The Serbians are coming! The Serbians are coming!!!

Well, maybe they're not all coming this way, but this weekend we were treated to a little Serbian smackdown in the form of the Aerospace Engineering cycling team. For some reason, they decided that the local January Nationals outlaw road race held in Chatham County NC was a good place to be on Sunday. Luckily for me, I was not participating in this little "race" mostly since my fitness is crap right now, and since I really just started riding again, oh, say, last week. And by last week I mean Friday 3 days ago, but hey, 3 days in a road, and feeling like crap. It can only get better right?

Anyway, don't know how these guys found out about this little local gem that has been going on for as long as I can remember, and even before that, but they showed up team car, 4 strong, and ready to ride the local cat nothings into the ground. You see, this is an open race, anyone can ride in it, and by and far, most of the people that are in it are from around the Chapel Hill area of town, and that means not a lot of guys that actually race bikes, but mostly people who THINK they can race a bike if they hang in tough on the Saturday Performance ride, and well, that's not how it really rolls. Don't get me wrong, sometimes that Saturday ride is hard as nuts, but it's not a race, and doesn't even approach the efforts I've expended in some races, which of course makes sense given that, once again, most of the guys on the Saturday ride don't race. That Saturday ride is their race, and they ride it like a race, well, at least how they think a race should be ridden, but anyway, I digress. There is a ride like that in every town where there is a strong cycling presence. This one is no different. I'm sure that you could find them from coast to coast. The good old, "we only drop our friends" kind of ride.

So yeah, the first race of the weekend. Year's past, I have done this race, and it's fun. It's short at 50 miles, or close to it, and for some reason, everybody and their mother is out to prove something to one another, in January. I like sitting in the group and watching those guys punch each other in the throat while they're vying for the January Nationals title. Aerospace Engineering showed up this year as mentioned, they're a pro team out of Florida I think, who have some of the stronger guys in the country, and they happen to be Serbian. So this race was probably great conditions for them to ride in. Gray skies. Rain threatening. Crappy road conditions. Unsavory characters sitting in the group. Yep, perfect for them. Except for this race, there are no landmines to worry about, which they often have to worry about in the Tour of Serbia every year. As far as what I can piece together from what I saw, the 4 Aerospace guys ripped the group apart, and got 3 of their guys in the early break of about 10 people. Which then through the course of the next couple of laps got split into 2 groups of 4, with one Aeropspace guy off the front of the race by himself, which was impressive, considering the wing was howling at about 20 miles per hour pretty steady and not letting up. On one section of the course, the tailwind must have been amazingly stiff, and when you turned around, it was block, straight in your dome piece, which would have sucked. I know this because riding out there, I encountered these winds, and when I was facing the headwind, on a section of road where I normally would have been going about 20 going pretty easy, I was moving along at 14 MPH and working the old ass off.

The race came down to the Aerospace guy holding on and taking it solo across the line for the win. Robert McConnville, a cat. 5 at the start of last year rolled across second, even after being worked over by the Serbian trio in the front group, which was pretty impressive, because that's a strong ride for anyone. Too bad he's an asshole. I hate it when that happens. Maybe he'll turn himself around at some point in time, or maybe I'll just put him into the ditch at some point in time (probably the latter). My good friend Mark Jellous I think rolled across 3rd or 4th on the day, good outing for him, and he'll be strong this year methinks. The Chad, skipped this one. I ask once again though; what the hell is a good portion of a pro team doing out in Chatham County on a Sunday afternoon? Ah well, the locals needed to see something like that to prove to them that indeed, they're not as strong as they think they are. Maybe bring some humility to the local crowd. Curtis, as usual, was talking about how he "just missed" the break, again. If you know Curtis, you know that he says this about almost every race he's ever been in. That's OK Curtis, we still love ya' man, and in a shocking revelation today, he did mention that he's now rollerblading to class. Yikes Curtis, just yikes. You've got to stop fruitbooting to school, that's just, as we like to call it, no good. Damn son, just damn.

In "other" racing news this weekend, cyclcross world championships were this weekend, and not surprisingly, nobody from the US could come up with the goods. The best that one of our riders could do was 10th place, a good ride, but not a podium place. Jonathan Page should be pretty darn pleased with that ride, but I'm pretty sure he would have liked to have been on one of the 3 steps (not like mountain biking where for some reason if you come in top 5 that call that a podium placing, but podium places are only top 3, that just goes to show mountain biking doesn't know what the hell they're doing, but that's another rant for another time) of that podium. He's come the closest in the elite men's category, and our guys are getting better, but here's the rub. Since cyclocross is NOT an Olympic sport, USA Cycling really doesn't fund it, or barely hands any money over to the guys and girls that do go over to compete at World Championships. I think only one or two people get money to go over and get their trips paid for. Everyone else has to pay their own way, which is bullshit. If they want a damn good team over there, they can't keep letting people, or I should say, making people pay their own way, and our people have to get over to Europe and ride in the big Belgian and Dutch 'cross races, because let's face it. Racing cyclocross here is getting better, but the level of the competition is nowhere near what it is across the pond. There is a lot more parity in road racing, and even some in mountain biking, but in cyclocross racing, it's a whole different ball game over there. Imagine this scene. People tailgating. People organized into fan groups, painting their faces, getting hammered before the event, singing and cheering for hours on end, and then imagine 200,000 people. This is what happens at a "typical" Belgian cyclocross race. The biggest guys in the sport have immense support in just people working for them. Taking care of them, so that all they have to worry about on the day of the race is getting on their bike, and hammering. People from the US like Jonathan Page, have spent entire cyclocross seasons in Europe trying to race against the best, and his support is spotty at best. He has some friends help him out, and his wife, god love her, is there as well, in the pits helping his small support staff, while she has their baby strapped to her back and or chest. It's amazing that he can get a 10th place with all of the stuff that he has to do, that the top guys don't have to do, like prepare his bike, his food, his pre-race warm-ups, and other stuff that for others, is completely taken care of. He's done well, but he needs more support, as do the rest of our national team, and we need to start sending national teams to the world cup competitions where they do compete as nations. But, we don't do any of that, because it's not an Olympic sport, and frankly folks, that's just stupid. Participation in cyclocross in the US has jumped incredibily over the last few years. I've seen local races in NC get 500 people racing in all categories. Try doing that at a mountain bike race. Good freakin' luck, it's not going to happen. More support USA cycling, more support for cyclocross riders. We need it if we want to compete at the highest levels of the sport in the world, without it, we're going to be also rans for cyclocross forever.

Anyway, the guy that was heavily favored to win this weekend, Sven Nijs (a Belgian rider of course) was in the thick of things, when he took a bad spill, and essentially knocked himself out, and out of the race. His countryman, Erwin Vervecken took the win, ahead of another Belgian and a French guy. This is the first time in several years that I can remember it not being an entirely Belgian podium at world championships. Final results were:

1. Vervecken - Belgium
2. Wellens - Belgium
3. Mourey - France

The Belgians, being Belgian, were not too happy with "only" getting the top 2 spots, they wanted the whole thing to themselves again, but they were happy that their guy took the rainbow jersey, again (2nd time for Vervecken). Ah well, maybe next year guys?