“Why are you still riding your bike?” Colin yelled as I lurched past. I was half way through my second ‘Cross race of the day. Doing two ‘Cross races in one day is a dumb idea under normal circumstances, today things were kind of special weather-wise (it was what I call “Worst case scenario weather” — 40° and raining), which made this endeavor extra-special-dumb.
 

I’m “old” now so I can do the 35+ Elite Masters race and I, for whatever insane reason, hold a Cat 2 Cyclocross license (I think USAC issued a Cat 2 license to a fish that same day…somebody was drunk at the wheel over there), anyway, I ended up with a license which allows me to do the Elite race and the Masters race on the same day, back to back in fact.
 

There are plenty of things you’re allowed to do, that doesn’t mean you should actually do them — for instance, you could construct a pair of custom bike shorts, employing fiber-glass as the chamois material and then use Tobasco sauce mixed with ground up peanut shells and sand as a chamois cream, that’s allowed. Does that mean you should do it? Hell no!

I’ve always felt that making bike alterations on the morning of a race is much better use of time than sleeping, so as usual, I was up way too early, working on my Superfly. My plan had been to race my new, ugly proper ‘Cross bike that is not a Fisher, but merely a place-holder until I can get my grubby little mitts on a 2010 Presidio (love those sliding drop-outs, it’s like it was made just for me!), but the hard rain of the morning had me second guessing this choice. I was at the very least going to roll down to the venue with an A and B bike, which one was which…only time would tell. 
 

Swapping out tubeless tires at home can be dicey, but in all honesty, all “I love my sponsor, and I’m a massive suck up” business aside, mounting Bontrager tires to Bontrager rims, using the tubeless ready system makes the process much less stressful. My success rate for mounting tires at home, with a floor pump, has gone up exponentially since I started using Bontrager stuff exclusively. My mission was to mount my Mud-Xs and throw a larger gear on, Mission: Accomplished!
 

We now return to our program: “Thom P. Smartest Boy In The Universe.”
 

A warm up was not had for the 35+ race, unless you count sitting in the car with the heaters blasting with the seat-heaters (my best friends) on high. Really, I pedaled my bike to the start line, that was it. I’d seen my buddy Mike Rowell rolling around on his SSCX bike, that had sealed the deal, I was riding The Superfly, I could always switch to my “real” ‘Cross bike in the pit if necessary. It was an uphill start into a left-hander, Mike lead it out on his Single-Speed, I wasn’t far behind, maybe third wheel. I would get passed by a couple dudes on the long straightaway leading up to the Start/Finish, but I would gain a spot or two back by hopping THE GIANT LOG OF DEATH (that video is from two years ago, not from this year’s hellish mud-fest). Between the two races I did, and I have no idea how many laps, I was able to hop the log all but once, and that was in first lap traffic of the Elite race. Small victory!
 

Things spread out pretty quickly in the Masters race, I wound up sitting in fifth place for the bulk of it, unable to or unwilling to close the gap back up to Mike in 4th. My excuse: I was doing another race fifteen minutes after that one. I spent a lot of time trying to wire the course, figure out all the turns. It was tricky, traction was hard to come by, in some spots you were walking a tight-rope, if you wavered an inch one way or the other, you were going DOWN. I would hold on for 5th in the Masters race, which I didn’t feel too bad about at all.      

After my finish, I rolled back up to the car to swap out my gear from a 33 X16 to a 33 X 17 ( I wasn’t going to switch to a fresh, clean bike…I was damned if I was going to have to wash more than one bike after this nightmare). These were more mountain bike than ‘Cross gears, but this course was unbelievably muddy and greasy and slow. I was not feeling spun out hardly anywhere. During the Masters race I had been wearing a Gore-Tex jacket under my 29er Crew vest, I had over-heated, which wasn’t the worst thing ever. These ‘Cross guys love to under-dress for the occasion, they’re all about slapping some embrocation (Pepper Spray: Now in  ointment form!) on their bare legs and riding around in freezing temperature. Not me, I go for full length leg warmers, thank you very much. For the Elite race I opted to throw my 29er Crew long sleeve over my short sleeve jersey and arm warmers, and not change my water-logged gloves…which was frickin’ brilliant. 
 

I was shivering and convulsing on the start line, so damn cold that I lined up right in the back, with the idea that I could just let the guys ride up the hill in front of me as I turned and ignominiously rode back to the car as fast as I could. But I started, bumping elbows with Reuters going up to the hole shot, which made me feel like I was “really in it.” I did make a bunch of passes on the first turn (apparently I am way more comfortable riding right up against the course tape stakes than a lot of these dudes, it was like my own personal single track over there) only to lose those spots on the straightaway, landing in tenth-ish to last coming up to THE GIANT LOG OF DEATH. I would lose more places as I tried, in vain, to set up for another hop. I got blocked in and had to dismount on the wrong side of the bike, awkwardly. 
 

It wasn’t long before I yelled at my hands, “Wonder Twin powers activate! Form of useless-ice-flippers!” They complied. It was a good thing I was on a single speed, because I couldn’t have operated an STI shifter to save my life. Heck, I couldn’t operate my brake levers, I did several laps playing the “I am not going to use my brakes game,” most of the time it worked out. I only took out one section of course tap when I slid out on a downhill corner. I did stay upright though, which was nice. There were sections of the course where I could just carry a lot more speed than the guys on their ‘Cross bikes (of course there were sections where I carried a lot less speed too, but we won’t talk about that). The downhill/uphill hairpins were a blast, I ‘d go brakeless down them, sticking to the outside, then riding up the hill on a tiny section of non-greasy muck, my foot bumping against the course stakes. Pedaling through some of the flat S-Turns, I could just weave my way around dudes who were trying to simply keep their bikes upright, “I wish I had my mountain bike” said a couple of them. 
 

Deep into the hour race I was suffering, my hands were gone, my feet were frozen blocks, my eyes were full of crud. I rode by Reuters (he had the good sense to drop out twelve minutes in) and yelled “Hey, get my camera from the guy in the yellow rain jacket !” “Dude, there are a million dudes in yellow rain jackets.” “Jus’ byell, hoob bwas ub cam-bu-wa bwat bwisn’t bwares!” I thought I communicated that he should, “just yell, who has a camera that isn’t theirs!” But as I realized while trying to have a conversation with Embrocation Rider Cary Friedrich a moment later, I was entirely unintelligible due to my frozen face. 
 

Shortly after that I was lapped by wunderkind, Luke Keough. As he passed he reached inside my brain and flipped a switch, shutting my body down, the blood in my legs turned to Bering Sea water. As I came up to the pit, I just rode off the course, thinking that I had another lap and three-quarters to go, and that there was no way I was going to make it since I couldn’t even hold onto my bars. As Reuters explained later, I only had to roll the last three-quarters of the lap to get counted on the results , “you’ve never been lapped have you?” “No, I guess not, I did not know that, I did not know.”  He told me I wasn’t even doing that badly, that I was sitting in about 8th. Oh well, you live you learn, then you forget what you’ve learned three minutes after you’ve learned it and prepare yourself to do it again the next time. 
 

Oh yes, the rain turned to snow…and then back to rain…and then back to snow just after my race. Things could have been worse I suppose.   

 

After the race I was in a state, cold and wet and in pain, luckily my cousin Will rolled by (the race was held in my homeland of Wrentham, MA) and loaded our mud-covered bikes into his pick up truck and took them down the street to my gramma’s house to hose them off for us. Me and my carpool mates Colin (Reuters) and Leah followed close behind. I took the longest shower of my life, making a mess of the place, and by the time I emerged, far less destroyed, Colin was there with a coffee and a box of donuts and Ganga (gramma) had hot soup on the stove. Amazing. 

 

That’s part of what I love about bike racing: you can feel so horrible after a race, be in so much pain and discomfort, but a few hours later, after some good food and a couple beers, you feel freakin’ great…ready to do it again, first chance you get.