Killer Gravel Road Race

My 2010 race season starts this Saturday in Middleville, Michigan at the second annual Barry-Roubaix (http://www.barry-roubaix.com/). My main memories from last year, other than proposing to Anna on the North Country Trail after the race,

are of getting dropped on the hills, and downhills for that matter, due to my underwhelming fitness and competence turning over the gears on my 1x9 Empella Bonfire. This year I'll have my fresh Hogsback and the tires I stripped off my cheapo winter purchase: the Bulldogs are a bit more bite and a bit less roll than I want for this race, but I'm rolling what I have. Check it out:

Kisscross puts on great events, this one and the Lumberjack 100 in Manistee being two of the favorites on my schedule. But it's the oaks and hills of Yankee Springs State Recreation, not just great promoting, that makes Barry-Roubaix, and the Yankee Springs Time Trial (an MMBA CPS and Chapter Benefit Race) really special races. Throw in quiet campgrounds, camp fires and Grand Rapids' breweries and eateries, and you have quintessential Michigan moutain bike racing. Here's another angle:

Race reports will follow. And just for good measure, here's Smoke, the race dog, taking in the cycling action last year:

Chris Lynch Inks 2-Year Deal with SISU Cycles

Negaunee , MI

Chris Lynch, most recently riding for Kitchi-Mi-Kana Cycling Club, has joined the SISU Cycles Race Team for 2010, bringing the SISU roster up to 5 riders.

Team manager Matt Palomaki said Lynch adds some sprint speed to the team, which already is known for its technical descending and unusual strategic moves. SISU has been looking for a smaller rider to fill the massive draft created by 6'4" teammate Jesse Bell.

“Chris is a proven performer and will be a great asset for SISU,” Palomaki said. “He definitely brings another dimension for the team to utilize. In the final kilometers of races, he will be a key rider, whether setting up another team member or utilizing his own fast sprint.”

Having been courted by several top domestic pro teams, Lynch opted to ride for SISU, mainly so that he stay close to home and continue to ride Cat 3. We caught up with Lynch enjoying a Chicken Grande burrito at Border Grill in Negaunee, “You know, I couldn’t be happier. I’m eating my favorite burrito at my favorite restaurant in my favorite town and getting some solid base miles right here in the UP. I’m really looking forward to riding for SISU. The only thing better than my new teammates is my new bike.”

Lynch, a native of Negaunee, Michigan, joins the Michigan-based team where he started his amateur career in 2007. At that time, teammate Bill Street was still in diapers.

New Hogsback in Town

The dream began two years ago when I ran into Jesse Bell at the Iceman finish area. I knew him as an ice climber, so was a bit surprised to see that he had just blown my doors off in our 30-34 age group, placing second. As I wheeled my blown-out but loved bike to my van, I saw him again, getting ready to head back North. But wait, what was that gorgeous blue thing on his car? I stopped him to ask. Michigan made? Marquette? Sisu means what? Hmmm.

I had been admiring sexy custom bikes for years while living in mountain towns full of boutique rides. I'm a Dirt Rag fiend and love following the Handmade Bicicycle show reports; of course, I've always drooled over the Bell's team frames at the races. There's just something so right about riding a bike built by a guy whose sooty hand you can shake (did I just say that?), a guy you'd just love to hand a barley pop. After a look at Jesse's classy rig, I knew a Sisu was in my future. I checked out sisucycles.com (great photos, by the way), started checking out this blog to see what the team was up to, and eventually started the process that led to the hot rod pictured.

Thinking about the races I like to do, I knew a hardtail would be enough. Barry-Roubaix, Yankee, Custer, Lumberjack, Iceman: all 29er courses, in my mind, but whether the White Bros. rigid will work for the NUE races I hope to add this year, is the question. I hope I can hammer epic rides on the carbon, as digging into forks, even adjusting forks, is not my idea of a good time.

NUE. Lumberjack is all I've done in the way of endurance racing, and it's really the highlight of my year. You wake up knowing you will spend all day on your bike, flying through the woods with hundreds of men and women who love it just as much as you. I've also been lucky to have my wife and dog as a killer pit crew. My eye is on Mohican and the Wilderness in Pennsylvania, but summers tend to get full of family, gardening, and other adventures. We shall see.

I was proud to sport the Sisu kit at Iceman this year and felt really good, my best race ever. Thanks to Jesse for the wheels and to Matt for getting them to me. I'm looking forward to meeting more of the Sisu crew this year and wish everyone many great rides.

2009 Cyclocross Nationals -- Bend, OR

I flew into Bend, Oregon with cycling rival and team Chocolay Ace Hardware all-rounder, Dave Grant, for a cardiovascularly challenging week of cross country skiing and cyclocrossing. After 3 days of ski camp, I took a recovery day before the cyclocross nationals race. The weather was frigid all week; the below-zero snow temps made for extremely slow, challenging skiing. With daytime temps in the 20's and low 30's, we anticipated a very slippery cyclocross course.

On Friday afternoon I suited up for a pre-ride of the course. In warm weather, it would have been a fast track with many flat sections and limited climbing. However, the weather was ideal for creating ice and after 2 days of racing everything was packed down into a slick, rock-hard surface. Even the grassy sections that were not covered in snow were extremely treacherous. Bone crushing crashes through these off-camber ice rinks were clearly foreshadowed.

There were only two true dismounts on the course: a double set of barriers and a set of stairs with about 30 steps. Several tight turns, a few of them 180 degrees, would slow down the pace and require powerful accelerations to stay with a group. It seemed that such accelerations would not be possible due to the unusually low coefficient of static friction between rubber and ice. Felling lucky to have kept the bike upright for three laps, I terminated my pre-ride and rode for a short time on asphalt.

Dave and Tony Lackey (who joined us on day 2) raced at 9:30 am on Saturday. The conditions were almost exactly the same as what I had experienced during my pre-ride. The Ace boys got terrible call-ups behind more than 100 other Masters 40-44 racers. They both kept the rubber down as they avoided the start line pileup that broke at least one collarbone. I watched in awe as crash after crash after crash brought racers to the ground. The course was a veritable ice rink. Dave and Tony stayed mostly on their bikes and essentially held their starting positions. They finished about as well as you'd expect from a couple of Ace chumps, 110th and 136th place. The winner of their race completed 6 laps, Dave and Tony were pulled before they completed 5. Deprecation aside, they did well to escape the race without any major injuries (bruised ego excluded).

My race, Masters 30-34, was scheduled for 3:30 pm. By then the temps were in the low 40's and the sun had worked its magic on the ice rink, turning it into a wet, sloppy mess. I was called-up about 50th position behind all the Category 1 and 2 and many Category 3 racers. All of the 4's were behind me. The gun sounded and the fun began. I came to a complete stop at the first turn as the group slowed in front of me. At the next straight stretch, I accelerated as hard as I could and got off the beaten path to pass about 15 guys. From there I just dug in and tried to hold my position.

Photo by Lucian Jones

The course was very much unlike what I had ridden the previous day. My Michelin Mud tires hooked up perfectly and only rarely did I lose traction. The pace picked up as the riders stretched out over the course and traffic became less of an issue. Instead, braking was my biggest challenge. I did poor job of setting up my brakes after disassembling and reassembling the bike for the trip to Oregon. The slow-mo pre-ride didn't reveal the issue, so it wasn't until I was racing that I realized that I'd have to drag a toe Flinstones-style to make it through some fast downhill corners.

Photo by Lucian Jones

I occasionally heard people yelling out positions and could tell I was somewhere around 30th place. Finishing in the top 30 seemed like a reasonable goal, so I tried to pick off a few guys here and there and avoided getting passed. I was yo-yoing with a guy until the end of the last lap when he spun out in front of me while going up a mud hill. I was pretty sure that move guaranteed me a top 30, but wasn't sure until I saw the results that evening. 25th. Nice. I was muddy.

Photo by Tony Lackey

Photo by Lucian Jones

This marks the end of my 2009 cycling season. Its been quite an adventure and I'm looking forward to a minimum 30 day bike hiatus. Time to ski! Thanks to Matt Palomaki/SISU Cycles for all the support and to the team for a successful road season. Special thanks also to Lucian and Sarah Jones for providing an amazing room and board hook-up in Bend(and phenomenal photos, and a vehicle to drive, and anything else we could have needed). You guys were truly amazing! Thanks also to Henry for the exceptional cheering and motivation.

Henry, a cheering monster
Photo by Lucian Jones

Check back in January/February to hear about how badly DG gets whooped in the Noque. Also, if for some reason you want to see pictures of Dave and Tony, or a shot of me with Miss Alaska teen, check out the photo album for the trip here. All of the good shots were taken by Lucian -- Dave, Tony and I took the rest.

Jingle Cross Day 1- Under the Lights

Friday night was my first ever cross race at night under lights and it was awesome! I was pretty pumped and for some reason found myself with a jitter or two before the start. The venue had giant spot lights brought in that did a great job of lighting the course as bright as day where it was shinning. A few spots were hard to see which made for some interesting racing to go along with the slip and slide mud covering the course. As usual Mt. Krumpet was a brutally long and steep run up to keep things interesting.

Telling your body its going to race at 7:30 at night in the dark through the mud and cold is not too easy. It helped to see the carnage from the previous races with countless derailleurs being ripped off and bikes hiding under layers of mud to get the blood flowing and adrenaline pumping. I can't explain it but I absolutely love and live for racing in nasty slick mud! The number of starters was in the upper 40's and looked to be some respectable competition. I decided to try something different and started a little easier to see if I could hang with a bigger group through the whole race. This proved to work a little better and I was sitting in with a group all th

e way to the bottom of Mt. Krumpet. Dialing tire pressure was a problem again with sections of hard fast pavement and slow slick mud. After a bike change things were going a lot faster again and I was able to catch back on and pass a couple dudes. All said and done I finished 25th and in the money!

If you ever get the chance come do the Jingle Cross Rock weekend of racing! It's always held at a great venue with steller courses that change daily. A really well run weekend with fun to be had by all as a racer or spectator.

Iceman 2009

The funny thing about this picture is I didn't know they were behind me. I was in the front row on the line just focusing on the start.... apparently they were too haha. The gun sounded and I was off and surprised how slow the group was going for a start. Maybe I've been doing to many cross races with the pros because I felt it just wasn't fast enough to make my head spin and legs scream so I took the whole shot pretty much from the start. My pull was probably for a good mile or so until I decided to let someone else pull a little and sit in and recover. Jesse Bell took over with the pace making and I followed 3rd wheel until right before the first section of dirt. Two guys attacked on both sides and turned up the pace a notch for about 20 more yards. This is where my great start was wasted as the two guys who attacked bumped each other and caused my buddy Matt to crash right in front of me! Needless to say I was not too happy and left running down the middle of the trail trying to get my chain back on going from 1st to 100th place after 5 minutes of racing.

The rest of my race was spent trying to make up the lost places. This is where the shoulda coulda woulda took over in my head as I drilled it for the next 20 miles. Somewhere around Williamsburg road I knew I was getting close to the front of the race and could see little groups not far up the trail. I tried with everything I had to bridge the last couple gaps to the groups but found the match book running out of matches. The fuel tank levels were dropping fast and the chase ended with 6 miles to go and turned into salvage mode. My goal of 1:45 was falling by the wayside and as the miles ticked by slower and slower so did the goal. 1st twice or 11th in my age group was the final result. Overall I'm still pretty happy because I knew I felt as good as I have racing in a long time and I was able to almost get back to the front. I may have over done it in the chase by myself and payed the price in the last 6 miles but it was worth the efforts and I would do it exactly the same again. Congrats to Brian Matter the local Midwest hero for the 3rd place finish and almost the repeat on the 3peat.... Triple Crown!

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing and enjoying the company of new and old friends. The annual party downtown was crazy as usual including the party bus. Breakfast the next morning was the now tradition of The Omelet Shop, and amazing as always. Iceman is always one of my favorite race weekends of the season and I can't wait until next year.

Bill Street

SISU Cycles Bikes Top Podium at UP State Cyclocross Championship

Photo courtesy of Dennis Loy

This was another big weekend for SISU Cycles. Tyler Jenema and Jesse Bell battled one another for the whole race. Coming into the last lap it looked like it would come down to a 2 up sprint to the finish. Unfortunately, Jesse dropped his chain at the last dismount, just 200 yards from the finish, allowing Tyler cruise in for an uncontested win.

Tyler's win earned him top honors in the seven race series, narrowly edging Jeff Juntti, who finished 2nd overall. Jesse's second place finish kept him in 3rd place in the series.