The Quality Inn is all booked up....no surprise

Just finished my first cross lesson! Very good instruction from Eric R. and Jeff W. Lots of fun too.

Yesssssa, join ussss.... On the muddy side....!

It's the new, New Golf

http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/biking/Cyclocross-Clinic.html?utm_campaign=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=xmlfeed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA

Jules said:

It's the new, New Golf  

Jules said:

It's the new, New Golf http://www.outsideonline.com/fitness/biking/Cyclocross-Clinic.html?utm_campaign=rss&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=xmlfeed

I think its more like mini golf--and that's a good thing in my book.

Also.... follow us on facebook!

https://www.facebook.com/Supercross.cup.weekend?ref=hl

There's 2. Drank that last red bull.

But its chabanov. Meh
On Oct 18, 2013 10:59 PM, "PatrickG" <

With corrected grammar, thank you Patrick for the edit.

FWIW my friend local to the Northampton CX race say the Howard Johnson's in Hadley is pretty a-okay. For cheap accommodations.

Speaking of Northampton, can anyone (I'm looking at you Hotlist) recommend family friendly activities in the area? If figure I will just need some daytime activity (between my morning race and the pro-race Saturday). I don't think they'll be interested in the basketball hall of fame or the Indian Motorcycle museum. They are a little young to tour campuses, but hey, I just need to keep them happy. My ace in the hole is that the hotel has a pool. That will keep them happy for hours after dinner. 

The Eric Carle museum.

And just down the road from The Eric Carle Museum is Atkin's Farm a great place to grab sandwiches and DELICIOUS cider donuts (also other delish sweet treats) and produce and pies and all that Farmers market type stuff.

How old are your boys again? Let me check with my friends for more ideas.

The eric Carle museum is great.

That weekend is also usually Cider Days at a bunch of local orchards. One year we hit one that was having an apple dessert bake-off. We got to sample about a dozen different apple pies, crumbles, cobblers, etc... and wash it down with a glass of delicious cider (hard for the grown-ups).

@Jeff...I'll give a more detailed answer later, as I have had experience trying to "crossresults" the system to help my Northampton call up position, but....the short answer?

Think about what races are going to best help you get physically and mentally prepared for the beast up north.

More later.

Okay, I'm back. So here's the deal. I once mistakenly thought even a "poor" finish in a harder race would be the magic ticket to low crossresults pointage. You can fuss with the numbers in great detail, but here are some initial calculations using your current point level and last year's results for the races you are pondering.

You are currently at 461 points. And you are close to losing one of your calculated score totals due to the whole, "last 10 races" rule. In order to neutralize the loss of a 472-point finish, you need to score a finish that is equal or better (lower) than that. Soooo, using last year's results as a guideline (assuming roughly the same level of competition shows up):

At Crossasaurus in the 3/4 race, 19th place earned that dude 467 points. If you want to lower your average, you would have needed to finish one or two spots better.

At Crossasaurus in the 4 race, 21st place earned that dude 470 points. If you want to lower your average 18th place gave that dude 457 points.

At Crossasaurus in the 1/2/3/4 35+, 21st place (almost DFL...only 25 finishers last year) with 465 points is your threshold.

At Bubble Cross in the Cat 4, 14th out of 46th place earned that dude 456 points.

So, you and I could do this all day long...my overall point is that, it becomes tricky business trying to game the system based on points. Because there is generally a steeper drop-off in point value versus the drop off in ability/fitness level in the "harder" categories. Also, I feel like good pointage generally skews towards better placings regardless of category.

Using myself as an example, my best point score all last year came with my win in the 40+ Cat 4 race at Bubble Cross! Traditionally, the local NJ master's cat 4 race is the "easiest" and yet I earned a surprising 386 points for that win. Part of that was because my teamates in Grehan, Roazen, and Nelson in 3rd, 4th and 5th came into that race with good pointage...and I was lucky enough to finish in front of them on that day.

Conversely, at HPCX where I raced totally average for me (I wasn't good, but I certainly wasn't on a bad day) the Master's 35+ open hard-ass race, I finished 37th out of 42nd place and was "rewarded" with 423 points.

More recently day 1 at Marty Cross, I did the hard ass 40+ race, raced very very hard, and I felt like I did pretty well (I certainly couldn't have done better), but my 24th out of 32 finishers was only worth 477 points. Kind of a punch in the gut to be honest. Now the results aren't up for day 2 where I got 3rd place in the 40+ Cat 4/5 race, but I'm going to guess, that my pointage will be better than 477. And it's a race, that in some ways was "easier." It was tactically, more of a challenge, but physically, on Saturday, strictly speaking, I think I got the better workout in...especially since I raced for 46 minutes that day, versus, I don't know something in the 30-minute range.

Soooo, you kind of get what I'm going after? Race the race that is going to prepare you better for Northampton. Forget the points. Visualize the hole shot at Northampton. Practice slaloming through trees and over roots. Get up double early and practice carving corners on frost covered frozen fields. Practice explosive short steep run ups (plyometrics?). Do the things that will get you pumped physically and mentally for the battle to come.

PatrickG said:

The boys are 13 and 10 now but they grew up on the very hungry caterpillar. If that doesn't keep them happy then cider donuts are sure to be a hit. 

In my continuing efforts to help families enjoy our bike race weekends too. Here are some more ideas for the Northampton weekend courtesy my local friends:

"Apple picking at outlook farm if they're into that. Mini golf at look park or hadley. Natural history museum at amherst college has dino tracks and is free. Also the mead art museum at amherst college. Small but world class and free. Smith college art museum is bigger but costs a small amount. Excellent art tho. Basketball hall of fame is in springfield. Also a pretty good airplane museum at bradley - tends toward military planes. Corn maze in sunderland - they have a great potato cannon that uses compressed air to launch the heck outta some spuds."

That's right potato cannons...

(Pssst! Donut Derby)