Ronde Van Evergreen

I returned to Carbondale over the weekend for the fifth edition of the Ronde Van Evergreen, a wonderful cyclocross race held at an old BMX park and the site of my introduction to cyclocross two years ago. After my less than stellar performance at Hermann, I decided that this would be a training race and went in with little to no expectations other than the hope to avoid the dreaded DFL. These expectations were further tempered when my ride arrived twenty minutes late and a deceptive detour sign enroute both conspired to leave me with little to no warmup.

Somehow, we still had a full thirty minutes to prepare upon our arrival and an initial inspection of the course showed it to be soft with a few mud holes, but certainly not the bog that I had hoped for. Additionally, the real estate had been cut inhalf from previous years and the organizers made up for it by mowing some new lines into the old overgrown BMX course. Slow and grinding and painful. Good times were sure to follow.

I lined up on the front row and had a mediocre start, something I need to work on, to slot myself in the top ten. I had decided beforehand that I would be happy with that and hoped to stay steady throughout the race. After the first U turn through the gravel, I heard a loud pop which turned out to be one of Stroots spokes, making for immediately reduced competition, or so I thought. As the lap wound through some unending twisters, I watched the top guys pull away and silently hoped to salvage some dignity from last week.

Coming into lap two, I got onto Martin's wheel and he pulled us around Dennis from Dogfish to get us into 7th and 8th respectively. On the straightaway on the next lap, I came around him with the intention of doing my share of the work and continued to grind away through the soft, but quickly hardening ruts. Throughout the third lap, as the course slowly became more abusive, I worked my way up to the young Williams wheel and sat on him for the rest of the lap. I'm not sure when it happened, but somewhere in the next lap, I managed to get a gap on him and put some space between me and Williams and Marty. I was now riding in sixth and hoping to hold onto it, but was a bit demoralized to discover that I was only 25 minutes in when I passed the finish line.

Given my race the preceding week, I wanted to stay steady and get a hard ride in so I kept it ticking over through subsequent laps. At one point I was a handful of seconds off Jay's wheel but either he was able to up the tempo just a bit or I faded enough that he was gone three quarters of the way through the race. At one stage after the steep climb, I saw Yielding in the pits with a rolled tire meaning I was now in the top five and very close to getting my race paid for. I thought I was safe as long as I could maintain and kept grinding away until I saw Stroot coming for me about fifteen to twenty seconds back with four laps to go. Thankfully, my handling made up for his superior strength and I kept the gap steady until I was told one lap to go.
The official seemed confused when he told me one to go, but I was thankful to end the suffering and didn't question. I told myself at every difficult moment that it was the last time I had to do it so I was chagrinned to say the least when I heard that I had to keep going after my "last lap". Pure rage pushed me through the legitimate final lap and I managed to hold Stroot off by a handful of seconds at the end.

So fifth place in my first A race of 2009. I'm definitely satisfied with the result and although I realize that things will change when there's a full roster and fewer mechanicals, I'm satisfied that a week of intensity has brought such a turnaround in results. Hopefully, I'll keep moving up from here and be competitive when the season gets into full swing. Unfortunately, my 08 nemesis Grrman won the race by quite a bit which means I have a lot of work to do. No worries, it's giving me the requesie motivation to make my goals happen. Up next is my first shot at a six hour mountain bike race (with no plans of being competitive) and then a sweet birthday present in the form of a season opening night race. Here we go!