A park in Springfield, MA whose street name is the same as its government name.

What is Blunt Park, Alex.

It’s mid-august, cross season is coming, and while I’ve been riding a lot, its all been more of the endurance type. I look on Bikereg, and there’s a cross race out in Springfield, MA at a place called Blunt Park. It’s August 21st and its 82 degrees out. I need to get ready for cross season and I’ve got the day free, so I decide to make a solo mission out to do this race.

I leave a little late, hit a little traffic and hit the registration table about 20 minutes before start. At least I don’t have to warm up since my heart rate is already elevated from rushing to catch my race. I enter the 3/4 race. This will be my first season racing with the 3s, so I’m not expecting to win this race, just have a blast and get some good training in.

The course is pretty fast, all flat. Has a fun section of single track with some log barriers to run or roll over. Then out in the field section, there’s some tight turns and then a series of 4 barriers, placed so you can take like 1 step in between barriers.

I start in the back, move up to the middle by the first corner, and not to give away the ending, ended up finishing in the middle. Some highlights: Some fan/heckler yells “Marty called, he said to grow a moustache!” I laid they bike down once on a tricky corner, but thankfully the racer RIGHT behind me was able to avoid rolling over my head. Got back up and tried to shift. SRAM shifters are full of sand. Having learned from prior mechanicals involving dirt getting into the shifters, I don’t try do “force” it and smash all the tiny internal gears. So I finish the last two laps as a single speed. Fortunately, I’m stuck in a pretty good gear, so things could be worse. And there’s no hills.

Race ended up being 7 laps, and for me about 48 minutes. I headed straight to my car to grab my water bottle. Odd not to be racing cross and not having frost bitten fingers and toes. I’m dead tired as I write this, so it must have been good training.

My plan for this race was simple, put the pedal(s) down, ride fast, swap out with my teammate every lap…oh wait. Ok, my original plan involved doing the 12 hour two person race. Unfortunately my first teammate @tristans decided to break himself at Domnarski Farms the weekend prior, and my second potential teammate @therobotbuilder wasn’t able to race that day. Crap, I have all this (read: a tiny bit) fitness, what else can I use it for? So I begged Tristan to crew for me for the 6 hour solo race. Ok, actually he offered to help multiple times while I was wallowing in laziness and self doubt (I’ve got excuses to not race, I should fully take advantage of them). So Tristan and his g/f Marianna were awesome on so many levels for driving all the way up and helping out…Can’t say thanks enough. And at least someone got to enjoy my suffering. Side note: how to feel lazy about doing a 6 hour solo…talk to @latimeriidae who arrived at the race w/o any support for the 24 hour solo, then proceeded to ride sub hour laps for pretty much the whole time and win. Badass.

Note the rain: It stopped at some point I think...but mostly kept going. Photo: Tristan

At the Lemans start I wanted to walk to my bike…I hate running and I’m very bad at it. But unfortunately my ‘pseudo coach/friend/Marty’s accomplice in the early Geekhouse days’ @protijy had gotten into my head. Something about “go fast at the start…” Crap. So I ran, grabbed my bike and started to RACE! I was just about latching onto the back of the 12 or so really fast people that are good at riding bikes. Holy crap, I can see the current leader (This means I’m WINNING) I decide that instead of riding conservatively and drop into my riding bikes for a long time pace, I’d race like a cross race. Awesome, FASTER! The course is already getting sloppy partway (Partway is almost like AW PARTY!!!) into lap one…ruh roh…and my “race pace” is already proving to be slower than the people who are now passing me. Lap one done, Tristan say 45 minutes. Woops…that’s probably not a pace I can continue for the whole time. Ok, slow down. I tried to keep things a bit more chill which just means very little when you’re pushing a 1X10 through 250W* mud.

*250W mud refers to the minimum power required to make any forward progress. Later on in the race the mud was probably approaching 300W, and hence I did more and more uphill trudging while pushing my bike (and Jabba the Hut’s weight in mud).

Each lap Tristan handed me a topped off and free of mud waterbottle, made a random funny comment, and quizzed me on my eating habits. Around lap 3 he suggested and I agreed I should be eating/drinking more. What dirt isn’t a good source of electrolytes? Crap. I upped my Roctane intake a bit more and besides my stomach grumbling a bit from basically eating different forms of sugar for the previous few hours, felt pretty good. As the lap count slowly increased my skills continued to decline rapidly, and I entered that “riding bikes is hard” stage where you start to question whether it might better to be sitting on a couch enjoying a St. Boltoph’s Town and watching a Firefly/Airwolf/Seaquest DSV rerun marathon that I just invented in my brain. Then I woke up out of that and realized that my legs were still moving and I was still riding my bike. WTF…this doesn’t usually happen until like 10 hours+ right? On a positive note my Conti X-Kings were hooking up pretty damn nicely considering the event was co-sponsored by Phil Wood who liberally applied their waterproof grease to the course.

Where are we again? Lap 5 maybe who knows…I wasn’t cleaning any of the remotely challenging stuff on the course at this point…dabbing, or just flat out dismounting and running stuff that I was going to be going too slow to ride safely. Also noticed that while descending one of the out of control slippery off camber descents my rear brake was working less and less. (Why the hell am I braking in said slippery off-cambers? See..told you my brain was fried) I pulled through to start Lap 6 at around 4:45…Tristan asked about my brakes and I said something about “they’re not quite dead…” he asked if I felt safe and I gave a “you have a wombat on your foot” look , shrugged, mumbled something and then almost fell off my bike as I had it in the massive 32X11 and my rear brake was working awesome because it was full of mud.

Back through the muddy section across the rooty section and up the evil climb. By the first big descent my rear brake was 99% toast and making “The brake pad is basically gone, and the aluminum carrier has a really low coefficient of kinetic friction, it’s almost impressive actually…” sound. Pulling the lever to the bar produced some cool noise, but didn’t actually slow me down. Fug. So I took my time, having decided that while I should be able to eek in another lap, I’m riding poorly and even then, I need to fix my bike to continue. I walked a lot of the final descent, happy that I was almost done, but frustrated as I knew 7 laps was doable. I got to just about the finish after going as slow as possible up the final rise and hung out for them to blow the horn, and rolled across the line at 6:00. 6 Laps in the books, finished 9/24, covered in mud, and soon to be hypothermic. That was a blast. I think I need to do more races like that. Again, huge huge thanks to Tristan and Marianna, and also to Pat’s Peak and the Root 66 crew, really well run event, and a great venue as they had plenty of bike washes, hot showers, and a very legit course.

Muddy, tired, but happy to be finished. Photo: Tristan

DF was a hellish race - for me at least.

Started in the last line of the group, and didn’t hear the announcers say that the right side of the course was a shit show. So, naturally, I took the right side off the start. I had a reasonable start - I was up front for a little bit, probably around 6th. Shortlyafter, there was a small water crossing which had a square rock on the far side - I saw three people flat! Thankfully, I managed to escape mechanical difficulties, and was feeling pretty good. Then the climb started. I paid for all those wintertime beers I drank in humiliation, as I started an epic gentleman’s slide. My legs just weren’t in the game. After the first climb, I started to feel a bit refreshed, like “hey, maybe I could actually manage this” - I even passed a couple people! And then I crashed. Not just a crash, but an epic OTB on a rocky downhill. Into a big thornbush. Almost immediately upon hitting the ground, my left calf cramped in the most severe way. I decided to lie on the ground for a minute and collect myself - I wasn’t going anywhere fast. As I lay, feet facing up the hill, I got a pretty sweet view of Dan and a few other racers riding past me. That would’ve been a great place to have a camera. Anyhow, I dusted myself off, and extricated the thorn vines that were tangled up in myself and my bike. Time to ride again! And by ride, I mean suffer greatly, and wish the damned race was over already. From then on, it was like I forgot how to ride a bicycle. Another climb later, and Joe passes me like I was standing still (he started minutes after me!) - I think he was in the top 5 for his category at the time. He was really hauling, and looking good.

The rest of the course felt like an infinite shitty climb. Eventually I caught up with Dan, where we chatted for a bit. He and I stuck together for the rest of the “race” (at this point, we were just riding for fun). I took a few more little tumbles from being exhausted and hurt, but nothing serious. Dan and I crossed the line side by side - I’m sure there’ll be some good shots of two sorry lookin dudes on very bright bikes showing up soon.

TL:DR; I rode like shit. There were lots of climbs. The course kicked the crap out of me (and I am left wondering if I may have cracked a rib today).

I took a picture of our messy bikes - I think they look pretty cool all dirtied up. Check it out (click for big):