Nor’easter / Rochester written by Justin Lindine

Everything was different, but then again, everything stayed the same.  Sometimes bike racing can feel like being stuck in a rut…pack the car, unpack the car, wash bikes, get bikes dirty, etc.  Other times there can be literal ruts; some good, like winning streaks, and more often bad, like flats or crashes or poor races.  I was stuck in an apparent 4^th place rut. 

Coming off the Green Mtn CX weekend where I was pleased with both my performances but really excited about the relative proximity of myself to famous notables on the second day, I headed to the Nor’easter cautiously optimistic.  The tons of sloppy peanut butter-like mud that greeted me when I got there was almost cause for more optimism-tempered by the fact that I would spend all evening driving to Rochester NY for tomorrows Ellison Park CX and probably have no small amount of maintenance to do in the morning.  Anyhow, what little pre-riding I did ensured my knowledge that the race would be a slugfest contested at slow speeds with a fair bit of technical grace interspersed with ridiculously hard pedaling.  The slew of Euros on the start line added to the normal depth of a New England field and unsurprisingly Dylan Mcnicholas took the hole shot for the first half a lap until a lead group formed with Ian Field, Nicholas Bazin, Tom Van Den Bosch and myself.  As you might guess, from my 4^th place rut comment before, I didn’t beat any of the guys in this group.  As it turns out Euros can drive in the mud pretty well and obviously pedal hard.  All it took was one slip-up on a muddy off camber and the gap was never to be closed again.  I struggled alone for the last couple of laps in no-mans land, with the comfort of knowing I was the first American, but the disappointment of being within reach of the podium again and blowing it.

That night I spent about seven hours driving through the darkest corners of Vermont and New York on my way to my sisters’ house, just south of Rochester.  I rolled in just shy of 2 in the morning and hit the sack after a quick shower to get some of the Lake Champlain shoreline mud off my body.  After some early morning bike maintenance and a little spin to open the legs up a bit I got to the racecourse not knowing what to expect.  Last year this race was a punch for punch brawl between Derrick St John and me.  The course is brutally hard with more climbing then any other cross course I’ve done.  I was terrified of the possibility that it would be muddy and transform the long grassy climb into the worlds longest death march.  As luck would have it, it was dry enough for file-treads and hot enough to be thinking more of going for a swim.  A balmy 80+ degrees out and did I mention that the entire host of Euros that I had raced yesterday were there on the start line?  Things felt a little like déjà vu as a lead group formed with the same cast of characters as the day before.  The similarities ended there though as the speed of the course and the oppressive heat made for polar opposite conditions from the day before.  I put in a solid attack that gained me a small advantage for ¾ of a lap, but it was too early and shortly after I got brought back a poor shift from me resulted in my front derailleur slipping out of position and hitting my chain-rings.  I managed to kick it half into place, but once again the gap was open to some pretty strong riders and I was behind the eight ball trying to close it.  I got tantalizingly close…within ten seconds of closing the gap, but just as I almost made it the attacks started in the lead group and the pace shot out of my tired reach.  Sigh.  I rolled in for the third consecutive 4^th place really beginning to tire of the trend in my racing.  I was simultaneously pleased with my ability to make and race within the lead group, but was beginning to get unforgivably annoyed with myself for botching every possibility with stupid mistakes. 

The good part about bike racing is that while the possibility for getting stuck in some of the negative, seemingly endless ruts is always present, there will always be another race to try and fix things at.  Some might call it masochism to keep plowing away hoping that each week something better will come of your futile effort…luckily in sports we have a better adjective to describe that: tenacious.  I like that…tenacious