Ice Weasels 2018

[cbusick]

Wow, that was a blast!
Thanks to Mike and Adelle for cranking up the MRC Team compound with the Chaud and the tortilla soup.
Thanks to everyone else for the food and beer.
I love it when the MRC bike rack is so full of bikes that we have to lean the extras on the sides. It was great having the full crew hanging out and cheering on our teammates. What a way to end the season.

Killer B 45+
The course was a lumpy frozen tundra so I decided to go with the vittoria drys.

I managed to get into the grid a row ahead of where I probably should have been, and then when the BMB guy ahead of me missed his clip in and veered right I shot threw and had the whole shot!!! For about 20 yards then I ran out of enthusiasm and let the masses wash over me.

Condon went by yelling, common Busick, let's go! I was holding OK about 6 riders back but then Eric L washed out on a corner and held us all back, opening a gap to Condon's group. A couple of the riders ahead of me apparently could only go fast for 1/2 a lap, but were pretty good at blocking the course so I watched Condon slip away. I finally dropped the laggards going by the tennis courts and started my pursuit of Condon. At the start of lap 2 I was about 20 seconds back. At the start of lap 3 I had it down to 10 seconds. By this point the whole southern half of the course was starting to thaw in the sun, making for a slick layer of mud on top of the perma-frost. This was not good for my dry tires, which went every which way but straight.

I swung my leg over to dismount for the run up and managed to put my right foot through the tape right at a stake. The tape wrapped around my ankle and tore me off the bike. I staggered back up, grabbed a white russian, tossed it back and then carried on.

Now I couldn't see Condon anywhere. I reeled in the other two guys who had been with him, but apparently Mike had dropped them and moved on. Damn, I guess today is Mike's day.

I kept racing along with Ian depressed that MIke had finally bested me. I grabbed another white russian, but now Ed Parson's was with us. This gave me some motivation and I kept trying to distance him but he'd claw his way back. Going into the barriers the final time we were side by side, then we remounted and made the turn for the finish line. Jimmy was running along side me screaming for me to sprint, but I couldn't clip in, my peddles and shoes were totally clogged with the mud from the run up.

I went to congratulate Mike, but he was like "oh no dude, I had to pit two times for flat tires, didn't you see me when you went by??"

Single Speed.
I enjoyed myself after the 45+ race, sampling the tasty beers, having a couple bowls of Mike's tortilla soup, and just generally feeling pretty good. I spent some time trying to jumpstart the Rasputitsa Bus from my truck, but I think their battery was ruined by running the inverter to make waffles for everyone.
Breeze Keller came to our tent after the pro race and asked if we had a pump. I put some air in his tires, and was shooting the shit, when I noticed a large, motley group of people hanging out at staging. Oh, crap, That's my race!?!?! I grabbed my bike and worked my way over.

Details here a a little fuzzy. I managed to work my way up through the crowd until I was behind Condon and Cactus. Cole passed me a beer. We started and I was with Cactus for a while, then a couple bikes back, the I rode the skinny at the barriers while Condon held everyone up with a fancy pirrouette which moved me up about 10 spots, but my heart (and certainly my legs) weren't in it. A beer handup from DeZutter committed me to the dark side of CX hand ups. After grabbing a shot of who knows what from the Fritz tent Katie pointed me to someone on the other side holding up some sort of whiskey bottle, which I gladly took a swig of and jumped back on. 50 yards later I was wonder what the hell I just drank. At this point I could hear either an Abram's Tank or a fat bike behind me so I pulled to the right to wave it through.

"Oh no, I'm not going much faster than you" Micheal Cole said as he went by. "I think I might be drunk"
So I cruised along with Mike until I hit the ice patch after the Tennis courts and went down HARD on my right side. I staggered up and started chasing Michael. Followed him across the skinny for the last time, hoping he didn't blow it, and pushed him across the finish line to end my 2018 CX season.

[davidmccay]

Great report Chris. Makes me wish I was there.

[strat]

What Busick said, plus:

Killer B 45+ for me too. Staging was kind of sloppy, I think I may have gotten a front row call up but it was hard to hear and it didn't seem to make any sense (was number 347) so ended up in the 3rd row behind Busick. Some nimrod decided to squeeze in next to me...should our bars be touching?!?

I've been itching to try out my Challenge Chicane's (file treads) since October but the monsoon conditions have kept these firmly in the stable...until today. Pre-riding they seemed to make sense, it was dry/hard with some fast rolling sections so I went them...but, like Busick said, by noon there was a slick layer of schmoo on top of the perma-frost and so things were interesting in places.

I pretty much tracked behind Busick during the race. Had front row seating for when the course tape snared him and then I snuck past on the run up but he got by me after once we were past the barriers (or were those things part of Trump's wall?!). Clipping back in was tough...thought I was the only one struggling but quickly learnt that excuse wouldn't fly! By the bell lap I was like a rag doll on the lumps and bumps...my back was complaining, my headset was chattering (and leaking some brown sludge which promptly froze to the frame) and some other yet to be identified noise was coming from the rear wheel!

Great venue and atmosphere for the season closer. Big thank you to the MRC faithful who have set the tent up each race and made this so much fun to be a part of. Wish I could've stuck around to watch the single speed action but had to bust out. Decent season for me, had a good run in the middle but I think missing 2 weekends cost me some pace/form. Could've done without the face plant at Shedd but it made for a talking point over Thanksgiving ("Dude, what happened to your face?!")!

Cheers, Ian

[JeremyC]

Great job Busick for organizing a great CX season! Wish I could have been there but it wasn't in the cards.

[Briana]

I had signed up for the Jedi race and the SS race but opted for the SS only. The combination of coming down with a cold on Wed and my company Christmas party Friday night had me in no condition for doubling up. I decided to skip the in race hand-ups in hopes of some decent cross results points to end the season. I got a good start and found myself in 2nd behind the SS Master Mike Wissell and was feeling pretty comfortable sitting on his wheel with a few others in the group. On the second lap, I slid out on my right side near the tennis courts, I got up quickly but was dropped back to 4th or 5th. I was still in a pretty good CX points position but 1st and 2nd were starting to get out of reach. I rode two laps between 3rd and 5th position and was still feeling like I had a shot at the podium when I slid out on my left side. Again I was up quickly but now I had dropped back to 8th and the gap to the guys in front was just too big to close with only about 3/4 of a lap to go. I soft pedaled until 9th got close enough for me to finish the lap with a decent sprint to hold him off. 8th place was still enough to get pretty good CX results points (pro tip, the SS race is the secret to getting good CX points) There's always a strong group of the front 10 guys which raises the "race quality" and then everyone else is hammered.

Thanks to everyone for an awesome season!

Brian A.

[peterkuhn]

The final race of the season! MRC did a great job with tent positioning, thanks for the cheers and support. Chris is correct this was super fun.

Jedi Men: The course had an unexpected variety of fast and dry and slop and loose slippery gravel. Lots of fun, really great, my only complaint is that I wished it could have been bumpier. Most everyone knows that cyclocross enthusiasts have a deep and abiding passion for bumps; there is really no upper limit on the amount of bumps an enthusiastic rider will appreciate.

While the Inuit are widely known to have 50 different words for snow, a cyclocross rider has over 200 words for bumps. There is the surprise bump you didn't see that almost knocks your hands off the hoods ("shit"), the collection of bumps that prevent any attempts to keep momentum ("shit"), the bumps that just rack your body and give you hand cramps when you're redlining already ("aghhg", or "shit"), and so on. Much like Chinese, intonation and emphasis are key and it's hard for a non-fluent observer to appreciate. In sum, any race where I can successfully read anything on my head unit or feel safe taking a drink has failed in the bump department, and while Ice Weasels put forth a promising effort (loved the curbs, loved the random ditch thru the fence) they're just not there yet.

So we line up and I'm like 3rd or 4th row back and holy crap I'm bad at doing the first lap. Does not feel good man. I had a grand plan to warm up on my trainer, "correctly", but the dropouts on my plastic bicycle don't work with the trainer so I probably didn't. After getting roasted on the holeshot and for most of the first lap I have combined my talents of 'almost hitting the fire hydrant' with 'always taking the bad line' to form a new talent, 'getting passed'.

Eventually I hit a stride and start fantasizing about passing this guy in front of me with a "Vegan powered" kit. He's like almost exactly as fast as me for a lot of the race but I should have learned from Robbie that cyclists put vegan on their kit for the same reason that coral snakes have stripes. So away he goes, and I'm trying to keep pace with a Mystic Velo rider with the same idea in mind; this doesn't happen either. Passing is hard y'all.

Shouldn't the A line be faster? Taking the little wood drop was way slower. I love having A lines though.

Women's and singlespeed costumes were on point. One major takeaway from this race is to wear a shiny gold or lavender purple onesie whenever possible, this makes it very easy to find pictures of yourself and photographers will love you. Let's make this happen for next year, I want to look hot and have no practical way to pee. Shout out to our own Kathleen with the fishscale unitard (I think?). Shout out to the utter contempt shown for peripheral vision or vision of any kind during the singlespeed race. Also shout out to the guy with a dress and panties, that looked cold but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do to be sexy.

After the race I had to get back in a hurry but managed to hoot at the singlespeed racers for their first lap, what a good race. I wish they could all have this vibe.

Video of my butt for half a lap and I think Michael Cole piling into the tape:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bApFOFUCCPk