Crystal Cup

There are some races that I don't really like. Then, there are some races that I absolutely love. I still haven't figured out what the exact formula is for the races I really like going to, but I am slowly starting to piece together the things that will make me really dislike a race.

I've come to the conclusion that when you're at work (the kind that pays the bills -- that you don't really work at, but where everyone thinks they're doing something) it's not the work you do, but the people you're around that make all the difference. Bike racing is the same way. I really like to look around at the start line and see familiar faces. Guys I know take a good line, keep their mouths shut, and do the work that needs to be done.

Now sure, some of these new faces are absolutely wonderful bike handlers, are strong in the pack, and take solid pulls. Then again, some aren't.

It seemed like there were a lot of the latter out there at Crystal Cup. And when you're working with people that you'd rather not be so close to in a corner and the work sucks ... Well ...

I guess it all comes down to safety pins. It bugs the hell out of me when a promoter buys the big box of "Variety" safety pins. If you're not one of the first to get there, you're stuck with either insanely small or cartoonishly large pins.

So the pins bent and because useless when I put my fat ass into my size Large jersey. Then I asked a guy for help that was parked fairly close to me. I say fairly close because we weren't all parked in a parking lot like normal. Instead, we were parked all over Crystal City. Some of us managed to find parking fairly close, but knew damn well we may have to pay an extra "entry fee" that would be stuck under out windshield wiper. I asked the guy that helped me pin my number back on how the course was. He pointed down to a now-tireless Zipp 404 with a crack straight across it. Sooo ... Great.

There was pretty much nowhere great to warm up, so a lot of us ended up battling with city traffic and trying to pretend we weren't warming up with sprint intervals. But we got to the line on time, and had enough time to watch like 6 laps of the Women's race before we could get going.

Most of us having no prior knowledge of the course, we just lined up. No sighting lap, no idle chit-chat, just straight to the line and punch that damn clock.

Once the clock was punched (in the form of an air horn) I'm pretty sure the guys on the front row attacked as soon as they had clipped in. Which is cool. That's racing, and sometimes it can be a lot of fun to go super hard right off the bat.

Did I mention many of us didn't know anything about the course?

Let me enlighten you about the course. There were 7 turns, a long straight, and a tiny bit of elevation change. But only just. Of the 7 corners, 4 were off-camber. A couple had manhole covers in a key point (like the apex), and one was a 180-degree fairly tight corner with a big divot right at the first quarter of the turn, gravel, poor quality in general, and off-camber. On the straight parts there were manhole covers, potholes, and manhole covers encircled by potholes.

The first crash was a simple bunching-up that turned into wheels touching down the straight toward the start/finish. I think only a couple guys went down, but they looked like they went down pretty hard. I know because I was really starting to feel like hell and with every hard acceleration I was loosing a place or two. So the crash kind of happened right next to me. And I had to catch on. Which I hate doing.

Then we rode around in circles some more, my teeth nearly cracked, and the pucker-factor was through the roof. On the last lap we came around the 2nd turn (Which was off-camber, had a pothole, and featured steel manhole covers) and a bunch of guys all decided they wanted to be in exactly the same spot. As the Japanese have known for years, the only way to get more out of a piece of real-estate is to pile things vertically. Which about 8-10 guys did very well. I thought I could get around on the left side, but so did 3 other guys. And they crashed into one another. So I did what any really tired racer does: I unclipped and pretended that I could be of some assistance so I didn't feel quite like I had outright quit. I mean, I could have just come around and finished DFL, or I could try my hand at geometry with a shift lever/spoke problem.

There are a lot of races that I walk away from really not feeling good about, and saying I'll never come back, but a bit of me knows I'll be back next year. This, my friends, was not one of those races. For the pro guys, I'm sure it was a pretty good event. I'd bet there was someone they could call and say "So how do we get the truck into the parking area?" and they could get an answer. For the amateur race, it was an event with barricades and a lot of police, and it seemed to be worse-run and with less info than we get at most of the races put on by a local team.

Then there's the racing. The course sucked. Through and through, it was absolute crap. Because the pro race had such a big draw, the amateur race seemed to have a big draw as well. A lot of guy from hours away, and some that only raced a few races a year showed up. That combination made me seriously consider dropping out of the race a few times so I could save my equipment (I don't have the kind of money to replace my Zipp rims) and my body. I got lucky and I wasn't taken down by the crash, but a lot of guys weren't nearly as lucky.

So in the end, I won't be doing the Crystal Cup again. And not one of those "Until next year" type of things. Unless someone wants to pay me heaps of money to go there, it's not happening. And given my fitness level today, no one will be paying me to ride a bike for a very, very long time.

Ride Sally Ride

First off, the race is titled "The Ride Sally Ride" which is actually quite catchy in context of the street name being "Ride Sally Dr." and then, of course, the song. Without "The" at the beginning, however, it's just a song lyric, and loses its catchiness. So can we all agree to put the three letters at the beginning? Or at least just abbreviate it to RSR.

Now that we've taken care of that business:

Typically, the most exciting thing I do in a week will come between the finish line and 200 meters before said piece of red duct tape. The sprint is one of the coolest things in bike racing, and to be quite frank, it's one of my favorite parts. There's a level of control that you have given your training and form, but there's a lot of unknown going on at the same time. For example, I have no idea if the guy next to me will become the guy on top of me in under a second. And that's happened before, so I feel like I might have a knack for spotting it in advance. Maybe.

That wasn't the case yesterday, however. Driving down the beltway at 7 in the morning on Sunday is probably the only time that the road is anywhere near lightly trafficked. After the notoriously bad "270 spur" the road straightens out, 4 lanes on each side, and keeps going in its infinite loop of the nation's capital.

It was this combination of many easy driving features that made it so amazing to round a bend and see the very final stages of a car flipping, spinning, and generally getting screwed over.

I have to admit that there was a split second where I thought Dude, I'm headed to a bike race. I promised to lead my teammate out ... That thought didn't last long, though, and I slammed on the brakes.

To make a long (and pretty scary) story short, I was the first one there, and ended up in shin-high brush and undergrowth doing everything I could to hold a passenger-side door all of 8 inches open so that a 10 year-old boy and his sister could get out of the overturned, backward, and in-a-ditch car that was now a complete write-off.

A few other people showed up and helped get the boy down off the hill and to the shoulder of the road. We got everyone to a safe location, and I treated the boy for shock (using the term loosely).

In the "Wow, it's a small world" category, one of the guys that stopped was actually headed to the same race I was. Interesting how that works out. We were both looking at our watches, and by the time it was all said and done, we decided to be spectators.

Until we got there with like 40 minutes before the start. Then we decided we'd do what we could. So once the kit was on, I was registered, air was in the tires, etc. I had a whopping 5 minutes of warm-up, 2 minutes of strategy discussion, and then a couple laps of the course before we lined up.

The general plan was to get Tim the W and myself and Eric would work our asses off at the front and then lead-out. The problem is that all three of us race with a nervous disposition. If one guy goes up the road and looks weak, we'll still hunt him down. Even if we're the protected rider. It was for that reason that Eric and I had to really police the front of the race. If Tim felt like we were letting something go, he was going to chase it down. Which doesn't help win the sprint at the end. I did a ton of work on the front, and it was good to know that the race averaged 25.9 mph. That made me feel at least a little better when in the last few laps I wasn't exactly charging along with the surges that kept coming.

Eventually I think Tim figured out that he was behind the wrong horse (me) and he came around to try and get some position. I was completely cooked, and once I saw my 2 teammates safely up the road and sprinting, I sat up.

I finished in the pack and shortly called it a day. Driving home I realized that I had done more before 11 on Sunday than most people had done all weekend. That's a cool feeling to have.

When it was all said and done, Eric came in 6th and Tim came in 9th. Both of them got boxed in on the last corner before the sprint (I'm not a big fan of corners that close to the finish.) Sarah and Daniel both made it into the ambulance safely, and the EMTs said they were fine, but they wanted to take precautionary measures to get them to the hospital. I came home and took a nap while I "Watched" the Philly race.

Here's to hoping next week's Air Force race is significantly less exciting.