Home  Bathroom Reading / News Adam Craig Journal Gloucester, MA to Brazil
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Written by Adam Craig
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Monday, 16 October 2006 |
 Over here at Carl and Adam’s fun bikin’ team we try to keep things diverse and interesting. Seemed to me that the best way to do that was head east for the opening round of the USGP of Cyclocross in Mass, head to Maine for a few days to catch up with the family, then fly down to southern Brazil for Pan American MTB Champs. Carl, being the older and wiser of us knew that a late fall trip to Brazil might be a bit over the top on the traveling program so he went ahead and flew home. Smart guy…
First things first. Cross Racing. Carl had the foresight to get his skinny tire on the weekend before in at Star Crossed in Seattle and the opening round of the Portland ‘Cross Crusade serics. Unfortunately, Carl wasn’t unable to three-peat at Star Crossed, a fellow who goes by three names took him to the tape in the last few corners. No third huge cardboard check for Carl to hang over my head because he’s so cool… On the other hand, it only took one random jit-bag local cutting the course in Portland the next day to fire him up enough for the win. Nice work. He didn’t even get in a fight after the race, although homeboy wanted to… Carl made some comments after the weekend of racing (which I skipped to recover from a hard week at Interbike in Las Vegas) about how two days of ‘cross will kill a man for a good few days. I for some reason didn’t pick up on this…
We flew to New England on Thursday, eventually… Somehow there was one square mile of fog surrounding our beloved Redmond, Oregon airport for the half hour we needed it to be clear so we could get out of dodge. No dice. Instead we ended up with one of the most horrible sentences I can imagine in a domestic travelers world. We would drive (with haste in the WRX) two and a half hours to Eugene, OR, then catch a flight to Vegas (not what I wanted to hear) where we would catch a redeye to Washington (also real bad) then make it to New Hampshire by noon the next day. Not sweet. Fortunately, we both got middle seats on the redeye…. At least that was some concolation? Maybe not…
After some hard sleeping we lined up on Saturday afternoon ready(ish) to rock from our solid midpack lack-of callup start position. I’m glad I didn’t chase UCI ‘cross points before Gloucester kicked off but starting in a hole sucks… We made do though, with constant forward progress. This found me catching the chase group (Barry, Ryan and Tim Johnson had long since checked out off the front) about three laps in. Being composed of mostly Roadies I immediately grew irritated with the incessant complaining about pulling through (which none of them wore actually doing) and complete and utter lack of cornering skills. So I gave ‘er. Somehow they started working like a well oiled machine and kept me dangling around five seconds ahead for a lap or so. Although the announcers were talking about the Most Aggressive Rider category points I was amassing I didn’t feel like racing like a total jackass so I went back into the group and tried to ignore the bitching… Last couple laps I tired of it again and set about paring down the crew to a manageable sprint size. Turns out I dropped everyone and didn’t have to sprint. What a relief… I crossed the line foruth and waited to high-five Carl who cleverly added ten places to my result, just to keep things even.
Day two involved the same business, Carl got a decent start and it took me while to reel the boy in. We railed some corners and passed some guys, wondering if our Giant TCX’s were the best handling bikes out there or everyone else just didn’t know how to ride? I eventually hooked up with my future Brazillian roommate Todd Wells and we set about slowly picking guys off. Not quite as quickly as yesterday though. We got within five seconds of the fifth place group but never made contact. I totally dusted Todd in the sprint for sixth though. Possibly my first ‘cross sprint victory ever. Carl somehow didn’t get the memo that he was supposed to add ten places to my result again today and blew it by riding strong and steady to come in 12th. Guess last weekend’s recovery finally worked out… I was about to go find a candy bar when they called my name for the most aggressive rider prize for the day. Not sure why, I was way more aggressive and effective the day before, but I’ll take a big cardboard check for $200 any day. Unfotrunately my good buddy and race organizer Bruce Fina repo-d the cardboard. Guess advantage is still Carl in that department…
After a nice week of sleeping ten hours a night at Grandma’s place and relaxing Maine style (mostly with pie and meat) I caught a flight to Chicago, then Brazil with the rest of the US National Team honkeys. Some creative connections (like taking a bus through Sao Paolo, a city of about 20 million brazillians) we made it to Balnaerio Camboriu in a reasonably smooth fashion. This is when I started remembering Carl’s observation about tired bodys in the fall taking roughly forever to recover from racing efforts. I bumped the sleep up to eleven glorious hours a night and hoped it would work out. Nope. Still tired on race day. Fortunately, the unrideable clay-mud of Saturday fell victim to Sunday’s hot sunshine and onshore wind, allowing us to ride most of the ridiculously steep climbs on the 4.5k coastal loop. Things started off reallllllly fast, like all South American races. I got dropped. Then I got it together for about ten minutes. Then I decided I would embrace the sensation of being pregnant with everything I had eaten since waking up and ride like a small child with all his blood in his stomach for about half the race. Once the bubble burst and I processed about a gallon of water and two thousand calories I got it together and fought the good fight, totally passing a bunch of random Spainish and Portugese speakers to get back into the top fifteen, I think. Ouch. Maybe I’ll take a few days off after this and figure out how I can survive La Ruta de los Conquistadores in a couple weeks… We’ll see how it goes.
Thanks for reading and keeping us in solid support thus far this year, the dog days of fall is when it means the most.
Adam and Carl’s fun, diverse, sometimes overextended Giant Team. |
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