Our very own by Natalia Gardiol went and represented at Nationals this year- here is her wicked race report! Enjoy!!

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Cyclocross Nationals, Dec 10-13, 2009

Bend, OR

While most New England ‘crossers entertaining the trip out to Bend this year started planning months in advance…I wavered. I started out the season in the Women’s 3/4 and made the move to Elites only halfway through the season, so my initial enthusiasm circa October (when I was winning races) rapidly tempered into fiscal prudence somewhere around November (when I had to ride my legs off just not to finish last)…

But, the draw of Bend was strong, reason notwithstanding. Who knew what might happen next year– if I might manage to recover this hard-won level of meager fitness, or if I might even still be in the country at all. With all that we hear about cyclocross in Oregon, the thought that I might be missing my last chance began to take on a haunting quality. So, with two weeks to go, I decided to pull the trigger.

Naturally, this decision let loose a mad scramble of logistics.

Chip Baker of HUP came through in a huge way by lending me his Record/Reflex wheels with Dugast Rhinos, which promised to be more apt for the expected mud than the Grifos I’d been racing all season.

My secret weapon, Jim Wirtanen of Pinnacle Bikes (aka cyclocrossworld.com), pulled off the speediest, thorough-est, most maximally PRO tune-up and packing job to have my bike overnighted to the bike shop in Bend the Monday after NBX.

Jeremy Dunn of Embrocation Cycling Journal and Dave Roth of HUP generously let me stay in the huge, happenin’, HUP Haus along with Dan Langlois, Kirt Fitzpatrick, a solid Saturday night crew, and surreptitious visits by Adam and Janice, which made the trek worthwhile in and of itself.

On the menu: two races. The Masters’ 30-34 on Friday, and the Elite race on Sunday.

Thanks to my heroic coach Al Donahue, I’d gotten the PRO tip from Jeremy Powers a couple of days before departure: rather than do openers on arrival, you’re best off to do a ride as close as possible _before_ the flight. That way, all you have to worry about when you arrive is stuffing your face and propping your legs up the wall.

Unfortunately, due to work, I’d had to book my trip for Thursday with an 8am departure out of Boston and a evening arrival at the airport in Redmond, 16 miles north of Bend. Twelve hours of travel, and openers of any sort seemed unlikely. I would advise anyone to consider not arranging their trip in exactly this way next year.

The good part was that a 2:15pm start time meant a 9am shakeout ride was actually feasible. It wasn’t even as cold as everyone had been moaning about all week. After some cowboy coffee and breakfast, we were ready to hit the venue at noon for the open pre-ride hour. I think everyone and their brother had the same idea, as there were so many bodies on course that it was almost impossible to move.

Nonetheless, the more laps I got in, the easier it became to appreciate the tastiness of what the course designers had laid out for us. It was a short, technical course to be sure, but fast– the layer of mud forming over the tundra teamed up with the incessant off-camber chutes and hairpins to make the penalty for error rather high. Thank god for the Rhinos…this was going to be awesome.

I gridded up third row, somewhere in the middle of about 60 starters. Other than the big names and the few New England friends I recognized, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the race. When the gun went off, I sprinted for all I was worth, knowing it would be a tall order to pass once we got to the dirt.

Coming into the hole shot, I hear, “you’re in tenth”….tenth! Simultaneously elated and terrified….surely this won’t last. The slickness of the course was wreaking havoc all around….I lost a few battles in the war to stay upright, giving up a place here and there, but nothing too major. I’m going to just gloss over the slip and fall coming into the stairs, and maybe the trip and fall over the barriers. Not like anyone was watching or anything, especially not a tall guy in a orange jumpsuit who seemed to be cheering at every inopportune moment (I’m looking at you, GeWilli!).

With just over one lap to go (of 6!!), I recognized Amy Breyla from the C3 team, and resolved to try and stick with her group. Going into the gravel/asphalt/gravel transition later made famous by Adam Myerson’s crash, she went down hard ahead of me. In fact, I think a rider went down in front of me almost every time through that spot. Scary.

Not knowing what was going on behind me, I decided it was worth trying to carry some momentum into the run up, which had been wholly rideable if one was careful. A fatal decision. I went into the corner with slightly too much gusto for what the re-freezing ruts could support and felt my wheels vanish from under me, dumping me tailbone first onto the greasy permafrost. The wind was knocked right out and I crouched there, stunned.

Rider after rider passed me by. It killed me to think I might have to DNF. After what seemed like an eternity, a kindly spectator helped me pick my bike up off the ground, and I tried to imagine standing up. All right, all right…legs still move. Feeling infinitely, impossibly slow, I pushed the bike up the run up and did my best to pedal after the remount. Apparently, there had been a decent gap behind the group that I had been riding with, because I don’t recall losing any more places after that. Given that I was probably averaging about 10 watts for the whole last lap, this is something of a miracle. Amazingly, that was good enough to hang on to 19th place.

A dunk in the hot tub and some tacos back at the Haus served to distract me from the fact that my right glute was becoming almost entirely seized. Good thing I had a recovery day the next day…surely that would fix it.

We headed out to ride the course again on Saturday at noon, hearing that they’d made some changes to lengthen the lap. The addition consisted of a bumpy, rocky, greasy off-camber descent off the crest of the run up, replacing the quick 180 back down that had been there the day before. This nefarious stretch added maybe 30 seconds to the lap, but it increased the catastrophe factor significantly.

It took me a couple tries to successfully ride it, and even then I was sure I hadn’t figured it out. I went home with gouges out of my left hip and elbow…a consequence of a touch on the brakes and the ensuing ten-foot slide. Did I mention those “rocks” were sharp, nasty shards of lava? Forget about brakes; the only way to go down this thing was to loosen up and let it roll. Oh yeah, and then brake like hell in time to make the acute right turn at the bottom. At least that part was bermed…slightly. So much for recovery.

That night, we ventured into Bend for some food, and afterward proceeded to waste 45 minutes trying to find the Deschutes brewery warehouse (it was at the race venue. Obviously.) and the purported party within. We had dawdled at the door not five minutes before the number of people waiting to get in went from three to thirty, to sixty. Curiosity won out, and we made a dive for the door and gave our $5 donation to trail maintenance. Inside, the DJ was into it, the colored lights were going crazy, and the extensive beer bar seemed promising…until we realized they were charging for drinks. So while I’ve heard wild tales of some creative dance “openers” that ensued after the Clydesdale championships, we peaced out and headed back home for some respite.

Now, for some reason, the Elite women’s race was scheduled for 11:15 the next morning, with only a half-hour of pre-ride scheduled before it. This meant that I and Abby Jenkins, a new Embrocation rider based out of Portland, made a brave (painful) pact to get up for the 7:30am open course time.

Pinning my number 100 on the night before, it crossed my mind to wonder if they were really starting the series from the number one. The answer was yes. By the time they called me up (everyone was called up by name, one-by-one, by a poor official who had been incomprehensibly denied a megaphone), there were almost one hundred riders in front of me, and I was starting in the last row. When the gun went off, nobody around me moved. Not a one.

I don’t think I’ve ever started a race so slowly. For the 80% of the first lap, there was nothing to do but try to avoid plowing into the rider in front. If I hadn’t been so sore and incapacitated, it might have been frustrating.

When it thinned out into a single line coming in to the run-up towards the end of the first lap, I figured I could make up some spots by taking a lower line on the descent that I’d been practicing in the morning. All was going well, until I forgot it wasn’t 7am and the melting frost meant I wasn’t supposed to touch my brakes. One painful slide and the first holes in my kit (in two years!) later, I realized I was in no condition to keep up this “trying” thing. Given that I could barely coax pastry-ride wattage out of my legs, I decided to just ride and enjoy. In the elite race. At nationals. On a 6.5-minute course with Katie Compton coming at you. You know when you are deciding to have “fun” during a cross race, you are doing it wrong. But a DNF seemed more wrong….so as the saying goes, HTFU, princess.

After that point, I began to look around. There were crowds of people out lining the course almost the entire way around, cheering, even though I was mighty sure I was riding DFL. It was a bluebird day, and the drum corps was a force of primal beauty every time through the barriers. Dave Chiu and GeWilli were unflagging in their encouragement. With no one around to make me nervous, I railed that infuriating descent every single lap. Easy. I played with taking the the hairpins as moto as I could. It works!

Oddly enough, I never noticed Katie Compton pass me. With 1.5 laps to go, Meredith Miller came by, then Amy Dombroski. I paused in the start/finish area and asked if I should stop racing. Right? I’ve been lapped. No, they said; keep going! Keep going?! Eventually the rest of the top eight came through, and I managed to get in Mo’s way the last time down the descent of doom, which I’m really sorry about. I had thought somebody was trying to duke it out with me for second-to-last place…but it wasn’t exactly easy to look over your shoulder on that part, unfortunately.

In the end, I finished 80th, hardly awesome. But it does mean I made up 20 places from my starting position. (Actually, it was 73rd according to the preliminary timing chip results, but not the official results. So I’m still confused about what they were for, in that case.) The absolute cherry on top, though, was crossing the finish line and being greeted by a Shimano/Pro worker handing out warm, damp hand-towels with which to clean off. And then the fabulous Matt Talbot, who was working the pit for the S. Camels, took my bike and washed it for me. That’s the business. I guess this is how it rolls when you officially hit the big time! CB even got some photo time on Belgium Knee Warmers.

Later that night, we went to the after-party at a bar whose name I can’t remember, made up some dance moves that I’d rather not remember, and generally celebrated the close of the season in the best way a crowd of bike racers can manage.

Headed back to Portland in the Rapha van the next day, Dave R treated us to some of the most arresting landscapes I’ve ever seen. High desert, plateaus, mountains, river gorges…that had me staring out the window in a trance for three straight hours.

With Christopher Igleheart coincidentally in town for his sister’s birthday, we couldn’t have asked for a better ending to the journey.

Season 2009 was one for the record books. To all the friends, old and new, that made it so great, I offer my humblest, deepest gratitude. You guys are the best.

by Natalia Gardiol

Nervousness before a ‘cross race is something I thought I had gotten over. The butterflies and clenched throat in the staging area….old hat. But, for some reason, lining up for the women’s 3/4 race at Quad Cross on Sunday morning, I could barely stand up from the metallic pressure that was seizing my stomach. We staged for an interminably long time. Why was I such a wreck? Going in to this race, I had the rare sensation of feeling like I had an actual chance for a decent result. My fitness was better than last year’s, the field was comprised of riders with whom I’d ridden well in the past, and…despite my sore throat and the previous night’s 1am chain installations, I felt like I could be at the front of the race if I didn’t screw up. So that would explain the nervousness…it was go time, no excuses.

The whistle blew, I stomped on my pedals– no way I was messing up this start. I landed at the front going into turn 1, and a mysterious clarity invaded my psyche. My usual cross race goes like this: jump! pedal pedal pedal! furiously! to the front! and then wait, clinging like nails to a bedsheet, for the inexorable slide backwards. The only question, usually, is how long until sliding time. That could not happen today. I had to trust that over the summer my lungs had learned how much was tolerable…how much was enough to keep a gap, but not dip into the red-zone…at least not right away. The rest of the race is, honestly, a blur of focus. I remember only the pressure of keeping the gas on, of linking up the s-turns, of sprinting hard on the pavement to get that “free speed”…

(photo by Natasha McKittrick [pedalpowerphotography.com])

In fact, I was so focused, going into the downhill s-turns before the first pavement section on the last lap, that I didn’t realize I’d plowed straight off-course. Something was wrong. Where had the course gone?! I looked all around, only to watch the 2nd place rider duck into the left-hand curve…behind me. I realized later that something had broken the course tape at the base of a turn, and I’d ridden right through the downed section. It didn’t matter. I was now in second, with 1/2 a lap to go. I was going to have to catch up.

I backed up onto the course, pointed the right way, and sprinted for all I was worth. Catching her wheel just before the pavement, I sprinted and sprinted and sprinted until I’d passed her and was diving into the right-hander past the pit (and the howling masses). And sprinted and sprinted and sprinted. Down the gravel, around the slick hairpin barrier, up the nightmarish wheel-sucking mud, back through the last pavement section, up onto the grass, and up the grind to the finish one last time. I imagined she was on my tail coming into the line, that she would come around me at any second…I was out of the saddle, lungs scorching, seeing nothing. Finish. Finish. Finish.

by Nicholas Mashburn

Few races are close enough that you can ride to them. Quad Cross in Bedford, MA is one such race, so I took advantage and got my warmup on the way there. I got my number at Registration and hit the course for a couple of hot laps.

I missed the call to staging, but maneuvered my bike into the front row between two NEBC riders who I’ve been racing with for a while. They didn’t protest too much.

Like Natalia, I had the nervous stomach, but that was helped a little when I was publicly called out by Ian Sutton. Ian was announcing the race and said something to the effect of “watch out for Matt Miller and Nick Mashburn, because they’re sandbagging.” I laughed it off, but knew I had a shot at a pretty good result. And I also already knew who my competition was.

Matt Miller (GoVegan) took this opportunity to talk some trash and then the whistle blew. I remember a young CLNoonan taking the holeshot with me on his wheel. He imploded as we crossed the finish line. I had started to open a gap on the field as we passed the team’s tent and felt great.

This is when I started to think I could open a large gap early and stay away. I heard intense screams of excitement as I was actually winning the race! Only to hit the muddy, slippery-wet deck in the turn before the barriers. I think I only knew I was on the ground because the excited crowd went silent.

(photo by Geoff Martin [beastgp])

Apparently this was a sign of things to come for the rest of the Cat 4 field in this same corner.

After a quick recovery, I realized my chain had come off. Crap! I frantically put it back on in time to see one rider pass me. It was Matt Miller. Of course. He was riding strong and smart, but karma was about to get him back for overtaking me when I was fooling with my chain.

Moments later his pedal was giving him trouble so I attacked. The attack put me slightly into the red. A half lap later he had managed to catch back up to me and counter. I was actually passed by another rider as well for a brief second until I realized that I was sliding.

I maneuvered back into second place and tried to pursue Matt to take back the win, but his gap was growing. On switch backs I pleaded with him to slowdown. He responded by heckling me. Honestly, if you’re winning a race by 15 seconds and heckling your competition, you’re sandbagging. There, I said it.

In the end I held onto second, which earned me a delicious Ommegang for post race recovery. Quad Cross is such an awesome race. I wish there were more local races like it.