Down but not out at Downeast CX     by Justin Lindine

There’s a possibility that it might not be muddy in Maine sometimes, but I don’t believe it.  Each and every year, seemingly regardless of what the weather has been doing in the rest of new England, the New Gloucester weekend rolls around and I make the trek up to near Portland only to find some variation of cold or warm and wet or heavy and soul crushing mud.  None of this bothers me too much, I mean there was the time I was borderline hypothermic up here, but really, I like the mud as much as the next guy.  Which is good, because upon arriving at the venue on Sat, the parade of early racers walking by covered in a grass-mud mixture suitable to building things out of was a good indicator of what was in store even before I could see the course.  So to, as it turned out, were those walking by pushing the remnants of their once functioning bicycles, derailleur hanging in twisted and shattered contortions.  If it’s any basis for comparison, I actually did more war-up laps at Nor’ Easter then I did in Maine.  Two laps were definitely all I needed to know about the course.

            Things were going well in the start-safe off the pavement and around the loose gravel turn by the barn.  Then things began sliding down the hill, literally, as I was crashed from above on the off-camber section.  I found myself on the wrong side of the course tape, on the wrong side of my bike, trying to find a way to jump back over and on without killing any of the people streaming by in the process.  Once back on the bike it was the usual “excuse me”, “pardon me”, “coming through” game till I made my way back up to the leaders.  Luke Keough and Dylan McNicholas and I began to push the pace and I was glad I made it back up to them before the gaps grew too big.  But, my bad luck was not to be thwarted that easily.  My drivetrain was skipping pretty furiously which at first I was pretty sure was because I could already barely distinguish my derailleur from a pile of cow-shit covered grass.  But the rhythmic nature of the skipping alerted me to the fact that actually I had a bent link in my chain.  I nursed the skipping bike around, losing a few spots but nothing major in the process, pitted onto the “B” bike and cruised back to the front…again.  I started applying a bit of pressure and soon it looked like it was going to be me and Dylan locked in yet another battle but one where I was feeling like I had the upper hand with some brute force and handling skills in the mud.  That is until my rear derailleur exploded in a sea of mud and carbon shards…did I mention that I had just passed the pit?  Now, at this point there are some of you who undoubtedly think that I should have called it a day.  I mean, some times it’s just not meant to happen.  Especially considering that day 1 wasn’t even a UCI race and I was just blowing myself for the important day tomorrow.  Well, as I ran my 3k’s around the course in the mud, I thought about it…but I really had dropping out of races, and I was basically just so pissed and determined to show that I should be at the front of this race that I kept going even when it seemed pointless, stupid and since I was back in 10^th, kind of futile.  But, I got my pit bike…new chain included, and got back into the groove of picking people off and motoring through the muck.  I was a little more cautious, running a couple of the deep boggy sections, to nurse my one remaining bike through the last 4 laps.  I didn’t win, but I did make my way back up to third…which is a poor consolation prize when you feel like you could have won the race, but still better than a DNF.  Now I would just have to find a new derailleur, clean the bikes, and recover in time to do it all again tomorrow. 

            Thanks to Dylan McNicholas and some bike shop friends I got the parts I needed to have two working bikes for Sunday.  Which was good because, shocker, the course was still really muddy.  Despite all the desperate flailing yesterday, my legs felt pretty fresh and I took the start line feeling pretty confident that the day couldn’t possibly go any worse than yesterday.  Then in the thirty seconds after the gun went off I found myself going from a nice clean line up the outside to being slammed into full bore from someone on my left.  The impact was so solid that I unclipped both feet, surfed the top tube and careened into the fencing just to keep from going down outright.  WTF!  This is not how the race was going to go.  If yesterday I was determined and frustrated, today I was pissed.  I went from 20^th to the front group in under a lap and when I caught the lead train of four riders I wasted no time and blasted up the right side to dive into the next 180 degree right hand turn.  It was a bold pass and somewhat uncharacteristically aggressive for me, but I no interest in being a part of the group anymore.  I wanted to smash the race to pieces and leave nothing more to chance and that was the opportunity to do it.  I got clear over through the next few turns and proceeded to have an uneventful (thankfully) ride to a vindicating finish.  Maybe I can put the bad luck behind me for a while.

Granogue 1& 2 -  Lions, tigers, bears and….honey badgers?  Oh Man. written by Justin Lindine

Granogue, the jewel of the mid-Atlantic, oft touted as one of the hardest courses around (in my humble opinion, Ellison Park is the hardest UCI course on the East Coast), and a race that I’ve had a varied past with.  I had some good races here last year, just shy of the top step, and I’ve had some terrible races here too…lost in the obscurity of the teens and twenties.  But this weekend was going to be different, hell, I was even on a bonified streak at this point…right?  But with a stacked field including the Cliff Bar duo of Mitch Hoake and Troy Wells, as well as Canadian pro roadie Mark Batty, who could tell how the weekend might play out?

The thing about Delaware is that you have to drive through NJ and the greater metro area to get there.  And while I know that there are more opinions on the fastest route through that maze of civilization then there are about tire pressure and treads before a muddy cross race, I’ve come to the realization that they pretty much all suck equally.  Basically you have to pay for the pleasure of sitting in traffic and hating life.  In my car, you can add paying for the pleasure of burning up my clutch plates.  It took Jerome and I (JT was carpooling with me) eight hours to get to our host housing.  Yikes.  A solid nights sleep though, and some big ass cups of coffee in the morning, and we were ready to get our cross on.  At my discretion we got to the venue what some might describe as “wicked” early. 

For all the hype, the course at Granogue is as tough as it is beautiful.  Taking in some of the higher ground of the Dupont Estate, it really is one of the more beautiful backdrops for a cross race.  The constant elevation changes, mix of rooty technical sections with fast open drag strips and a seemingly ceaseless wind make for a real strong-man’s race course.  I was jazzed.  The ground was dry with just the smallest hint of greasiness in the woods where the shade kept the sun off the ground.  I opted once again for the season’s weapon of choice-file treads.  My gamble of only having extreme mud tires and extreme dry tires was surprisingly continuing to pay off.  

            After a pretty flat-out start by Nick Keough, Jerome Townsend and Mark Batty got a small gap heading into the pavement at the end of lap one.  I recognized that as the moment to go and wasted no time hitting the gas to bridge up to them.  Not wanting to waist the momentum of my bridge I pretty much just kept on going and was soon in a situation that I was beginning to get comfortable with…basically doing a 40+ minute cross time trial.  I was basically just repeating the mantra of “no mistakes, extend your gap” constantly in my head, which luckily seemed to help as I rode a smooth race with no technical glitches and had a comfortable 30-40 seconds in hand at the finish.  UCI streak count-3. 

            There are a lot of small moments in a bike race where indecision can make the difference between the top spot of a podium or not.  There are any number of calculated guesses that you gamble on in the hopes of success.  I had been pretty lucky in my last few races to be able to take command of things early and then cruise through the rest of the race in a defensive mindset-keeping tabs on the gap behind and mentally keeping the pressure on to maintain a steady, hard rhythm.  Sunday at Granogue though, was a different animal, and to be honest a race I wasn’t sure, until the final seconds, that I could win. 

            Troy Wells came out of the gate flying after a poor showing on Saturday.  He and I managed to pry ourselves off the front fairly early in the first couple of laps, but there was just a scant 10-12 second gap back to a surging Travis Livermon and Mark Batty.  Up front it was like a boxing match between a couple of brawlers.  I would attack at a zillion miles an hour and then Troy would tenaciously claw his way back to me.  Then he’d try pushing the pace on the climb and ensuing descent-making use of his Rhinos to rail the loose grassy turns where my file treads were just that little bit slower.  And so it went for lap after lap.  A seemingly dead heat until a reckless increase of just a few mph in the descent saw me sliding out, under the course tape while Troy punched it away.  Moments like that seem to happen in accelerated time.  I got up and under the tape only to find that my chain was jammed in the derailleur crooked and off the chain rings in the front.  For what seemed like forever (and in reality was about 15 seconds) I decoded the rubix cube of my drive train while Troy rode away and the Batty Livermon train barreled down on me.  By the time I got going there was little more then 5 seconds between me and the chase behind and almost 20+ to Troy up the road.  There was a voice in my head that thought maybe I should wait for the group and race for second…that maybe this situation was impossible.  But then I realized I don’t give a shit for waiting, and took off after Troy.  The next couple of laps hurt significantly.  My success in bridging back up to Troy rested mostly on my belief, rational or otherwise, that I could.  I have always been a sucker for taking up the “impossible” challenges.  By the time I got to him, it was two laps to go.  Neither of us had much left for punch-me from my frantic chase, and he from trying to stay away from me.  I realized that I was going to have to come up with another way to win this race…I was going to have to sprint for it.  I reasoned that the only chance I had in that scenario was to let all 6 feet of Wells to hit the pavement first and then wait for the moment to pounce.  This sounds like a simple plan, but I’ve lost many a sprint more than I’ve won so there was no small amount of anxiety in the decision.  The last half a lap I started thinking like some sort of cold-blooded killer.  I slipped behind at the top of the climb just so there was no chance I would get stuck pulling through…I even took the barriers a little wide to hold my second place position.  And then when we hit the pavement everything seemed to take forever.  He looked back, and I waited.  He looked back again, and I waited.  He looked back a third time, and when he turned around I punched it as hard as I could up the straightaway.  I looked back under the arm enough to know that I had it…whew.

Post Script:      

How does one acquire a nickname?  Well, in this case post Granogue there was a cycling dirt clip that seems to have inextricably tied me to the viral pop-culture sensation: “The Honey Badger.”  Sheer coincidence that my previous nickname was the “wolverine”, yet another small, angry and sometimes belligerently violent rodent?  Who knows?  But after the cycling dirt video showed me chasing and attacking a Rudy Bear (Troy Wells nickname in case you were wondering) there is no going back now.  I guess there could be worse things to be likened to then a mean ass, tenacious little creature that eats King Cobras, sleeps off their venom and could care less about getting stung by bees as it devours their larva.  “