impromptu infield course. It took the kids out and back, down to the beach, over the sand and around the turns to the barriers. I walked Charlotte the whole way, but caught some of Thomas’ moves from a distance. It looked like he rode a good way in the sand, then someone showed him he had to get off and run. Some other kid ended up crashing into him in the last turn, but he had a blast.
Amanda took some great video that I spliced together with Live Movie Maker, which apparently now supports MOV files.
The original MFG Cyclocross results from the Rad Racing GP had me at 67/72 racers. The new results posted now have me at 57/73. They still don’t provide times, so I have no idea if I would have even placed in the Cat 4 field.
That moves me from the bottom 15% to the bottom 25%.
I emailed them about getting timing information and their response was “We do not have times, but accurate laps and revised results, which will be posted today. Thanks for your patience.”
Once again, really makes me appreciate what a great job Seattle Cyclocross does with their races. It’s going to be interesting to see how I continue to place in MFG versus SCX races. This weekend is the Starbuck’s GP which is organized by MFG. My fingers are crossed that they’ll up their game like they promise.
I competed in my third cyclocross race yesterday. It was the season opener of the Seattle Cyclocross series. From my extensive cyclocross experience, I’ve got to say the crew at Seattle Cyclocross runs a well oiled machine. First off, they have a season pass that saves you time and money. You end up getting 7 races for the price of 5-6 races. Then you don’t have to wait in any lines like my MFG Cyclocross experience at Rad Racing. I just showed up in the pouring rain, got my set of numbers and ran back to my car to pin them on.
Pre-ride Prep
Once I had my kit on, I donned my rain gear and headed out for a couple of practice laps. The course was pretty long and the rain combined with my extra low traction tires accentuated the technical challenges. With a few minutes till the race, I headed over join my new friends from cyclocross practice at the Recycled Cycles tent where I ditched my rain gear, water bottle cage, light, and saddle bag and headed to the start line. It was a huge field of Cat 4 and Cat 4 35+ masters. I started out near the back and by time the race started there was another row or two behind me.
And we’re off!
The course started out on the running track, so were were up to speed fast and mud was slinging everywhere. Then we transitioned to some winding turns on the grass, then up a hill around a bend and down a hill onto pavement, hairpin turn onto dirt/grass, then a giant loose dirt/sand hill climb where my new shoes kept wanting to come off. Then the technical part of the course began. Wet dirt, not quite mud was canvas for a steep, off-camber twisty descent ending in a hairpin turn with another little hill climb that was easy to pedal up if you grabbed the right gear ahead of time. Then it was a lot of long, relatively flat runs with tight, slippery turns until you passed the finish line and head to the uphill barriers which brings you back to where you started on the track. Rinse and repeat three more times.
I only had one mechanical this week and it was my chain falling off at the top of the running hill climb. The only reason I think that happened was because someone I was chatting with at the start line said I should get one of those chain keepers…
Results
The cool thing about starting in the back of the pack is that you have a pretty good idea about what position you are in the race. I’m sure my memory isn’t working, but the only time I recall really getting passed was during my mechanical. While I’d like to think it was my massive power and technical skill it was probably the fact that most of the fast people start further up in the pack and I was just rolling with people my speed or slower.
Another cool thing about our friends at Seattle Cyclocross is that they post race results minutes after the race is over. The results come off this great invention called a printer so you can actually read them plus they include all the data you could ever want like your position and time. What a difference than last week’s results, but at least MFG admitted they screwed up.
I ended up 44th out of 77 racers in the Cat 4 35+ masters race. I cross referenced the my time on the regular Cat 4 results and I would have been a few spots above DFL. So that makes me a solid Cat 4/5 racer!
Kiddie Cross
Another awesome thing that Seattle Cyclocross does is that they have a Tikes and Trikes race for the little kids. Amanda and the kids came down just in time to enter Thomas in the race. Here’s Thomas’ cycloross debut:
And an after shot:
Apres Racing
Amanda and the kids headed home and I rejoined Tyler from the Recycled Cycles team to watch the Cat 1/2 race. We paid special attention to the lines the elite men took–they slid through the turns like a hot knife in butter.
After the 1/2 race, I tried to grab a snack at the Kaosamai gourmet roach coach, but they ran out of food so I had to call it a day at the races and head home for food.
Lessons Learned
- Bring right sized allen wrench to remove water bottle cage
- Seattle Cyclocross should run all the PNW events
- Practice slippery technical turns
- Get mud tires (just ordered one Michelin Mud 2 and WTB Cross Wolf to test out)
Pinning Bib Numbers to Your Jersey
There’s gotta be a better way!
I normally hate pinning group ride numbers to my jersey because I don’t like to put holes in my ridiculously expensive jerseys plus they tend to leave rust because I sweat like a pig.
Since I’m teamless in Seattle, I’ve been wearing my wearing my Team Fatty jersey while cyclocross racing. I’ve not raced three times and my once pristine jersey not only has a bunch of holes, but now the holes are starting to tear.
After seeing the latest round of destruction, I started concocting alternate ways to affix the bib numbers. The best the interwebs came up with was to use spray adhesive to glue them on. Which seemed a little aggressive.
My current plan is to attach some more durable material to the jersey where the bib number will get pinned to. I started with the idea of sewing it, but I figured that would probably irritate my skin. Then I thought about some sort of iron on patch version, but figured the heat would melt the jersey. Now I’m thinking about testing out some fabric glues, but I’m not convinced that will hold.
Any suggestions?
Totcycle South End Edition
My buddy Julian over at Totcycle (the most awesomest family cycling website ever) joined forces with Morgan to put on a Totcycle family bike ride in the south-end last weekend. Technically Totcycle calls the events Kidical Mass, but I like to distance myself as far as I can from another cycling group with a similar sounding name.
The weather leading up to the weekend was horrible and the forecast for the event wasn’t so hot. However, we had a glimmer of hope on Saturday when all of a sudden the sun came out of nowhere. Cliff Mass, our local weather genius described it as a forecast failure. However we made up for it with what Cliff described a northwest monsoon.
I spent the morning on the shores of Lake Sammamish racing and watching the Rad Racing GP. The weather was schizophrenic from sun to torrential down pours and lots of full on single rainbows. Things were a little behind schedule at the race and I waited around to see a friend do a lap before I left. That put me in the car around 12:30pm. I got home around 1pm and needed to be at Mt. Baker Part by 2PM.
I pulled into the driveway, tossed all my wet, muddy and smelly cyclocross gear in the garage and put the finishing touches on the new Xtracycle seat I made for Charlotte and hooked up the trail-a-bike to the Big Dummy for Thomas. We finally ended up rolling out around 1:30. The ride to the I90 lid is around 35 minutes on my road bike, I knew there was no way we’d be there by 2, but we took our chances and went for it.
At first I thought my legs would have been fried from the cyclocross race a few hours earlier, but instead they were feeling great. I think I ended cranking harder getting to the Totcycle ride than I did at the race and we made it there around 2:15, just in time to meet the group on Lake Washington Blvd. WIN!
We spent some time gawking at all the cool cargo bikes and then did introductions. It was a great mix of people from all over the Seattle plus a couple from Shoreline. After we finished chatting we rolled out onto car-free Lake Washington Blvd to start our quest for ice cream at Full Tilt.
Within a couple of minutes it started raining, so we all stopped to put on some rain gear and went back on our way. Then all of a sudden the skies opened up and we had to pull over under some trees to get the kids under cover. Then it was sunny and we were on our way. We peeled off Lake Washington Blvd and took some nice bike paths towards Columbia City, but the path sort of ended just before Rainier so we had to navigate the fleet of GIANT cargo bikes and kids along the sidewalk until we picked up another bike path on the other side of Rainier Ave. From there we followed an on-street bike path until we got back to Rainier and rode on the sidewalk another block to Full Tilt. Our armada of bikes quickly took over the parking lot and all the kids went running inside after their ice cream treat.
Thomas wanted lemon ice cream like usual and Charlotte wanted pink. This translated to Ube for Charlotte and lemon lavender for Thomas–which was so delicious that I also got a cup of it.
After all the ice cream was consumed, we headed out. Part of the group headed to the light rail, some went home and the remainder went back to Mt. Baker Park. We headed out with the Mt. Baker Park group, but got waylaid when Charlotte found a playground she wanted to test out. Once we were loaded up, we crossed paths with Amanda who put the kids and trail-a-bike in the car and I continued to pedal home.
Once I rejoined the Totcycle crew, I noticed that the rear end of the Big Dummy felt really sloppy. At first thought it was just the lack of weight from the kids, but further investigation showed the hub was loose. I tried tightening it by hand, but it still wobbled. I was a little worried to pedal it home, but there was no other option.
It made it home fine and I the next day I stopped by the bike shop to get a cone wrench to fix it. I wasn’t sure of the size I needed, but they had this spiffy set that included two wrenches with four sizes. It had to be one of those sizes…but it was 1mm larger. Fortunately Gregg’s was open until 9pm and I grabbed two 17mm cone wrenches and was able to get the bearing snug and the Big Dummy back on the road to take the kids to school the next morning.
Xtracycle Kid Seat and Cargo Box
Amanda is warming to the idea of family cycling. She’s even using her bike and the double trailer to take Thomas and Charlotte to school. However, she’s never liked the idea of Charlotte who is a couple months shy of 3 years old riding on the Big Dummy’s Xtracycle Snapdeck.
Since riding on the Big Dum Dum is one of Charlotte’s favorite things, I needed to come up with a better Charlotte carrying solution.
Charlotte loves riding on the Big Dummy
Look at all the fun she has back there:
Prototype Design
Our most common use case is one kid on the snapdeck for trips to the store or Charlotte on the snapdeck and Thomas on the trail-a-bike. For the first prototype I wanted something that would secure one kid and give us some storage for trips around town. I came up with a design that includes a seat up front and a wider box in the back to accommodate two grocery bags. The downside of this design is that you can’t carry two kids on the snapdeck. I slapped the prototype together with some 1/2″ ACX plywood I had laying around. I rounded all the edges with the router to keep injury down, but I didn’t bother to sand or finish it. The fastening system to the Xtracycle could be classified as jury rigged. I put two wooden rails down the bottom to center it, they’re at an angle so it gets somewhat wedged on the Xtracycle frame and finally I have three pieces of nylon webbing (one of which is the seatbelt) that wrap around the Xtracycle frame.
Prototype #1 with some props
Here’s an action shot of Charlotte out running some errands at Greenwood Hardware.
Prototype #1 in the real world
