Ohio State Cross Write up

12.10.06 Ohio State Cross Championships

LOCATION: Yellow Springs, OH

WEATHER CONDITIONS: Clear skies, very light wind with temps in the mid 40's.

SOIL CONDITIONS: Freezing temps from earlier in the week left the deep soil frozen - but with the higher temps on Sunday, the top layer of soil softened up. Result - a very rough ride with extremely slippery conditions due to the upper layer of soil thawing out.



COURSE DESCRIPTION: Extremely flat traditional cross course with no run-ups, three sets of barriers (two that you bunny hop over), a sand pit, a few short single track sections, and about a thousand 180 degree sharp/off chamber/slippery turns.



STARTERS: Not too familiar with the Ohio Valley Cross series locals, but notables included Paul Martin, Ohio Series leader Phil Noble, John Carr (winner of about every Michigan cross race this year), ALAN boys Shawn Adams and Jimmy, and Nate-O (winner of the Cleveland Cross Series).

BIKE SETUP PARTICULARS: With the course being so flat, I opted for the hella fast Reynolds wheels. With the conditions being as slippy as they were, I reduced the PSI to around 35 pounds to help with traction. Ran my standard 42 up front, with a 12x23 in the back.

CLOTHING: With the temps as warm as they were, I opted for thin layers and I ran a long sleeved Craft base layer. Since the course was rough and my hand is still in pain from a training accident two weeks earlier, I ran three sets of gloves - a trick I "invented" to help reduce pain in my hands from endurance racing. One light winter glove over a short fingered glove over top of a very thin summer full finger glove.

RACE DETAILS:
Got to the start line early to get a good starting position, but was trumped by the "locals" in the Ohio Valley Series who thought they should start ahead of us because of their standings in the series. Total BS, but we didn't have time to fight about it as the start was about to happen in 30 seconds.

Gun goes off and into the slick corners we go, slipping and sliding,and bumping into each other. Very quickly, the lead group is formed and the main split happens within 1 lap. I am the last man in the main group, a group consisting of about 12 riders - but the speeds are somewhat slow and the gaps are short. Go too fast and you'll go down.

So I quickly come up with a game plan - stay upright. Play it safe in the corners and pay attention to my angle coming into them to avoid slipping. And then gun it in the straights - full out sprint out of every corner.

Soon, my plan was paying off and I quickly moved from 12th place up to fourth, behind John Carr, another rider and Shawn Adams. This was now about half way through the race. In one of the sections, the unknown rider and Shawn had some difficulties in a section that I came through clean on so I gunned it and opened up a gap immediately.

The gap to John was at 20 seconds, and I was closing it down fast -- but a slip left me on side and a dropped chain soon brought Shawn back up to me. Time was running short - maybe only 15 minutes left in the race. As soon as he caught me, I told him, "let's not race for 2nd place - let's go for the win."

We chased and at one point, had it down to 15 seconds. We shared in the pulling, and didn't attack each other or race for second - which proved to secure our placing as Paul Martin came within 45 seconds of catching us by the end of the race.

Last lap came, and on the final little log/barrier, I jumped over it to the right with Shawn on the left. An earlier crash had left Shawn's hanger bent and left him with only three gears.

I attacked hard and didn't look back until I was on the road. When I looked forward, I was closing in on John and got within 5 seconds of him, but he sneaked out the win.



Since John is from Michigan, in regards to the state championship, I came in first, Shawn was second, Paul was third and Nate came in at fourth.



Thanks for all those who stayed around and cheered me on - especially Nate's cheering posse and Gary from the 'burgh. Made the race pretty exciting to hear all the cow bells going and the crowd cheering everybody on.

Full results can be seen at the biowheels website HERE

That's it - thousands of hours of riding, hundreds of hours of racing, and now it's down to just two more hours.

sologoat out