Two Wheel Blogs

A week ago, while I was running the cross country course at SIUE, several cyclocross riders went by me. "This is what you should be doing," one of them called out to me. I recognized a couple of them as guys who work at The Cyclery. "So, Thursday night is cyclocross practice," I thought. "Cool."

When I got home from work tonight, I suited up and headed out to SIUE. As soon as I got on the cross country course, I saw three riders coming towards me. I pulled off, turned around, and tagged along as they passed me. We rode on a stretch of the course I know well from running it. As we approached a hill, we dismounted and shouldered our bikes, then remounted and rode on. In a clearing, they'd set up barriers so we could dismount and carry.

As we did our second lap, one of the riders introduced himself. "I'm Joe. That's Anthony and Bob." After that lap, we stopped to talk. Bob asked what races I'd done, and I listed the four I did last year. We missed each other racing last year, and he did all the races I didn't do and none of those I did.

After awhile, it hit me that I'd met Joe before. "You're Aggro," I said, calling him by his nickname. "Yeah," he said. "Have we met?" I explained how I'd first met him at the Spanish Lake mountain bike race a few years ago. He and Boz had been duelling all that season, the first season of racing for both of them, and it all came down to that race. Boz won that race, but another rider (riding a cyclocross bike) beat both of them and took the title. A few months ago, when Boz bought a mountain bike from Joe, I met Joe at The Cyclery to pick it up. But I'd not seen him since then.

We did a couple more laps, then called it a night. They had started riding around 5:00, while I didn't get there until about 5:30. Joe lives in Freeburg, and Bob lives in Trenton, so both of them had a ways to go to get home. I was only a 2-mile ride away from home. For once, it was nice to be "the local guy" after a ride.

I was riding tonight because, even through my half-marathon training schedule called for a 3-mile run, I was planning on running the open race at the Granite City Invitational this Saturday, and I try to rest two days before a race. The Granite City course is a dead-flat 3-miler through a city park. I've wanted to run this race for four years, and I had hopes of going sub-21:00.

When I got home, an email from the Edwardsville cross country coach confirmed my fears: the open race at 10:30 a.m., so I won't be able to get there in time. (My son is running for SEMO at a cross country meet in Forest Park that morning, so I'll be there to watch him.) Since I wouldn't be racing after all, I laced up the running shoes and headed out to the Nickel Plate for the scheduled 3-miler. I felt good. Even though it was still warm, a nice breeze made for comfortable running.

Yeah, I'm bummed that I won't get to run the open race at Granite this Saturday. But there's another race on Wednesday, this one at the SIUE course. It will be my first time running the new route. I'll miss the old route. It was the perfect challenge for a runner. It'll be the same, but it will be what it will be.