Rejection Reaction.

Disclaimer: My rants may seem like they are directed at the author of the rejection emails I have received. They are not, they are directed at USA Cycling as a whole. I do not know who is responsible for their individual policies, but for now I am directing my anger at the entire organization, not any one single employee.

This is the explanation that was passed along with my rejected upgrade request:

I look at Cat.1 results for ALL categories and with that I am looking for top 5 results. For the Pro Open races I do not see the results nessesary to go pro as it's tough to tell which riders are pro and which are cat.1. Please resubmint for a pro upgrade when you have some top 5 results out of all cat.1 times or top 5 results in the Pro Open category.

Few thoughts:

1) To earn an upgrade I have to place in the top 5 against all pros, or in the top 5 against all the cat1s. This equates the pro field with the cat1 field. This is stupid.

2) "it's tough to tell which riders are pro and which are cat.1" Yes, I agree. There is a very fuzzy line between cat1 and pro riders. Your own upgrade policy equates the two. (see: item 1, above) This is the problem, not an excuse to not solve the problem. Road and cross have a very defined system of promotion points which is used to determine who gets an upgrade. The solution is easy, you have a system that works (road/cross), just replace the system that doesn't work (mountain) with the one that does.

3) As Greg pointed out, comparing the times of racers who are not racing directly against each other is stupid. If I'm off the front of the 30-39 field, and I soft pedal across the line and win my race by 5 minutes, I could potentially not earn any upgrade credits because a couple 40-49 cat1 dudes who started 2 minutes behind me, finish 1:50 behind me. At least give me a chance to lose the sprint to the line.

4) Taking the top X number of racers is stupid. It needs to be a percentage of the overall field size. I can't remember the last time I saw more than 5 cat1 women in a single race, does that mean that they should just get upgraded based on (essentially) attendance alone? What if your race happens to be in the middle of a hurricane and no one shows up? What if your race sucks and no one shows up? (yes, I wrote that last sentence just to give me some text to use as a link.) Are you still taking the top 5?

5) Last year the upgrade requirements only counted if they were earned at National Calendar events. It seems like this year, there is a more sensible policy of counting non-National Calendar events. As much as I appreciate the lowering of the bar to a more reasonable level, there is something to be said for consistency. This is (at least) the third year in a row that the upgrade requirements have changed. Hitting the pro upgrade was tough enough in the first place, it doesn't need to be a moving target.

6) "Please resubmint for a pro upgrade when you have some top 5 results out of all cat.1 times" Wait a second, I've got those...

USA Cycling Support Ticket #212862 Closed: License Category Change Request

Dear Kevin Sweeney,

The following request to change your INTL/NORBA category has been denied by USA Cycling:
huge_pop - 2010-03-04 11:34
Member: Kevin Sweeney
License: INTL XC
Request to change category from Cat 1 to Pro

Member Explanation/Resume:
At the beginning of the 2009 season, I started out racing Cat1 and in my first 5 races, I never finished worse than 4th, with 3 podiums, and one win. After that I started racing in the Open/Pro category, and usually finished around mid-pack. Highlight of my season was finishing in 6th place (out of 20) at the Massachusetts State Championships Open/Pro race. Also impressive was my 13th place (out of 28) in the Mt. Snow Open/Pro race.

I feel my results from 2009 (below) prove that I can compete in the Pro class, and would like to compete in this class exclusively in 2010.

Thank you for your time,

Kevin

04/11/2009 Root 66 #1 Hop Brook Dam Cat1 3 of 21
04/26/2009 Root 66 #2 Fat Tire Classic Cat1 4 of 25
05/09/2009 UMASS Orchard Assault Cat1 4 of 19
05/17/2009 Root 66 #3 Winsted Woods Cat1 1 of 11 (flat)
05/24/2009 Root 66 #4 Coyote Hill Classic Cat1 2 of 14
05/31/2009 EFTA NECS #2 Bear Brook Blast Off Cat1 DNF
06/28/2009 Root 66 #5 Putney/West Hill Open/Pro 23 of 35
07/12/2009 Root 66 #7 PATS PEAK Open/Pro 18 of 23
07/19/2009 EFTA NECS #4 Harding Hill Cat1 1 of 8
07/26/2009 Root 66 #8 Mount Snow Open/Pro 13 of 28
08/02/2009 Root 66 #9 Hodges Dam Open/Pro 6 of 20
08/09/2009 24 Hours of Great Glen Expert 4man team 1 of 8
08/12/2009 Darkhorse 40 Cat1 2 of 27
08/29/2009 Root 66 #11 Norcross Scurry Open/Pro 9 of 9
09/13/2009 Root 66 #12 Landmine Classic Cat1 8 of 19

Request was denied on 2010-03-10 15:14 by Marc Gullickson

USA Cycling Response from Marc Gullickson:
Kevin,

I look at Cat.1 results for ALL categories and with that I am looking for top 5 results. For the Pro Open races I do not see the results nessesary to go pro as it's tough to tell which riders are pro and which are cat.1. Please resubmint for a pro upgrade when you have some top 5 results out of all cat.1 times or top 5 results in the Pro Open category.

A holiday reunion.

It started not too long ago, when we were cleaning up Ice Weasels. I spotted an Eggbeater cage sitting on the registration table. It was well after dark, and everyone had gone home. "Gee, that would look good in my pile of Eggbeater parts" I thought. Yoink, into my pocket it went.

Fast-forward a day or two later when, like any obsessive promoter, I was googling "ice weasels" and reading every single comment on the internet. I came across this race report, and this photo:

If you mix that, with this race report and this photo:

Actually, I'm just going to let the internet write the rest of this for me. Read the late edit and comments here.

Then read this, sprinkle in a dash of this:

That should paint a pretty complete picture for you.

Well. not really. I'm leaving something out.

I couldn't help myself. As I was sitting there looking at the pedal cage, and the rebuild kit, I just couldn't control my urges.

Sorry David, the bad news is you're only getting half a rebuild kit. The good news is your left pedal is going to operate so smoothly you're going to pick up at least 10 watts.

Ice Weasels, the race that just keeps on giving. We'll file this one under "not always a douche."

Ice Weasels

What's up dudes? We put on a race, let's talk about it...

we trucked that snow in from vermont. and the sun from florida. i think it was worth it.

Thanks,

Obviously, a big round of thanks must be given first and foremost. Putting on a race is about finding people to help you, and coordinating that help more than anything else. From registration to parking, results, beer, to course work, heckling/commentating, to break down, warmup, to food, course materials to PA systems, hand ups to hand outs, sausage to hup cakes; there are way too many people to thank. If I try, I will inevitably leave one out, and that's no way to thank someone. You all know who you are, we couldn't have done it with out you. Seriously. Thank you.

With that out of the way, let's talk about why Ice Weasels is better than every other race on the fucking planet.

1) Constant improvement.

benchcut: half destruction, half construction, full on awesome.

Listen to your customers. Address their concerns. Don't be happy with what you have. We headed out to Wrentham months before the race to fix-up parts of the course. Last years sketchy descent down to the rail bed made way for this years waaaaaay awesome euro-chute. The euro chute was my baby. I had a vision, and that vision had to be argued and defended many times. I gotta say though, in the end, it was exactly how I wanted it, right down to the placement of the hay bales. I had no idea digging out a bench-cut was so much fun, almost as much fun as railing that turn and dropping down to the rail bed at full speed.

there you go little girl, kevin'll treat you right. yes, you're a good little euro-chute.

2) Sprinkle in some awesomeness

No one is going to complain about swooping turns in a flat field. But, swooping turns in a flat field certainly have room for improvement. So we embarked on the labor intensive, and for the most part completely unnecessary chore of building a berm to spice up the flat field. It took damn near forever. Chris (one of the White Barn Farmers) gave us a hand with the tractor, but we still worked well into the dark to get it sculpted just right.

berm! just because.

3) The easy way is the lame way

that's the run-in to the berm, 24 hours before the race. seriously, no joke. (poop!)

We showed up in Wrentham the day before the race, and the course was looking horrible. There were a lot of ideas floated.

"Ditch the berm, it's not going to happen" There were 6 inch deep tractor ruts all around the run in and run out for the berm. Everything was frozen solid. A 4x4 truck could barely make it through, no way was a bike rolling through it. After a few hours of tractoring, smoothing, raking, and repeatedly driving over it with a truck, the berm was a go.

"There's too much snow, cut out the entire front section." The rakes and trucks were again pulled out. We spent hours flattening and smoothing the course, and raking off all the snow we could. It took forever, but come race day, the course was exactly how we wanted it.

"Turn this race down to 9, it's too awesome" Nope. This race was turned to 11, where it stayed. We didn't have to make any compromises.

4) Races are supposed to be fun.

Sure, everyone wants a good result, but that doesn't mean you can't, or shouldn't break up the tension. BEER! Come on cyclocross race, loosen up a bit. Let me get you a drink. There, isn't that better? Let me rub your shoulders.

the cause of, and solution to, all of cyclocross's problems

5) Why can't races be social events?

yes, the kegs were put right next to the trainers to test your willpower.

Who wants to warm up alone, set up behind their car in the parking lot? Maybe you and a teammate spin on trainers next to each other. Why? Everyone's gotta race together, why can't everyone warm up together. We're all cool, and we sure as shit can't carry on a conversation while we're racing.

In summary

I may be a tad bit biased, but I'm going to go right ahead and say it anyway: Best. race. ever.

hot on the trail of the rare new england ice weasel. it's been here, not too long ago. these tracks are fresh.

Late edit: It didn't make the official lost and found. But I got an eggbeater cage sitting on my kitchen counter. Let me know if you're missing one and it's yours, with a rebuild kit. Us eggbeater users gotta stick together, it's a cruel world out there.

Dear Cat 1 men,

Hey guys, what's up? It's us, the back of the field.

Nope, Further back.

Yeah, there. Hi!

It's probably been awhile since you've been back here, so let me give you a little update. Things are tough. Not just the normal, "i'm going to get lapped and my legs and lungs burn too much to do anything about it" brand of tough. That's to be expected, that's why we sign up for these things.

This is different. It's the starts I want to write to you about. Not sure if you realize it or not, but you've been sending a lot of debris our way lately. Debris we don't see coming. All we can see is the ass of the four guys in front of us. We love love receiving new bikes just as much as you do, we just don't want them delivered to our faces while we are trying to race.

stole this from colin's seatcam; crossresults, crossresults, crossresults. there, we're even.

Next thing we know our front wheel is embedded in someone's ribcage, our rear wheel is three feet off the ground, and simply finishing the race is so much more painful than it needs to be.

funny story. see that red and black redline behind those yellow shoes on the left? that's the flying bike in the picture above, one day later. looks like dylan brought her home and clipped her wings on saturday night.

If Ricky want's to come back and race with us, that's cool. We'd love to have him. Can you make sure to send him back on his bike, and upright? His is a fast wheel, by which I would love to be dragged through the straights, assuming it's on the ground in front of me, not wedged firmly in my groin.

You guys are faster than us. We acknowledge that and let you go first, we stay out of your way and don't ruin your race. All we are asking for in return is for you to not ruin our race. Don't send your bikes flying back at us. Don't send bodies back at us. Just let us ride for 50 minutes, we'll stay out of the way as you lap us, and we all go home in one piece. That cool? You can even take our entry fees home with you.

kisses,

the pack fodder

Lowell race report

Six reasons why Lowell is awesome.

after a few minutes of squinting, i'm fairly certain that's me. (photo: Geoff)

1) There wasn't a crash at the start. I did freak out a little going around the track when the pack started coming together. Cyclesmart has left mental scars on me. I think it's going to be a long time before I'm anything but cowardly off the line.

2) The announcer narrated my trip to registration. It felt super pro, but I think someone willingly handing a live microphone to McKittrick might be a sign of the apocalypse. Stock up on dry good folks.

3) Results? Why? This isn't the Verge series, it's not like anyone's keeping track of this. There were no series points to earn, and the money didn't go nearly as deep as it needed to go for me to have a shot at it. My goal was to test the legs and get a good workout, which is much easier than trying to get top 25 in a stacked field. Easy goals = fun.

4) Strategy? Why. This isn't a Verge race, we're here for a workout. It's more fun to attack the course at your own pace than it is to sit in a slipstream and stare at someone's lycra-clad ass. Passing is more fun than conserving. I pretty did much all the pulling. I wanted to be out in front. This was awesome until the last two laps when the gentleman's slide started. At that point I may have wished I conserved a little bit more early on.

5) I crashed! It was my own fault! There was no one to blame. It was awesome.

6) New dudes! The field was a diverse mix. Lots of masters, lots of Cat3s. Lots of people I've never raced against before. My crossresults.com page has a whole row of new skulls this week. Pretty badass.

gorilla prefer subtropical forest, but gorilla like Shedd Park too. (photo: Jeff)

New Feature!

From now on I'm going to guess how many crossresults points I think I earned in my race, before they are computationaled over at the interweb. Which is slower? Crossresults code or my race report posting? How many times do I have to mention crossresults before it's ok to mock crossresults? Crossresults is going to get the squirt gun show bump today. It's a negative bump.

Anyway, 304. The field was fast, and I placed well, but I think the lack of a cyclocross world kit* may have cost me a few points. I want to say maybe 308, but I felt really fast and made some good moves in the first 45 minutes. My guesses would probably be more accurate if I knew how that number was computed.

*not the one Brian Wilichoski wore while he whooped my ass, the black and green one.

Lowell prerace report

Things I have done wrong this cyclocross season.

uh, I need to race that bike, could you, and you, and you, and you, and you please get off of it? (that's me in the middle, #32)

1) Allowing Derrick St. john and Rickey Visinski to line up within 10 feet of each other.

2) Not dropping out of Cyclesmart day two after hitting the pavement at speed. I subjected myself to a great deal of unnecessary pain and frustration.

3) Buying that 11/23 cassette. I run a 1x9. This combination only works on the flattest and driest of courses. Haven't been on one of those in a looong time.

4) Not taking a rest week every three weeks. For some reason I thought I could just hammer through three months of cross racing/training, then take three months off. It made my legs hurt to type that.

5) Trying to cure the pain and frustration (and failure) of Cyclesmart day two by training extra hard. By "pain", I mean the literal type: roadrash, bumps, bruises and general muscle soreness.

6) Racing exclusively Verge races. I put way too much pressure on myself for these big events. Cross isn't fun if you're always putting pressure on yourself to do good. Grassroots races are good for the soul, and I haven't done any this year.

In summary

I didn't have anything in my legs at Cyclesmart, day one or two. There were also crashes at the start both days. I wrongly attributed my disappointing performance to those crashes when the truth was I was way overdue for some rest. This all came to a head Saturday morning when I woke up and didn't even want to look at a bike, let alone go to Plymouth and race one. So I took a solid week off for the first time since the middle of summer.

Did it work? Let's head to Lowell and find out.

Cyclesmart International, Day one

How did we get here?

I'm a mess. I sucked on Sunday, and this week is like slow torture. I have a gigantic monkey on my back and it's not going anywhere. I can't concentrate on anything. Nothing satisfies me. I'm craving something, but can't for the life of me figure out what it is. All I know is that I am constantly on edge. I've given more strangers the bird in the last 48 hours than I have in the last 3 months combined. Everything sucks.

Rx.

I need to get this behind me. I need to go to the proverbial airport and drop off my baggage and this fucking monkey. First step is to get these race reports out of the way. Second step is to sweat. Get on the bike and hammer until my headset seizes up into a salty mess of corrosion. The final step is to start tearing off legs.

Cyclesmart, Day one.

Who cares? There was a crash at the start. I slowed, put a foot down, and got around it. From there on I climbed from group to group. Pass. Sit in and recover. Pass. Recover. Hammer for 2 minutes to the next group. Recover. Pass. Recover. Hammer for 2 minutes. Repeat until you get to Chris Hamlin's wheel. Watch that wheel disappear. Either Chris saves gobs of power for the last 10 minutes of the race, or I was out of gas. Who cares?

I'm shaving my arms tonight. (photo: df53x12)

Either way, aside from getting caught behind the crash, I rode the race exactly how I wanted to. I thought I had a really good race. Then I looked at the results and learned that I merely had a good race. The 15 racers on the bottom of the results read like a checklist of the racers I slowly moved up through. I though I was working my through the mid-pack and into the points. Turns out I was actually working my way up from tail-gunner to mid-pack.

In Summary

Either way, 29th. I'll take it. Sure, I might have been able to pick up 5 of 10 spots if I didn't get caught behind the crash, but there were also 5 or 10 DNFs that would have beat me if they didn't get caught in the middle of the crash.

This post sucks. Everything sucks.

Canton Cup

Why didn't you race Canton?

Let's start from the beginning. Downeast? In Maine? Remember? With all the mud? Yeah, that. Gave my bike a good scrubbin' after that weekend. Rode 'er into the office the following day to see how she was running. Like most of the bike commuters around me, there was all sorts of grinding and squeaking coming from my drivetrain. A quiet bike is a fast bike. My bike was not quiet.

thom came dressed as a kid toucher.

So I ripped 'er apart. Took the whole bottom bracket apart. It's BB30, so the process was way more involved than the last time you took a look inside your bottom bracket. I had the special, overpriced, Cannondale tools, printed instructions from Cannondale's website, and a whole tub of grease. An hour later, I had very dirty set of directions, half a tub of grease, and one bolt left to tighten. I was quite proud of myself, until I heard the crunching sound that last bolt made.

So close.

my friend, functional crank arm bolt, and his evil twin

Aluminum fasteners. Why? So one thing lead to another, and my crank arm fell of as I soft pedaled through the parking lot at Canton. No race for me. I had a stash of beer, and I hadn't registered yet; two factors that made it easy to turn down the 15 bikes that were offered to me. Another Canton Cup, in the books.

Dear Cat3 Men,

I started typing a comment to respond to Mike's response to my open letter to Cat3s, and it started to get really long, so I decided to turn it into a post here at the show. I should preface this by saying I consider it too late in the season to justify the $90 UCI license that an upgrade would require, so I don't expect any more Cat3s to upgrade this year.

thom get's into character by scoping out all the boys. (wanna see my van?)

That said, my main argument for the top of the Cat3 field to upgrade is the Closed Cat3 field with 126 dudes, and the Elite field with 55 dudes. Canton, and the results of my fellow upgraders, showed that the top of the Cat3 field can hang with the elite field. I think the top 20ish Cat3 dudes could easily move into the elite field without the earth crashing into the sun. Equalizing field sizes was probably the intention of moving the Cat2s out of the B race. This move has been successful, but I feel it should be pushed even further.

Sure, the new elites will probably get lapped, but it won't be until after you've raced for 40 minutes, which seems to be the average length of the Cat3 races. The 20ish vacant Cat3 spots will be filled, which helps the sport grow, and the elite field will get bigger, which helps the sport grow.

after the race, thom, his van, and ryan kelly were nowhere to be found

Alright monkeys, start your poo-flinging.

Downeast Cyclocross Weekend, race report.

Day one.

It happened. It was muddy. There are few pictures. None of me. I won't bore you with paragraphs of text with no pictures. I know you, Internet, you have a short attention span. You like pictures. Greg had a great ride. Wheels wrecked it something fierce. I felt horrible before, during, and after; but I finished. I was under-dressed, and under-motivated. My gearing was retarded. When it was over, I was a bitchy, miserable mess. Enough said.

Post Race.

my frozen hands were useless. The buckles on my shoes were packed with mud, and it took the efforts of many to get them off. I threw all my muddle clothing in a plastic bag, got in the car and cranked the heat. The heat would stay cranked. Two hours later, my rolling oven was about 140 degrees and everything was dry and brittle, including my face. It's cool though, I had chapstick.

I spent about about an hour cleaning, tuning and lubing my ride. Then I spent an hour hosing off and laundering my clothes and body. Went to bed early, and couldn't get to sleep even though I was completely exhausted. Don't you hate that?

SUNDAYSUNDAYSUNDAY!!!

Woke up, hopped on the trainer. Spun out the stiffness, did some stretching, then hit the kitchen.

i find when you're drinking a half dozen servings of espresso, it's best to make them two at a time.

Feasted on a pile of high protein gruel, packed up the car and hit the road. I knew the races on Sunday started earlier, and I took a guess at how much earlier. I was wrong, I showed up almost 4 hours before go time. I got sunburn. I'm cool with all these things.

Sunday was just as muddy as Saturday, but it was a beautiful, bluebird day. Problem was, the mud was drying, and turning from chocolate milk to peanut butter. You can ride through chocolate milk, peanut butter will destroy you. The promoter had mercy on the elite fields and moved the course tape a bit to expose some soggy grass, and provide a detour around the super-slow mostly unrideable mud pits.

muddy fried chicken legs. there's 11 secret herbs and spices mixed in there.

It was a pretty brutal race. As usual, my goal was to beat Colin. Colin was talking big game about taking a DNS before the race. Combine this with his DNF from Saturday and I figured it would be a race of attrition. I get out there, put in a few good laps, then coast into victory. Problem is, Colin is crafty, it was all psychological warfare. I found this out the hard way. I would pass people, people would pass me, but every time I looked back, he was there. With all the mechanical and DNFs he's been having lately, I forgot that he's really fast on a cyclocross bike. Having about 4 pit bikes, and 28 people helping him in the pits certainly didn't hurt either.

dear colin, GOOO! AWAAAAY! kisses, gorilla

After about 40 minutes, my bike was not shifting, braking, or rolling. Certain parts of the course had much tackier mud that others. These parts gummed up my fork and stays with so much mud, I could hardly push it. My plan was to aim for the center of all the puddles to try and loosen things up. Rinse the peanut butter off with chocolate milk.

In Summary

this is what a well-earned beer looks like, here's to me.

22nd BITCHES! 4 verge points! $19 dollars!

I can't tell you how excited I was about this. However, my excitement was somewhat dulled by waiting in line behind Brian Wilichoski as he picked up is significantly (!) larger check for 11 place in his elite debut. He's fast.