New England Crit Week, Pre Race words

WIP without images (for now) because I’d rather give this a couple hours of headway time on social media than wait until it’s all properly done to spread the hype

Remember when I wrote a pre race report, back in March? And I how I haven’t written one since? It’s not that I haven’t been inspired to do so- believe me, I still get excited to sit on a bike to pedal and steer at high speeds with friends. Every time. Almost thirty, and I still have yet to find a pastime that makes me feel more alive than putting the fun between my legs and going hard

My reaction when Comrade_Temple_Dirt asked if I was going to watch the Presidential Address. These days it’s my reaction to a lot of questions

Some of the not-writing Life that’s been happening here is because of New Stuff At Work (new coworkers, new responsibilities, still struggling to pretend to be a firmware engineer with a mechanical background), Big Projects Outside Of Work (#BikeFam, I’m buying speaker equipment THIS WEEKEND for all of the events we’re jamming at together, chill), and overall restructuring my life to be more sustainable at it’s usual break-neck speed (a little less meat and a wee bit more coffee and yoga and sleep feels EXCELLENT) All of which takes away from sitting down to do Other Things, including Writing about all of that. You can leave as many notes to your Future Self as possible for the To Do list and pat yourself on the back for being all organized. Eventually you have to fill the cup with coffee/beer/tea and start putting your back into it

The good news I’ve found is you can do whatever you want once the mind is focused and you put your will to it: what’s much more eye-opening is how it consuming that can be, and the rest of you withers away. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. You gotta give each the due attention, and give the rest a break 

My handle is still @bensanrides , and if there was ever a week to indulge in being a bike racer it’s this one: New England Crit Week! There’ll be quite a bit more #content coming up, because even after years of racing I get way too excited about this time of year. Heck of a lot of attention will be to racing for this week. And if you don’t share what you love, how else does it grow? When you know another way, tell me how, but in the meantime I’m going to be hyped about racing bikes like it’s my job

#sevendaysofblackandwhite i like pictures. there are a lot of fantastic sensations, and while a picture speaks a thousand words, it doesn't fully cover the billions needed to convey a feeling whats shown is a @katiebusickphotography shot at @gpbeverly . whats not shown is slick pavement, fallen riders, a body filled with coffee, beer and enough adrenaline to decide to not brake and shoot six inch gaps at thirty five miles to stay in the race its hard to write about the billion feelings bike racing does- im going to start, eventually- but the thousand here will do for now #nowletsstoptimeandenjoythismoment #DALE ¡

This post has got a couple different bits here. One is a brief preview of each race, the other is a link to a lexicon of bike racing terminology so when you read each there’s a better understanding of what I’m so excited about. Might as well give context to the baffling terminology that’s regularly referred to

Gnar Weasels

All right, little bit of a fib, because this is a New-To-Me race, also isn’t officially a part of New England Crit Week and this will be precisely the second mountain bike race I’ve ever done. Racing is racing, and despite using a different bike we’ll count it for now

The promoter is Results_Boy , and along with Night Weasels, not only does he additionally manage Ice Weasels and Greenfield Criterium, he’s the president of NEBRA and you’d be hard pressed to find another human that makes their will so manifest for the good of the community. That alone makes it worthwhile to attend any event Results_Boy has a hand in

I am SHOCKED to discover that spending 6 hours outside marking the @GnarWeasels course led to a SUNBURN despite my halfhearted application of SUNSCREEN

— Colin Reuter (@resultsboy) July 6, 2019

This is basically a shameless plug for Results_Boy to distract from the fact I’m scared witless to pedal hard on not-pavement and have little to offer for pre race insight I really hope I make it out in once piece to write about it so moving on

Fitchburg

Oh man. Oh mama. Take me now, tell ‘em I went willingly

What’s not to like about this race? It gets national attention, for better or for worse. Beer is served beer on course. It’s broadcasted on television. The weather is peak summer furnace. Punishing, just how I like it. The course brings EVERYTHING to the table, so-called-specialist be dammed. And, being ever-so-biased, it’s the best shot I have for a best personal result for New England Crit week. Name a more iconic race I WON’T WAIT because I’m so excited to go hard

This is me at #necritweek 2016 Fitchburg, wondering if I was too concussed to race after a high speed crash the day before (thankfully wasn’t), and still getting IN THE ZONE to the crowd music before the knife fight started. Photo cred lost to time

What the gif doesn’t show is the course is almost all uphill or downhill. You have to either pedal efficiently or ball so hard the [RUDE] want to fine me AND steer the downhill and the corners well enough to survive the whole mess. If you make the selection for this race, you’ve made it as a bike racer so well done. Always worth the registration fee. It’s also July in New England. One memorable race I was spitting blood while driving the pace in a ninety degree oven. Another had so much rain it was over one hundred percent humidity please don’t science-splain my hyperbole. That day I had to bunny hop over a crashing racer on the downhill and I still wonder why I waste my ninja reflexes on bike racing and not the Filipino Mafia

2015 Fitchburg. Couldn’t find from that day the Snapchat picture of They_Call_Me_Slam aghast at the pro field barreling downhill and the speedometer sign showing “Too Fast” so here’s another Snapchat picture of me giving baked goods to drunk spectators

Fitchburg is such a fun course I’m keeping pre race thoughts and strategies secret, except for the Strava gif listed. Hint hint, it’s my fastest lap time there

Exeter Criterium

Deep inside my sassy brassy exterior I have several soft spots for this race. Is it because it’s run by fellow Wildcat Alum Ryan_From_Exit17 ? The iconic historic New England downtown we get to play bikes on? The number of national professional racers that come to give a live demonstration on pedaling hard? The dogpile effect everyone has being so psyched for this race?

Yes yes yes yes and yes 

This is a surprisingly technical race. Every corner is different and is challenging in its own way, and it’s one of the last races in New England that runs a massive crowd preem (see lexicon for Benjamin ‘Splains Bike Words). How massive? Safe bet is at least five hundred dollars massive. We’ll break the speed limit that lap, which is currently eighty seconds for twelve hundred meters. Quick rough math translation shows that’s fifty percent faster than Usain Bolt can sprint for a third of the distance. If you think that sounds awkward imagine jockeying around in a mosh pit of peloton at that pace 

Exeter 2018. I was in between jobs with a vague sense of health insurance, so I used that as my excuse for tail gunning the mosh pit from a safe distance. Photo by Katie Busick

I’ve never done exceptionally well here so a proper course preview is hard to do proper justice here. They key that I’ve found to at least surviving is relaxing in every single corner. First corner is deceptively wide and racers will needlessly bunch into each other to ramp up the speed. Second corner funnels and pinches and hems on both sides high curbs to cull the pack. Third corner takes place on level sidewalk paint which claims crashes than fairly possible. There’s no fourth corner because the peloton speed is so fast the turns smoothed out. Stay upright in every corner and you just might make it

SAM NOOOOO pic.twitter.com/wPm01mNay8

— Colin Reuter (@resultsboy) June 27, 2018

Bike New Hampshire Motor Speedway

Hmm this one isn’t actually a part of New England Crit week either. It does however occur during the empty slot the schedule would normally fill, plus it’s an exciting event to share. If you don’t share what you love, how else will it grow?

My realest and bestest Bike Fam hosts a weekly race series with rotating courses, and this one is the closest it gets to rocking harder that Queen like a criterium. First corner funnels fast and tight, best handlers front to the line please. Second corner kicks hard from downhill speed to a headwind tunnel. Gotta sort yourself in the peloton in the best position possible because oh snap third corner is an off camber smooth paint turn which is the sole dangerous feature that prevents us from making this a sanctioned USAC race. Last final corner before the uphill kicker is also off-camber, but wide enough so you can Choose Your Own Adventure line before Unleashing The Beast for the sprint finish. For me, it’ll be the last race of the week and another reason why it gets a mention here

Greenfield Criterium

Find it a bit hard to talk about this one because 1) I’m not attending it this year (see? I don’t spend ALL of my time racing, thank you very much) 2) there’s little different about the format or terrain to distinguish it from most industrial lot courses 3) this is another hard riddle of a course I have yet to crack. Virtually flat, three of four corners are textbook ninety degrees boredom, personally unsure where the selection for this race happens (if you’re a teammate reading this, try to string out the front by corner three, send it wide and no brakes all the way to the final corner, and BE PATIENT to come around in the final stretch to win)

Comrade_Skimeister and I lined up for Greenfield, 2018. In his words here’s his write up on doubling up for the day. So proud he’s doing it again, this time for Semi Amateur and Semi Pro Fields

And yet- the event is everything about what makes bike racing great. It brings so many people hyped for bikes. The promoter is dedicated to bringing parity to the sport. It’s a well run race. Each peloton fills with enough bodies that the defining course features are moving around the racers themselves. Which truthfully is what bike racing is really about. In this time of DIY workout experts and digital connections being a poor substitute for the real thing, we pack the peloton every event to rub shoulders and rubber to Feel It Still

Which really is one of the biggest reasons New England Crit Week is the best. It’s a days-long bike party mosh pit

Katie Busick catching me being SO EXCITED to line up in such a B A N A N A S Pro field for the Gran Prix of Beverly, 2017 (#necritweek race on hiatus this year)

Spending my #necritweek prep slicing chilled pineapple, come by for a slice. Look for the Crazy Asian with flames on his chest and dark clouds on his arm. We can toast to the hottest, maddest week to be a racer, and be thankful it comes once a year

Made a concentrated effort to show a NOT bike picture. Despite my love of cooking, this will NEVER TURN into a cooking blog

That One Time I Was Paid To Race My Bike

(this ride and report for Rasputitsa is about two weeks late and old. almost threw this one away, but #KEVIN from New England Devo asked me to finish this, which as desired #content puts this as a better than average website I guess???)

(thanks for the encouragement, #KEVIN . we should do this event together next time)

There are a couple of factors involved to inspire me to write about bike racing:

-The “epic-ness” involved, the good and the bad

-How unique the experience was. Which is getting harder to feel after doing *checks notes* two hundred and forty-ish race starts

-The Value Added to me

Photos are also an important factor, but in narcissistic age of social media, that’s kind of a given. Photo by Mark Washburn

Last point is a special word I use a lot in my bike life and professional life. It’s what comes after all of the diligence and technical attention to detail is done to make something worthwhile and special to someone. Professionally, it’s basically a quality Customer Support and Attention attitude. In bike life, it’s… basically a quality Customer Attention experience. If I want answers or a physically rewarding experience, there’s Google and free workouts to utilize. To justify the business value of my job, it’s important that want me specifically to help them. To justify paying for a bike race entry, I want to make certain I get something from specifically attending that event. The minimal justification for a bike race entry is groups of people to race against, a recorded result and whether do I feel like competing hard enough to earn the post-race beer

Sprinter_Krampus highlights it nicely in his piece here, on the nature of training and lining up to race to challenge yourself . Challenging your physical self is the absolute best feeling. I get from weight lifting, rock climbing, hiking, even simple yoga poses. They’re all ways of feeling the edge of my physical and mental limits. None of that though compares to pining on a race number and lining up against the clock and others. I’ve done it enough that it’s almost second nature and routine, and it’s so easy to get excited as race day approaches

Which is half the reason why I was willing to wake up at four AM to drive three hours in the rain to the top of a Vermont mountain in the literally freezing rain to ride a gravel ride, for free

Me trying to be clever and preriding my guess of the course one week beforehand. This is sixty degrees in mid-April

Every January the New England Bike Racing Association (NEBRA) invites race promoters and bike advocates for a day-long summit meeting. It’s advertised as an open forum to help cultivate the bike racing season for riders everywhere. In reality, it tends to turn into a shouting match between grown men having a *checks notes for actual quote*, “promoter dick-swinging contest” as everyone gets agitated about how high costs are and how few riders there are every year. An example of this is the churn rate: The percentage of new riders in the total pool of racers is sixty. The average number of years a bike racer stays in the sport is three years. Those are awful numbers to build a sports community and grow activity involvement. To highlight, here’s the Live Tweet Thread Judge_Upgrade_Plz asked me to type up the meeting minuets at this year’s summit

#nebrasummit opens with reminding we are a region of 156 clubs, 2300 license holders, 139 events

— Benjamin Kramer (@bensanrides) January 27, 2019

In an effort to make the discourse more productive this year, Judge_Upgrade_Plz invited Happy_And_Mocha to this year’s summit. Happy_And_Mocha are a unique fixture in New England, because most event promoters:

-Are USA Cycling Certified* races

-Have at most four hundred racers

-Maybe profit a couple thousand dollars. Easily can lose the same amount, depending on the weather or calendar conflicts

Whereas Happy_And_Mocha have:

-A non-USA Cycling Certified* event

-Has grown to over a thousand riders

-Can’t even imagine their budget but they talk about donating twenty thousand dollars to charity after expenses

*anyone that’s wondering what’s the point of being USA Cycling Certified, it basically the national governing body that officiates competition to build the pipeline of elite bike racing, nationally and internationally

OK, if you're following #nebrasummit , I'm wrote up some stuff* re the @RasputitsaRide section from earlier
*stuff being long rambling Kramer fashion Tweeting, because promoting doesn't have to be complicated but a complete understanding helps https://t.co/OuAXUYgtYt

— Benjamin Kramer (@bensanrides) January 28, 2019

Wrote a separate Live Tweet Thread about their part of this year’s summit. There’s a lot of volatile feelings associated with Happy_And_Mocha coming to NEBRA Summit. It absolutely pains me that two bright and cheerful individuals who- by all understandable means have enough going on that they don’t need more stress- had a difficult reception coming to what’s effectively an Old Boy’s Club. New England’s bike race promoters have been doing things the same way for a very long time; at best any change could be a lot of work, and at worst it’d be taking risks they can’t afford. Happy_And_Mocha both knew it was going to be that way, and as a gesture of good faith they offered everyone in the room a free entry fee into their event. Being paid to race my bike? Makes for a good second half of a reason to go. As far as I know, I was the only one in the room that ended up taking up on that offer

I mean, how bad could it be?

Believe this style of picture is called “Bike Racer Dress Up”

Had a lot of fun prepping for Rasputitsa. I’m no stranger to riding hard and bad weather, but a gravel ride is different in the sense of variable terrain surfaces and minimal pack riding. A bike race can be really dependent on drafting and team tactics and neutral support. A gravel ride is basically survival on two wheels and whatever the event promoter throws at you: You’re on your own for finding the fun and challenge. So, for me it was getting to pick tire and clothing choices to slog. Did a reconnaissance ride slash finding adventure on Off-Fridays the week before on 38mm tires. The dry conditions and frozen ground was fast- thought I’d then chance to go narrow on 31mm tires, adding bike handling experience to add speed and risk flatting. Reasoning was even with rising temps and rain, the frozen ground would hold and this would basically be a fast ride against the weather.

I’m no stranger to racing in bad weather, but these are all new factors I get to fiddle and work with. That novelty alone made taking that free entry very satisfying to me

You can watch the elevation gain/loss and grade percentages to realize this is what the promoter can “throw at you”

 Weather being a factor at Rasputitsa 2019 turned out to be a large understatement. With an hour to go to the start, the parking lot was getting pelted with hail and rain. At the start line, it was maybe forty degrees- high likelihood that the weather could change to snow. The permafrost beneath the dirt roads was still frozen enough that everything was sliding off the road and raising the river level. Ever noticed how it get’s cold when you move by a river in the woods? That was everywhere on course, which created pockets of cold air whenever the road dipped down

It’s nearly May, but anyone that lives north of Massachusetts knows the weather in New England does whatever it wants, seasons and sensibility be dammed. At least this made clothing selection easy: One foul weather jacket, one set of fleece long bibs, winter boots and gloves. Also broke open six chemical warmers for my hands, feet and hips, and wore nylon gloves underneath my riding gloves

Me feeling very not-clever. This is thirty-five degrees with rain/hail/snow in Late April. Photo by Katie Busick

 I still can’t tell if any of that made a difference. The rain got everywhere, the roads were so steep for 36x28 gearing, and the cold was bad. We’re talking about a hundred racers quitting halfway through and getting driven back to the start kinds of cold. Of course that’s on them for not dressing properly- but it’s just bike racing. Within reason, it’s fine to push yourself to the edge of your comfort level to perform

There’s strangely little to say about the race itself to make it a narrative. Frankly speaking, the weather and course conditions made me focus so hard I want to sell that kind of laser precision to my defense contractor job. It makes it a bit hard to remember and recap for a usual race report. Some relevant race highlights and numbers were:

-Skipping over potholes and slick dirt at forty miles per hour, basically making my tire choice of going fast and narrow insane. This is fast enough that cars had a hard time keeping up

-Climbed over four thousand feet, one of which included a section averaging four percent for six miles. Finishing climb was one mile and eight percent grade. This is steep enough cars had a hard time going up

-We climbed so high the rain turned to full-fledged snow

-On immediately finishing I went straight to my car to strip off the wet layers, dry off and inhale a beer simply because it was calories I could replenish off of. Which I needed about two thousand of, after racing for 2.5 hours in New England ‘spring’ weather

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Is this the norm for gravel racing? Because I LOVE it. The course started downhill in the pouring rain only to be matched by relentless muddy uphills. At one very muddy uphill section I thought ‘Ok, at least it can’t get worse’ and then it started snowing. A blast of a birthday weekend @rasputitsagravel race👍 Bring it 2019! #mudseason #gravel

A post shared by Amber Ferreira - Triathlete (@amberdferreira) on Apr 27, 2019 at 10:44am PDT

That’s all I really have to say about the race itself. Got my epic ride challenge, unique experience and satisfying post-race beer. Simple, like every other race. Ten outta ten, would do a-gain You can tell that this post is a lot less about the race and way more about the future of the sport: how to get more people involved and excited to race bikes

Was too tired to consider what kind of picture trope this was, but it felt right to take it post-race

What’s really amazing to me about Rasputitsa is so many people willingly came to race bikes. I went by myself and came across lots of friends during and after the race. So many other people as well. I’m sure most of them don’t line up for fifty races a year like me, or muse poetic about the implications of sports community and physical challenge (if you do, hit me uuuuup at @bensanrides , lets talk bikes) There were people riding from Manhattan that have never been to Vermont, and afterwards they were so excited talking about how thrilling it was being out in the weather and next year they were going to prepare doing X Y and Z. To me, that’s more impressive than getting the European Champion of Cyclocross to line up

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Really enjoyed @rasputitsagravel ride today. The conditions were brutal. But luckily never got cold. Place 6 at the finish.

A post shared by Lars Boom (@larsboom85) on Apr 27, 2019 at 11:38am PDT

Nobody’s making these people exercise in bad weather. Maybe they’re chasing that feeling of challenging yourself. Maybe it’s for completely different reasons. In the end, it’s their choice to engage in this same activity that has so few people that puts them in a special place in my heart

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Some familiar faces here @rasputitsagravel this morning!

A post shared by NewEnglandBicycleRacingAssoc. (@newenglandbicycleracing) on Apr 27, 2019 at 6:21am PDT

What I’m trying to say, is thank you, Happy_and_Mocha. Rasputitsa is a very good example of in getting more people excited about bikes that I’m looking forward to applying. This was both a great first time event for me, and a national race that gets people excited about bikes. Puts everyone on the same team: I’m glad we’re here together

I am paying Katie Busick for every tongue-sticking out picture she catches of me. It’s the little details that make life satisfying