Out With A Whimper: St. Mary's Cross/OVCX Finale Race Report

Maybe I should have ended my race season with the Gravel Grovel. While my string of positive race reports has been nice, and could not last forever, I did not want it to end like it did this past weekend at the St. Mary’s Cross race at Fort Ben Harrison State Park, the finale of the OVCX series.

The prior two OVCX races I did this year (Brookside and Bloomingcross) were marked by back of the pack starts due to my high cross rating, and were spent fighting through traffic.  In its own way, this was fun, but for this last race things had changed. Thanks to a series of solid finishes in the IndyCross series, my cross rating had gone down, and I had registered early for St. Mary’s.  This resulted in a second row call up position.  This race was also the Indiana state championship race, and in looking at the registrants, I liked my chances of a possible top 5 placing, and perhaps even a podium.

But things went to hell. I planned to leave my house at 11 am  to get to the Fort, which takes about 20 minutes. Problem was, some last minute household outdoor duties popped up and in dealing with them, I allowed time to get away. I looked at my phone and realized it was a quarter after 11, and I was still outside dealing with those issues.  I ran around like a mad man trying to get ready. My wife was going to drop me off and I was planning on riding home, but we didn’t get out the door until almost 11:30 and then didn't get to the venue until 10 till noon. 10 minutes until start time.  As we pulled to a stop I immediately knew I was going to miss my call up. I raced to check in and get my new number pinned on (I had my number from the Bloomingcross race pinned on. I had assumed it would be used again).

As I got to the start line just as the USA Cycling official was waving the day of registrants forward to take up positions behind the called up racers. So, there I was dead last in the field.

Suck.

As for the course itself, it was pretty good. Mostly flat, with a section which climbs up a large sledding hill at the state park, and then descends the same hill via a short switch back section. A set of barriers was preceded by a short twisty section to kill most of your speed.

Beautiful shot of the barriers at St. Mary's Cross and the Shamrock heckle section.
Photo: Instagram @nathanielbikes

So the race started and immediately a rider in front of me had a mechanical and I nearly hit him.  The same thing happened a few minutes later with another rider and I was really off the back.  I persevered and started off picking off riders here and there.  The course was mostly solid, although the climb up the sledding hill was quickly turning to muck. Traffic required me to run part of it on the first lap but I was able to ride thereafter.

Not much else to say about the race since I was never in contention for anything. I went back and forth with a junior rider a few times, since every time I would make a move to pass he would manage to cut me off. Honestly, I could have thrown an elbow and probably shoved him to the turf, but that wouldn’t have been cool on my part, and would not have been popular amongst the spectators.

I did make contact with Aaron on the second to last lap, and tried to make a move and passed him on the last lap just before the climb. Too bad he stuck close with me on the climb and then my front deraillieur didn’t want to shift up to the big ring which allowed him to get on my wheel and then pass me back. He got  short gap on the final ½ mile and I couldn’t close it before the finish.

The problem was a lack of urgency on my part. In the Indy Cross races where I had recived good call ups, I found myself pushing very hard to stay with the faster riders, and letting their momentum carry me to a point where the field was spread out behind me.  That in turn led to better results and faster times as I tried to maintain with the faster leaders.  In this case, I was relgated to targeting individuals riders in the distance, and then spending half a lap closing with them, passing them, and then setting about doing it again. The speed I should have been capable of just wasn't there; instead there was speed just enough to get me in front of the competition I was presented with at the back to middle of the pack.

So, that was it. Final race of the 2014 season saw me squander my best call up yet in an OVCX race and push me out of contention in the state championship race.  I watched the podium for the Cat 4 and saw one rider whom I had beaten a couple times in the IndyCross races step up.

Strangely, the winner of the Indiana state championship for Cat 4 had something like 24 upgrade points going into the St. Mary’s race per crossresults.com. He had raced the Cat 4 35+ race that day as well and won that too (as in first overall), and then won the Cat 4 portion of my race, although he was in the top third or so overall. I’m not sure how one can still race in Cat 4 with that many upgrade points but perhaps I need to refresh my memory on mandatory upgrades. Looking at his cross results profile it seems he had been primairly racing in the Cat 4 35+ race so maybe there is a difference between upgrade points in that wave and the open Cat 4, maybe a weighting thing?  The overall positions in the Cat 4 35+ is probably not as fierce since it shares the wave with Cat 5 riders, while th Cat 4 open has to deal with Cat 3 35+ and the freaky fast junior riders.  But no matter. It would not have impacted me for this race.  Time to look ahead to cyclocross 2015.