me

(Moving my reply from the MTB thread to here)

The Hotlist: Episode 5

 

A mustachioed man in drag, scooters with bike racks, Belgian waffles peddled from a Frenchman’s cart and yet another beautiful rain and mud-free cyclocross weekend in New Jersey. What madness is this and will it ever end?

 

For the first time this season, all CX RACING KISSENAS came together to race the same event. No split-sies! Kissena hit the hills and put on their best (and ugliest) racing faces as they suffered through a course that made them go up and down and back around again in Chester, NJ at Marty Cross. And despite some questionable “official” results frozen—like unsuspecting suitors who gazed upon Medusa’s visage—in stone on crossresults.com, Hotlist plays Perseus in this week’s Greek tragedy and beheads the beautiful beast.

 

1.     Eric Ragot. With the raucous support of a trunk-full of waffle-eating fan-boys and girls, Ragot rides to a workman-like 6th place in a 28-rider Master’s 40+ field on day 2 of Marty Cross. Another “Independence-like” podium would have made everyone happier, but the big man had his work cut out for him on some serious hill climbs.

2.     Todd McLoughlin. Rail thin and full of enough scabs and bruises to cast him as Kissena’s next Blueblood’s-appearing meth dealer, McLoughlin shrugs off his previous week’s close encounter with the River Road descent, and Saturday’s average (for him) performance. He gets at least a daytime Emmy for his 6^th place on Sunday.

According to the rules of engagement, if missing a week of racing doesn’t knock you off the hotlist, then a week of sub-par racing (Hotlist was expecting a few more podium placings), in the absence excellence by others, won’t either. But Hotlist ain’t gonna spend a lot of time talking about you either…so you know…race better next week, okay?

3.     Michael Perlberg. Rolling tubulars, burped tires (whatever that is), slippery file-treads, pre-ride muss and fuss. And he’s not the only one. Hotlist is starting to love his clinchers more and more. Despite a weaker than average race on Saturday, Perlberg is still better than most and holds onto the number 3 spot.

4.     David Stokes. Took the week off. But like the latest dish at Taco Hell, we can still taste his Whirlybird Smackdown El Grandé. He holds onto four.

5.     Jules Roazen. Another one who took the week off and Roazen holds five. Of course if he opts out of Bubble Cross, that’s two weeks of no racing and we all know what that means…

6.     Konrad Ratzmann. Rumor has it Ratzmann is somewhere in west Jersey, still looking for his pants. Hotlist is tempted to suggest he use one of his safety pin earings and attach those black skinny jeans to something he won’t lose (his girlfriend?). In the meantime, Konrad takes over the number six spot with a solid 4^th and 5^th place in Saturday and Sunday’s cat 4 open races.

7.     JP Partland. After a trek to the Tibetan Highlands, JP finds clarity and realizes that missing out on cross racing is bad for the soul. Coming into Sunday’s 40+ “Ass-kickers” category, he starts the race strong but loses the ability to pedal circles in the end. He still holds onto 16^th place. He earns a not-too-shabby 406 crossresults points which is 44 points better than this week’s number eight’s result.

8.     Joaquin de Baca. Many of us would be thrilled with a 7^th place finish in a surprisingly competitive cat 4 race that was won by a 16-year-old Pro/Cat 1 mountain biker (who, according to USA Cycling rules, should be racing Cat 3). Still with a string of ass-kicking performances this year, we expect more from the dude who podiumed twice at Providence.

9.     Patrick Grehan. A last minute bike repair, no course pre-ride, Grehan earns eighth place in Sunday’s Cat 4 race. But like our other killer Cat 4s, he didn’t have the race he is capable of. But with Bubble Cross and Northampton coming up, redemption is surely just around the corner.

10. Gwynna Smith.  Well can Hotlist get a Hallelujah? New to the club, new to the sport, Ms. Smith doesn’t go all, “I have to practice clipping in and out of my pedals for 6 weeks before I race” or “I don’t want to get muddy” and instead digs deep to easily best her personal goals in the women’s 3/4 field.

 

This coming weekend, western New Jersey is again hosting another day of cross racing. The second year event boasts the best sand riding we’ll face all year, add to that some cool single-track, off-camber twisty-turnies across hilly fields of grass, a hole-shot that doesn’t suck, smaller fields and you’ve got the makings of a nice day of no-excuse, CX racing. A number of our regular Cat 4s may be taking the weekend off to recharge body and mind, and others may be at  PA’s Crossasaurus Awesome, but Hotlist still expects to see plenty of Kissena jerseys puttering around the miniscule parking lot.

Anyone have a secret link to the New Jersey CX Cup standings? The old forum location on their website appears to only go to 2012 or older. #reallyNJCX?Getwiththeprogram

I was once told that "there is no such thing as a mandatory upgrade" in CX. This didn't sound right to me, so I looked it up. Here's the low-down:

1E6. Cyclo-cross Upgrades and Downgrades
Cyclo-cross categories are upgraded similarly to road category upgrades using the system below:
(a) Requirements for upgrading:
5-4: Experience in 10 races is a mandatory upgrade.
4-3: Voluntary upgrade with 10 points. Fifteen points or two wins if the field had at least 30 competitors is a mandatory upgrade.*
3-2: Voluntary upgrade with 15 points. Twenty points or two wins if the field had at least 30 competitors is a mandatory upgrade.*
2-1: Voluntary upgrade with 20 points. Twenty-five points or two wins if the field had at least 40 competitors is a mandatory upgrade.**
*Juniors are exempt from this mandatory upgrade
** For category 1 upgrades, only 10 of the points may be earned in races that are part of a training series or may be earned in master’s races.

And here is the points schedule:

(b) Points awarded for Cyclo-cross Races Number of Starters Placing

Starters       5-10          11-20          21-50        50+

Places
1                    3                 4                  5               7
2                    2                 3                  4               5
3                    1                 2                  3               4
4                                       1                  2               3
5                                                           1               2
6                                                                            1

Marc Bertucco said:

Anyone have a secret link to the New Jersey CX Cup standings? The old forum location on their website appears to only go to 2012 or older. #reallyNJCX?Getwiththeprogram

They update this thread weekly although the dates are wonky, the points are accurate. 

mperlberg said:

Marc Bertucco said:

Anyone have a secret link to the New Jersey CX Cup standings? The old forum location on their website appears to only go to 2012 or older. #reallyNJCX?Getwiththeprogram

They update this thread weekly although the dates are wonky, the points are accurate. 

http://www.njbikeracing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20

Except, not really. I got no credit for my 3rd place in the 40+ 4/5 race on Sunday. More post race results snafus...

@Marc - so this is how you scratch your elbow during a race?

http://dmadson.photoreflect.com/store/Orderpage.aspx?pi=0HS2003F000204&po=204&pc=1089

For the life of me, I can't figure out what I'm doing in those shots either. Stretching? Definitely NOT eating a sandwich. It does look like these are finish line shots. And I was wishing at the time that I had one more lap, because I was pretty close to reeling in 2nd place.

Related, how come nobody posts a screen shot of the Kissena crossers when ALMOST EVERYONE'S arrow is red and pointing south? This is for me and David S. We're the only dude's in green this week. Go David and Marc!

http://www.crossresults.com/points/?list=Oct+25+2013&filter=Kissena&listregion=top250&minAge=0&maxAge=99&minCat=1&maxCat=4&gender=M

Seriously though, what I can't figure out about this list is how in the world could there actually be roughly 7000 cyclocrossers who are better than me. Are there even 7000 people in our sport? Whereas Roger Aspholm, apparently there are only 180 people better than him, which sounds more realistic. Except when you consider that there are over 6000 people in between he and I and I know he's good and I kind of suck, but he's not that good, nor do I suck that bad.

Or do I...I guess if you worship at the alter at crossresults, you kind of gotta buy into the big list too. I will say that I am genuinely surprised that there are at least 13,000 ranked cyclocrossers on the list.

Bubble, here we come.

You're over-estimating for sure. Gloucester had 800-something riders and no other East Coast race will be quite that big. Up in the Northwest, Cross Crusades draws like 1300, but everywhere else is significantly less than that. It's easy enough to see the numbers on crossresults.com.

@Marc - That's the bell curve, homes. Talk to Gauss about it.

Well this is unsurprising.

Jeffrey White said:

Well this is unsurprising.

"It was brought to our attention that people have been practicing CX off the main park roadway in Prospect Park. The Prospect Park Alliance has been notified and sent pictures and videos of these riders, and this could be used to ban all racing from Prospect."

I can't stand this attitude. When someone gets caught with a dog off leash, nobody threatens to ban all off-leash hours in the park. Totally ridiculous. 

I like this comment a lot:

hey!
anyone thinking about either or combo cx @Swashbuckler-CX and Stoudts-CX both near Lancaster-ReadingPA Area?
i am, love to team-up with someone or two.
- harryB

saturday:
https://www.bikereg.com/net/swashbuckler-cross
sunday:
https://www.bikereg.com/Net/stoudts-cross-pacx-series-race

Harry, same amount of driving give or take 10 minutes gets you to Northampton. Steer north.

JN,
true enough, however, am in Philadelphia Friday's for work...so, a bit more accessible south&west for me this weekend.
+accomodations super reasonable@$50/night for a double.
-h

Ah, makes sense. Have fun out there.

Weekend off for me. Some R&R before HPCX

anybody going to caffeinated cross on Saturday in south jersey and need a driving buddy?

I'm fighting a bad flu right now, so I'm not even sure how many of my posts have made it online, but let me, at the risk of repeating myself, say that if you haven't already discovered, it's impossible to race CX at half-speed. If you are not mentally fresh and excited, you will not have the extra edge you need to do your best. Or even well. So, for new crossers, I want to point out that David's weekend off plan may be a great plan for you too. Not necessarily this weekend, but think about your freshness both in mental and physical fitness as the season progresses.

It's one of the things that I love about the sport, it requires so much of us. That's why after one or two even just 35 minute races, we are exhausted, and sick and beat up on Monday. It's incidentally not dissimilar from true criterium racing. But I'll save that pitch for next spring...

 

In case you missed it, in St. Louis Zach McDonald rode around a barrier that didn't have course tape snug up against the barrier. Here's a poll asking whether you think that was "okay" and/or within the rules:

http://www.cxmagazine.com/poll-riding-around-the-barriers-penalty-gateway-mcdonald-uci?utm_content=buffer93db9&utm_source=buffer&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=Buffer

I remember at a Myles' talk, he once said something to the effect of, "you race within the tape and if the tape is down or poorly placed to allow you alternate lines...too bad...you take the faster line." (Which I did to some boo-birds in back of me at Bubblecross. I hope they followed my alternate line that lap though because it was totally faster. So you know my opinion on the matter...)

@Marc I'm less interested in if Zach was right or wrong and the consequence for the official who decided (?!?) in the spur of the moment that he would make Zach run the barriers again as punishment.  Where is *that* in the rulebook?

mperlberg said:

I can't stand this attitude. When someone gets caught with a dog off leash, nobody threatens to ban all off-leash hours in the park. Totally ridiculous. 

Agree 100%. It's nonsense.