Hey all,
Velonews.com has a monthly photo contest and I entered a photo. Vote for me
by sending an email to Rosters@InsideInc.com and letting them know my photo is awesome (and that
Lyle who is pictured is awesome too).
If you click “gallery” on this page you can see all of the entries.
Oh and if you want to see more of my photos you can check out my Flickr page
photo by Callie
This weekend featured two Midwest CX races, one in Bartlet, IL, the other at Washington Park in Milwaukee. Not a difficult choice for me since last year’s Halloween race was one of my favorite races of the year. I spent more time this year thinking about what my costume would be then anything else. The operative word is “thinking” since thanks to a late night before I ended up just throwing things together at the last minute. I decided to go as “Hipster Jeff” and rode my fixed gear ‘cross bike, rolled up jeans, and a messenger bag strapped to my back. I felt somewhat bad when people started calling me a “messenger on a fixie,” but it was done with love.
Racing fixed was a new experience for me and I heard rumor I got 53rd out of 58th which honestly I’m pretty proud of. Dismounting/remounting wasn’t too hard, my gear choice was pretty decent, the problem was just that I ran of out leg strength 3 laps in and had to take it down a notch in order to not puke. Oh and not being able to coast into turns cost me lots of places.
The definite highlight was jumping off the back of my bike ala Kevin Bacon in Quicksilver and ghost riding the whip across the finish line. Too bad I didn’t have the legs to run up and catch it smoothly.
Andy showed up as Lt Dangle from Reno911!, Katy’s Angus Young costume was completely amazing, Cale’s needs to be seen to believed, and Chris & Shawn showed up sans costume and completely tore it up singlespeed. Tons of people showed up to watch and I’m sure I forgot people, but you’ll see them in the pictures I took.
Best. Race. Ever.
To those who have never visited MadCross.Org…What’s you problem?!
Renee runs the site which is the place for any and all Wisconsin cyclocross (and sometimes all of the Midwest) action. Besides having the latest news and schedule updates it also collects a lot of the pictures various photogs upload from all the racing. Below are a few of me in race mode. In theory you could buy an 8×10 print of me suffering, in theory.
Hold your breath, the Halloween CX race report is coming soon…
While I missed Carpenters Park for a lot of people it was their first cyclcocross race. I was sad to miss the race mostly because I really wanted to see how the fields would look with the Cat 4’s being split up into the A’s & B’s. I’ll have to look at the results, but I’m going to guess the 4A’s was still a pretty large group.
The bane of every cx racer is the bicycle chain. It is one of the critical pieces of equipment that if it breaks will take you out of a race. I’ve had my seat come undone, pulled out a shifter cable, and my handlebars point straight down after a crash and haven’t had to quit yet. In fact at Whitewater I saw a guy whose seat broke and rode without it!
On the more annoying level is the dreaded chain drop. It’ll take you completely out of your groove, but it is still fixable so you can’t just throw your bike & walk off. I’m not sure about the mechanics of chain dropping, but here are my tips on how to avoid it:
1. Remove a link or two - I used to drop my chain on my road bike all the time until I did this, granted cross chaining is a little more annoying, but then I shouldn’t be doing that anyways.
2. Place your bike, don’t drop it - When you go to remount your bike gently place your bike down & put a little weight on it before you jump on. This way your chain won’t be bouncing around when you go to put the hammer down on that right pedal.
3. Buy a dog fang! - This little guy sits right between your inside chainring & your top tube and will shove the chain back on to your chain ring. I looked at mine last night and sure enough I saw a couple of marks where it must’ve saved me.* They weigh nothing & are super cheap. David Millar** would have another TdF stage win if he had invested in one of this little guys.
Hopefully this’ll help you all keep your chain nice & healthy and you’ll be like me and have only your addiction to not training to blame for a bad race.
*Two years ago Marcus (Yojimbos) crafted a dog fang out of a pine cone, a bar end plug, and electrical tape for my friend Allan.
**Doper
Sorry Carpentersville. Next time for sure. Instead here’s a picture of my nemisis:
8:30am and I am laying my floor feeling completely destroyed. My lower back is on fire after the long drive home and I could barely sleep thanks to my allergies keeping me up. The course yesterday was on a large mostly unkept field on top of an old landfill. Everywhere you walked weeds with little fluffies were everywhere and when I got home my clothes were completely covered with them.
The course for Whitewater is almost completely flat, with three barrier sections that were extremely easy to handle, and no complex turns. This meant that the laps were fast with us Cat 4 men averaging 3:45 per lap. In the end Cale & the leaders got in 9 laps, while I only did 8 and got lapped on the last lap. All of this combined to equal a very un-fun cyclocross experience. Adding insult to injury was the $25 race fee compared to the other $20 race fees.
Dear Jeff - If you are reading this in 2008 and you are trying to decide whether to do Whitewater again, don’t do it.
Waking up Sunday was difficult to say the least and while Andy wasn’t able to make it due to his back at least his 3 different alarm clocks helped me wake up. I picked up Cale and after picking up some much needed donuts & drinks we got to Badger Prairie with plenty of time to not only register & get ready but also pre-ride the course & watch the Masters 45’s race. Renee Calloway of MadCross.org puts on this race and it is spectacular. The great thing about this course was it was really interesting all the time. The usual tight Wisconsin turns marked off by a maze of tapes, a big sweeping turn into a slight uphill, a nice section of off camber turns, plenty of ups & downs, a log run up and a unique dismount through a playground. My only disappointment was the lack of the volleyball court sand pit, oh well. To add even more enjoyment to the day a light rain fell the entire time along with a ‘cross perfect 50 degree temperature (even if it seemed colder at the time).
When I pre-rode the course it was only a bit slippery and the course on the backside felt a bit bumpy. It was easy to tell that it was going to get exponentially more sloppy fast as the races went on so I let some air out of my tires to give me a better grip. In general I find I have two major faults coming into cyclocross as a road rider: 1. An overly sensitive sense of fear of everything (trees, ruts, rocks, twigs, leaves), and 2. a tendency to run way too high of tire pressure. This year my only change from last year’s setup was a new tubular wheelset I built up while on the DL. For CamRock I ran about 50psi which was way too high; for Badger Prairie I gassed up the Grifos to 35 which I think was perfect for me. One of the reasons I was reluctant to go with Cale’s recommendation of below 30 was I still wanted some pressure so I could get some speed on the road sections which I usually pass people on. No exceptions for this race as I think I got at least 3 extra places on the road.
Coming up tomorrow…the Whitewater Trash Dash, and Carpenters Park…
This past weekend was spent in the great state of Wisconsin (birthplace of both Georgia O’ Keefe & Chris Farley) where I was able to race in both the CamRock ‘Cross race near Milwaukee, and the Badger Prairie ‘Cross race closer to Madison.
Thanks to Katy & Andy of Team Pegasus for letting me make their apartment my HQ for the upcoming campaign of terror I would unleash on America’s Dairyland. After meeting up with Cale, Jason, & Evan we rolled up to CamRock and were ready to go just before my race lined up for the start. I wasn’t able to get a pre-ride in and at the gun I went out with cold legs & extremely nervous. The first lap I went out as way too hot, stomping on my pedals way too hard instead of spinning and grabbing my brakes hard which I am sure pissed off anyone behind me. The entire time I kept having “Oh Yeah I remember that…” moments usually right when I overcooked a turn and just missed a tree that I am sure I also dodged last year. By the end of the first lap my legs were already burning & other racers were able to pass me. For the last 3 laps I tried to settle in to a steady pace & work more on finding that threshold of how fast I can take turns before crashing. I also was able to gain back a few places and was able to finish 38th out of 66 riders. Afterwards we stuck around to watch the other races especially the Cat 3 Men who I am trying to follow a little more closely this year. Both Greg Heck & Brian Boyle raced and it was great to be able to cheer on my fellow teammates while also trying to get some pointers by watching them race.
That night after a short nap a whole crew of fellow Chicagoans invaded Milwaukee for the Biketoberfest Beer Crawl. We started out at Classic Slice where I ate a Shippeeee Ahoy faster than I would have like and headed out to the bars. It was completely terrific hanging out with people I don’t see near enough and I spent most of the nigh focused on not getting hit by drunk track bike riders and not drinking too much.
Next time on jeffkao.net…Badger Prairie ‘Cross
Race reports for CamRock & Badger Prairie cyclocross races coming soon. In the meantime here are some pictures I took:
More can be found here:
“80% of success is just showing up.” - Woody Allen
Normally here you’d find my breathless account of last weekend’s cyclocross race in Wisconsin. Instead you get to read my significantly less interesting account of how I didn’t even make it to the registration table.
As early as Wednesday night I had my race bag packed, the bike all prepped, my waiver filled out, and the directions sitting on my dashboard. The start time for the Lapham Peak trials was 9am which meant a 6:30am departure for me & Rachel giving us 2 & 1/2 hours to drive up to delafield. Sadly we were still on 94W when 9 rolled around so instead we decided to turn around. This was mostly for 2 reasons:
1. We had a 4 hour drive ahead of us to Michigan for the Apple Cider Century the next day
2. We wanted to go to Apple Holler
Rachel’s boss told us about Apple Holler during Cowalunga and at the time I thought it was just some random diner that served really good pancakes. I was wrong. The first thing I saw when we walked around the grounds was a large bridge that was elevated a full story off the ground. There was a cage on the top that held a single goat and leading up to the goat was conveyer belt operated by a hand crank. Kids would take turns putting a handful of feed on the belt & then turn the crank to feed the goat. Bizzare.
After a really good brunch (apple pancakes with apples & french toast also with apples on top) we bought a dutch apple pie to bring to MI, and two Taffy Apples for us we headed on our way. So yes instead of pictures of racing I give you this picture of a baby goat:
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