EPIC

So by now you've read the others' reports of this day but I'm here to give you the inside story of the 2007 Wisconsin Cyclocross Championships.

The course was designed primarily by Bob Schueler of Hampshire Cycling Club. On a normal day, it would have been a course for the power rider- not very technical, a longish hill and some fast straights. Sunday? fugedaboutit. For the first race of the day (and I'm sure subsequent races) it was about nothing more than keeping the pedals turning. You could ride full speed (5mph?) up to the barriers and jump off 3 inches away and not stack it. The deal was, that if you stopped pedaling for even a moment, you simply lost all forward momentum instantly. It was so slow that technical skills just didn't come into play even though it was 3 inches of snow cone slop.

Being that this was The Championships, and I have more of a story to tell, I'm going to have longer than a 1ROSRR today. But first, the prelude; last Sunday, after Devil Take The Hindmost V.2, which no one knew about due to my apparently posting about it in some kind of weird code, I started to feel a little punk. By night time, I knew I was in for a good one. By the time Monday morning rolled around, I was full on sick- sore throat, body aches, chills, the whole drill. My one thought (besides wanting to be summarily executed) was F*CK! This is no time to get sick! Why oh why can't this be NEXT week AFTER the championship race?? Suffice it to say, my week went from bad to worse. In my mind I had no intention of even showing up on Sunday much less racing. But....

Being the hard headed Kraut that I am, I just couldn't not show up to the race. Even while getting dressed at the venue, I was doubting whether I should race until I saw my friend Rich who told me that if I didn't race I would have wasted his time coming out to watch me. That was enough to convince me. Lewis and I headed out on course to pre-ride and discovered a few things right away. One, the course wasn't marked yet (!) and two, the conditions SUCKED. Don't get me wrong, I love it crappy and I've no doubt that under any other conditions, I would have loved the course. Oh well, it just meant a whole lot more running as I didn't have a low enough gear to slog it up the long hill.

As we warmed up, the multicolor squiz was working it's way out of my lungs and I was heating up like it was a summer day- except for my toesies as they were soaked and cold. The race was delayed about 20 minutes so that they could finish course marking before they called us to the line. All the usual suspects were there, plus a few new faces but no Tom Hooyer. His absence would turn out to mean a lot to me in the end, but I'm getting ahead of myself. On the line, I informed Tim T. that of he failed to win, he would be off the team. I was there for pack fodder, no more. At the whistle, we humped it off the line in slo-mo. The first obstacle was a sand pit that I hadn't actually seen before and quickly claimed me as a victim. I lost a good four spots right there and then a few more for good measure down the front straightaway. By the middle of the first lap, I was sitting maybe tenth, well behind my competitors on a normal day, but this wasn't a normal day. After talking myself out of quitting for the 99th time, I finally settled in to a rhythm and, wonder of wonders, started picking people off one by one; Russell, Lewis, Richard et al. I managed to not only limit my losses but make up enough ground to finish 4th- podium! Ahead of me were, of course, the aforementioned Tim T. who heeded my warning and won the race (and the overall), Mark Burkholtz, aka Army Guy, and Chris Berge, my nemesis. Tim had a real fight on his hands as Mark surged on the second lap and took the lead from him for a short time.

In the photo above, I pipped that guy on the line by a half a wheel. Until last night, I had no idea how much that would mean. A fourth place finish is worth 15 points, a fifth place is worth 14. That one point was enough to put me on the podium for the overalls! Now you know why it ended up being important to me that Tom was not there as he would have finished ahead of me and I would not have gained third place- one point ahead of Tom!!

Thanks to Bob and Jerry and the rest of the HCC guys for all of their effort in putting on this race. It had to be tough to do but that's the spirit of cyclocross.

As a footnote, my dad asked me what it would take to cancel a race. Cancel? Yeah right. I told him that if the snow was too deep to ride, we'd just have to run the whole damn course.....