Iron Cross! WOW

AFC had another strong showing at Iron Cross almost winning the team competition with 4 of its 5 riders in Single Speed division. Pat had several mechnicals which did not allow him to finish.

racers in singlespeed division: Pat, Adam, Alex, Matt

racers in geared division: Greg

Alex and Adam finished 3rd and 4th together in the SS division with a time of 4hr 31minutes

Alex and Adam racing with a nice geared guy we met on the road section

Adam receiving 3rd place award in SS division

Matt Panas finished in 5hours 2minutes

Matt Panas racing on his SingleSpeed!

Greg finished 5hours 41minutes

Pat lots of mechanical problems and would of finished around 5hours but got a DNF

Pat climbing one of the steep hills

Here is a special report from Greg aka "the Goat" who did really really well in this race:

So, here goes. Sug calls me on Friday and says I should do Ironcross on Sunday. I tell him he must be out of his mind and I am in no way, no how in shape for such an incredibly ridiculous adventure/cyclocross race. I can barely finish the normal cyclo courses. He insists that he thinks I could do it b/c I am tough. This would be my longest ride in months and off-road (mostly) to boot. He states that he needs a 5th guy for the team challenge and after me continuously telling him that I don't belive I could even finish half the distance of such a race, I finally decide what the heck and I had committed.

I purchased some 700x35c tires from bike escape in Frederick and three tubes. Its 6pm I get home, try to put the tires and tubes on, I get the front tube and tire on, not much problem. Then I move to the rear wheel, where I pinch flat a tube. Now I determine that I will only have one more shot at this as I only have one more tube. I put the tube in, pssssshh. I may be out of the race before it even starts. I had something to do on Saturday, so I would not be able to get to a bike shop in time on Saturday to get another tube. So, I decide to go to Wal-mart with a long shot of them having a tube that will fit. They did have tubes, however they were shrader valve and they didn't fit, so I found some Slime patches and purchased them, slapped them on the two pinched tubes and I was ready to go, hoping and praying they wouldn't flat on me during the race. Short story, the tube never flatted; until this afternoon when I walked out from work and my rear tire is flat. The rear tire that had the patch. That's ironic.

I started with the sub-5hr group with sug, alex, pat and matt. We start and then in the begining spiraling section, less than 3 mins in the race a rider hits the tape barrier, and crashes, so nicely laying himself and his bicycle right in front of my front tire. I can't brake fast enough and I hit him and his bike and fly to the ground. Matt didn't get the full grunt of the accident and was able to get up rapidly and continue. I hop up, thinking that was a good start and continue. I can't wait to get out of this freaking spiral. Probably looks awesome from the sky, but from where I was on the ground, it sucked at that point in time. As we enter the first trail/fire road I decide to settle in at a decent pace and plan and ride my own pace and let the others fly by. We reach the first wooded trail section that was mountain bike worthy mostly and only and I decide I can so run faster than I am biking. So, I hop off and start running, eating up people and finally catch a woman, who is surprised that I am just running the trail and lets me by. I then forget to grab my water bottle and it flew out of my jersey without my knowing. I put my bike down and realize its missing, I really need that bottle, so I leave the bike and venture back for my bottle, find it and continue onward. Not long afterwards we climb the most ridiculous hill ever, extremely steep, lose rock and sand, you take a step and lose two of them. Half way up, your back hurts, and the only time you can pass anyone is when they quit and step off or slip enough that you can quickly over take them. It was brutal. And at the top was check point 1. After check point one, I hear a voice beside me say " a fellow TMR rider" and this is when I meet Paul on his mountain bike. We exchange greetings and then a few people on cyclocross bikes flyby us and I decide to latch on. Hoping that I will not see him again, but later on he blew me away for good I am pretty sure. He was fitter than I. Then I realize not too far later that my seat position is not so great and it keeps numbing my nether regions and I can't take it anymore, so I stop and make some adjustments. A lot better now, but not near perfect, but I can manage it.

The race goes lots of fire roads and paved roads for a long time and then and all is well. I am pacing myself dutifully. We climb again up another ridiculous hill, not as bad as the first, but not far off, not far off at all. I start thinking this is fun, but it sure hurts like the beee-jesus.

This is a close break down of the checkpoints. CP 1 14 miles in, CP 2 28.5 miles in, CP3 44 miles in, CP4 49 miles in, and then the finish is roughly 13 miles further. That's odd, there is only 5 miles in between CP3 and CP4. There is such a reason for this. It goes up, up and up some more with probably 10 false summits, that left you swearing everything under the sun. Many, many people were walking these sections, some crawling. I decided that I wasn't going to walk any of it and gutted it out. I finally get to a nice down hill and I am cruising, watching or potholes and turn markers and out of nowhere an extreme sharp left turn, off camber and thick/soft gravel on the exteriors. I stop in time and make the turn (and notice straight marks, where someone had abuptly slammed on the brakes and missing the sharp turn......and to find out later that its where sugar and alex went down). I begin my acceleration and I get sucked into the loose stuff and I get thrown off my bike and did a nice flip, first striking my right palm into the ground in a superman esque maneuver and then quickly rolling onto my back where I crushed my banana in my pocket and squish my water bottle, exploding all of its insides over the canvas of my back. At first I didn't know if it was blood or what, I just knew that I was really wet. Bruised and cut, but still in one piece. Guy behind me saw me whip out. After a few more tough climbs that I made bikable though others chose to do afoot, I make it to checkpoint 4, tired, but still alive. Only 13 miles left, I can definitely do this and I start pushing harder where I can and catch some more people and battle the same ones for most of the rest of the race. My advantage was that I stayed on the bike on all the climbs that I could and therefore during the last half of the race, gained the respect of a few fellow riders and on one of the climbs, they saw that I wasn't planning on getting off my bike, as I passed they gave me a little extra push that helped a lot, but then 40 meters later just before the crest of the hill, I just had nothing and fell over laughing. In a state of euphoria and confusion. Then got up and continued on. They asked if I was alright. And I said yes, hoped up and got back on the horse as I didn't want to get passed by them anymore......and I didn't by all except one. Instead my motivation was to put as much distance between them and myself as I could. It wasn't until we hit the road with a few miles to go, that one of them caught me, and we shifted into a big ring and biggest gears and just hammered. I kept at it until we kept hitting the hills, and I just lightenedu up, then would go hard again, and then started catching him again, but then we entered Camp Thompson and again and I didn't have enough real estate and relaxed. It was fun, it was painful and I like it a lot better than normal cyclocross, b/c its not so much about speed as it is finding out how to battle yourself and your toughness and continuing on, on and on. The strangest thing was how I would go from complete exhaustion, to feeling fresh and recovered throughout the day. It was fun.

Goat finishing the grueling 63 mile race with one last barrier:)