Monday, August 25, 2008

Big Hit Man...Blunts Park

UPDATE! After spending 5 full days scouring various websites to find pictures of myself, I met Soups at the cross training last weekend and he gave me 14 pictures!!! What a gentleman.

Yes, I do spend hours scouring the web for race results and pictures after a race. It is a partof my coool down.

This is my one race report for Colin Reuter.

Sunday Sunday Sunday, R-Michael, Natasha, and I headed to Blunt Park for the first cyclocross race of the year. On our way we got lost three times on the same street and rear ended some nice people also trying to get to their race.

As I got there the 35+ men were finishing so I got to yell at Chip for a couple of laps. He was flying through some corners with some very nice tubies.

My only race cheer is "POWER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" for this year.

After Chip's race we proceeded to do a lap of the course together. I could not fricking believe what I saw. There were like 7 sets of barriers or something ridiculous like that.

I was talking to Josh from CBT and he seemed to agree that this race would suck big time and many people were going to eat shit over the barriers.

Anyways, there was a lot of bitching coming out of my mouth, and the main reason is that I was scared of the one barrier that was actually just a tall fence. I am not sure if anyone has experience Ollieing Chains, but one of the most difficult things is to gage height of something that does not have a solid face to it. Everytime I went over this barrier, I could not judge how tall it really was. Very scary...

After riding several laps, I decided to go with the File tread FMB's. There was no mud on the course and it was a relatively fast course with some good straight aways on pavement. I rode the tires at around 25-27 PSI which was a pretty good pressure for the course and I was able to ride through much of the bumpier stuff without my back seizing up. But as you can see, even for a pretty non technical turn, the front tire gets pretty deformed. (Pictures from the Soups.)

I was hoping for some really long stretches where I could open up my HR into the high 190's, but the legs said no.
At the starting line, I had a good position, but could not clip in right away and also chose the wrong gear and ended up in 12th or something like that. I had some good battles with Nick M who rode the D2R2 the day before. The whole time I whispered D2r2 D2r2 D2r2 into his ears, and eventually he dropped his chain and I was able to sneak by him.


He is looking very strong this year, and I hope to battle him all season. The race went very well, I kept it under 194BPM for most of the race, and it felt very comfortable. I think when I have more fitness and confidence, I hope to race at 197-200 BPM. The whole race maybe 2-3 guys passed me, but I was able to keep my position pretty well. I was dissapointed that I was not able to beat the R.Michael but he had a good start and is also riding some very good form. Dr. Cory J was showing some good form as well.

Good to see Meg powering into second place yesterday and wished I could have seen Jeff, Zoo, and Murat racing as well. There were also rumors that Theo Paul was there as well.

9 comments:

C-BOMB said...

Dude!
Nice race, Man! You will be dusting RMM and Mashburn later this year. But how do you get your heart rate so high? I have never seen higher than 191bpm...do you take speed or do coke right before the start?

Yash Katsumi said...

I take a potent "Cocktail" of 2 parts Sportlegs, 1 part Gu Espresso, and 1/2 parts courage.

I am not sure why it is so high. Max HR is around 208 and I can TT at 193-200 for about an hour.

R. Michael, you may have won the battle, but the war is not over.

Colin R said...

THIS RACE REPORT HAS MADE MY LIFE COMPLETE!

Your HR so high, I think you might be part hummingbird...actually that explains a lot.

nick said...

Nice report, Yash. I was enjoying sitting on your wheel for 3 laps. I'm sure we'll be battling it out throughout the season. I'll keep checking crossresults.com to see when you've been changed from "nemesis" to "victim."

Thanks for the vote of confidence, C-Bomb. Just wait. You'll be my next victim.

Zoo said...

Dude, the pre-lap that I rode, I came to that fence and got lost, I couldn't figure out which way I was supposed to go until I realized that it was in fact part of the course :P

Yash Katsumi said...

VICTIM VICTIM VICTIM!!!!!

I must find some potions now that will take away pain.

Your Friendly Neighborhood HR Dude said...

that was a really fun race.

the fence scared me too. In my oxygen debted state, I looked for the line around it to the left 3 times during my race.

super fun.

respect
faticus

Yash Katsumi said...

Marc did you travel all the way from the MidAtlantic? That is a serious trip...

RMM said...

My coach tells me that it is not a victory unless am I holding your still-beating heart in my bloody hands at the end of the race.
I shall break your spirit Katsumi!!
Amesbury is coming up quickly.