ride joe ride

Alright, no matter what anybody tells you: I didn’t get lost on the midway during Monsters this weekend. The guy three wheels up from me decided to turn into the wheel pit (no, I don’t think he needed a wheel), one guy started to follow and then there was some cussing and squealing of brakes. I swerved off the course to avoid crashing.

And that’s how the 5’s rolled at Monsters: kinda nervous with lots of brake grabbing. By the time I looped back out, the break I had been in was gone and I latched on to the chase group 20 seconds or so back. At that point we could have seriously caught back up. One guy was trying to organize an echelon, which was quite nice of him. Unfortunately, nobody wanted to work very hard and it became apparent that we were not going to catch up. The idea of bridging up was not sounding so good, so I cast about for something else to entertain myself with.

Luckily, fellow UCVCer Ari was in the pack and we quickly set about scheming. We decided that one of us ought to be afforded the distinction of having finished somewhat ahead of the group we were in. We decided it would be him. We sucked wheels near the back of the group and plotted the location of our attack. The plan was for me to lead him out just after the second turn on the last lap and pull him until I blew up. Other than me almost dropping him when I jumped, it worked very well. We got away without any of the guys coming along, and he got his solo finish well clear of our group. Most importantly, we were entertained.

As you’ll read elsewhere, there were some pretty serious crashes — the word at this point seems to be that everyone injured is doing well. I spent lots of the day marshaling the first corner with Allison, so I got to see more rider to ground contact than I would have liked. Despite the ambulance visits and the resulting skewed time tables, Jesse, Dan and all the UCVC volunteers pulled off an amazingly well run event that was very much to the club’s credit. Good job guys. I shot lots of photos, edited them and then accidentally deleted the folder in which they resided. I have most of them still on a card, but it’ll be another day before I post them. I’ve posted some photos from the race here.

For me, Monsters marked the end of the spring training periodization cycle, so after some easy riding this week (including a weekend in Arkansas) it’s back to the build phase next week. VO2 intervals! To keep things interesting, I’m making some changes in the power metric system I use. More on that soon.

Also, I haven’t made a follow-up iBike post, and that is on it’s way as well. The bottom line, though is: I have a nice Powertap system available for sale if anyone is interested.

Driving to the race in Vernon Hills this weekend, I had a big epiphany about why I race and how it all fits into the scheme of life etc etc. I’d consumed a truckload of coffee and was listening to highly motivational music, though, so I’m not sure how appropriate it would have been had I remembered it. Fortunately (for you) by the end of the race I’d utterly forgotten it. This was not because my race, as a entity itself, was especially exciting — we spent an awful lot of time riding around at a conversational pace — but because I both won my first tangible athletic prize and crashed for the first time in the same race. Allow me to elaborate. (It shouldn’t be tough considering you may have actually spent time reading about me riding a trainer while watching movies if you’ve spent any time reading this blog.)

Okay so, on the third or fourth lap, I got a bit antsy sitting in and decided to make my way up front and see why we were going so slow. There was a guy off the front by a few bike lengths so I rode up behind him and yelled “let’s go.” He was smart and indicated that if we were going it was going to be me to be who was going to be doing the work.

If you’re reading along and are not familiar with racing tactics, please realize that this is not how breaks are supposed to work. This dude and I were dangling about 40 feet off the front of the peloton working out who was going to pull for our little breakaway. Sad. Anyway, I didn’t feel like sitting in, so I pulled for a bit. Then he pulled for a bit. This wasn’t a breakaway, mind you, we were just sorta hanging out a bit in front of the group but since we were going about 18 mph, it didn’t make that big of a difference.

As we came through the start, I heard the announcer call a prime for the next lap. I realized that hanging off the front of the pack was not the best place to start trying to win the prime, but I figured I’d give it a shot anyway so I buried it. The guy I’d been off the front with hung for a bit and eventually faded back into the pack. By the time I came through the penultimate corner, I looked over my shoulder and realized I had a pretty big gap on the field — big enough that I didn’t think anyone could reasonably come across (though someone did try according to fellow Tatitos.) When this sunk into my somewhat oxygen-deprived brain, I have to say it was a pretty awesome feeling. Hearing the dude calling the race over the loudspeaker announce “#720, Joe Kallo, takes the prime easily” was also pretty gratifying.

I shoulda really laid it down at that point since I wasn’t feeling gassed. I doubt I could have stayed away, but at some point the field would have had to decide to let me win or pick it up a bit. But sitting in suddenly sounded like a good idea so I sank back into the pack over the next lap. Somebody asked me a lap or two later if we’d caught my teammate who was off the front. I grinned.

Okay so that was the prime. The crash came in the same penultimate corner where I’d had my revelation earlier in the race. Basically everyone was getting excited for the sprint and the dudes in front of me overshot the corner or were pushed into it. One jumped the curb and the other went down, and I t-boned him and rolled off my bike onto the median. I felt kinda bad as I was all sorts of ramped up for the sprint. When I went down I went into cross mode: I was on my feet in 2 seconds and was about to ride away before remembering that this was asphalt and people actually get hurt when they crash. I looked over my shoulder and asked if everyone was okay. They were (or said they were) so I rolled away to see that Damon Nelson, the most inspirational cross sideline shouter in the world, had turned around to make sure we were okay. You rock Damon. Of course the field had ridden away, so no sprint for us.

So my first ever athletic prize won? It was so utterly perfect that I am going to violate my “no photos on the blog” rule for the first time and show you what could be an argument for the inherent order of the universe:

That’s right, a bottle of Italian wine. Utter genius.

You only get one first road race. Further, just because yours ends with an ignominious flat tire does not mean that you can’t write a bloated, overwrought, race report about it. Cf:

This weekend’s kermesse, held in Leland, Il and hosted by Flatlandia was run on a 10 mile loop out in the cornfields west of Chicago. If you kinda squinted, it looked like the pastoral portions of the Paris – Roubaix, and it shaped up to share the spring classics’ tendency to be windy and foul weather-wise. The howling wind made for some really brutal crosswinds, and the sky was black with potential rain. The course itself was flat and had a few turns before it ended with a mile packed dirt farm road to truly echo the spring classic style.

Fellow TATI riders Eric and Francisco were in the 4’s, and I lined up with ~40 of my fellow 5’s for pre-race briefing. After being briefed, the two groups were led away a couple of minutes apart by their own pace cars. After a half mile of neutral start, we rolled across the start and the pace picked up quickly. I made my way up to third or fourth wheel, and it wasn’t long before two Cycle Smithy riders pulled to the front and cranked the pace up still further. This was good as it allowed me do what I really was looking forward to doing: making the first attack of the race. After a few minutes of tempo riding, someone a few wheels up shouted “rough road” and the group slowed a bit which was the mark I’d been looking for. I jumped out of the line into the headwind and heard two people shout “TATI left!” Ah, now that sounded nice. I hammered for a minute or so to open a gap, and looked over my shoulder to see that someone had come with me. Even nicer. The pack wasn’t having any of it though, and they were back on us within a couple of minutes. As we sank back in, another attack went off and the pace surged again.

By this point, we’d covered a few miles and dropped the vast majority of the field — there were maybe 15 or so riders left in the group with a largish knot of XXX riders. By the time we reached the mile of dirt road which marked the end of the lap, we were even fewer. In fact, I was snoozing as we turned onto the dirt, overshot the turn, and had to slow way down to keep from bogging into the soft shoulder. As a reward I got to make a gut churning charge to get back on over the dirt road. Despite the massive crosswind from the right, riders were inexplicably holding the center line when there was a really nice line to the left — i.e. allowing me ride out of the wind. I thought I might use this information on my next lap. I made my way back to the front of our group just as two guys were attacking (a smart place to do it!). Nobody seemed interesting in chasing so we watched them ride away. As we came through the finish line for the second lap, our group had dwindled to 8 people with the two guys off the front. At least four of these guys were XXX riders.

Everyone took a break for a few miles, which felt pretty darn nice, and we began to encounter riders who’d come off the back of the 4’s and 3’s races. Soon, it was time to start working again, and I settled very well into my role of wheel sucker — I figured that with XXX so well represented in our group, they would be happy to do the work. I was starting to form a plan involving trying to attack right at the outset on the dirt to maybe shake the group up a bit when the wheel I was following suddenly jerked to the right and in it’s place a big pot hole appeared. I tried to stand, but we were traveling at nearly 30mph and my rear wheel dropped into it very hard and instantly started to hiss. I screamed an explicative, pulled out of the group, thought (wished) maybe I’d imagined the whole thing, made a move as if to slide back in, and heard the guy who was next to me say over his shoulder “no dude, you’re flat.” And I was.

As I walked down the road for the next 25 minutes pushing my bike, I had lots of time to think about how things could have gone, and what difference it would have made, and what I thought about road racing. I decided I liked it lots. The walk was kind of nice, but I would have liked some cleat covers and a bit less rain. It was nearly 10 minutes before I saw the next group of cat 5 riders.

I finally made it to the dirt road and was a couple hundred yards down it when Julie Popper of Half Acre rode up, stopped, said “you’ve got to ride in with dignity man,” tossed a flat repair kit at my feet and pedaled off despite my protests that I didn’t deserve it. Julie rocks. I fixed my flat, rode the last half mile in, and dropped to the cheers of my awesome friends, who’d driven all the way out there to watch me race.

Eric and Francisco came through soon after, and had to suffer through a fourth lap during which the bottom fell out of the sky. A huge cold wall of rain roared across the course and made a seriously epic last lap — they both looked like they’d ridden a cross race afterward, they were so covered in mud.

Flatlandia is to be commended for putting on an awesome race. I know I echo a common sentiment when I say that I look forward to next year’s kermesse.