Fixx SuperCross Cup 2015 Round 3: Tymon Park

Long Story Short

• Classified as 57th, but I ruined the rankings by taking an extra lap,
• Actually finished 64th out of 89 riders,
• Finish time was 45:57,
• Lap times were 10:45, 10:51, 11:53 and 12:11,
• Got lapped by 18 riders,
• Had a few falls.

Full results are available on the Fixx SuperCross Cup Results Page.

Strava

View the race on Strava: Fixx SuperCross Cup 2015 Round 3: Tymon Park, B Race. 64/89. Finished with 10psi in my back tyre.

View the race on FlyBys: Fixx SuperCross Cup 2015 Round 3: Tymon Park, B Race.
I've enabled the Orwell Riders;

• Myself; every race needs pack fill,
• Barry; he had a great ride to 50th,
• John; after a poor start, he recovered well to finish 45th,
• Valdis; Orwell's B-race lynchpin, finishing 16th.

Course Segment

Although some of them times are very suspect.

Multimedia

Alek had his handlebar camera on for this race, watch the video: 2015 FIXX Supercross / round 3 / Tymon Park.
Sean Rowe was around the course for the A-race, the B-race and Ladies race.

Short Story Long

Build-up

My back wheel was slipping on the Glencullen golf course when I got out of the saddle, I presumed due to high tyre pressure. I wanted to go Tubeless with my tyres, to get dem sweet, sweet low pressures. I put in a large order to Bike24 and Chain Reaction for bike upgrades. I really lusted after that Ultegra CX crankset. Live is too short to ride five bolt cranksets.

The conversion was hard, due to my rookie mistakes, but I got it done. I also got a head light, so I could ride in the dark. Orwell's A4 group are doing night intervals and there's a secret CX meet-up on Thursday nights. It's fun not having to explain to a wife about my expenditure.

"Your bike already has tyres and a pedal thing, why are you buying these, we're saving for a deposit, I can't live with Farty Frank in this dinky apartment anymore." - Non-existent wife.

"Listen love, the tyres will allow me to run lower pressures without pinch flatting, the new crankset is 40g lighter than the old one, and Frank doesn't fart as much as your mother." - Me not having to explain my logical decisions.

I rode a Mucky CX session with Mark, who won the previous two B-races. As Spectre is out, I'll use a James Bond comparison to distinguish us. He's in the class of Eva Green in Casino Royale, I more like Henchman 32 in the Timothy Dalton one.

The Paris Murders had me pretty rilled up. It took my a few days to figure out who, or what, I was truly angry at. Nothing quite like a terrorist attack to make you confront your own mortality and life. Everyone has an opinion on this whole Middle-East debacle. War has always been, rich people getting richer and poor people dying. According to Fallout, "War... war never changes".

Imagine if defence budgets were put into renewable energy forms. Praise the work of Gates and Zuckerberg. There would be no need to influence politics in foreign nations for their Black Gold reserves. But alas, we live in a world where disposable World Leaders have warmongers to obey, lest they end up like one, or more, of the Kennedy clan.

Pre-Race

I had another worry on my mind. My Stages Power Meter was on the frtiz. I thought it was Water Damaged, it was shorting out and draining batteries. How would I get it working again? How would I be able to make purple lines appear on my Strava graphs? These were my thoughts as I waited for Tymon Park to open. I parked in the estate across the road from the gates, as to not obstruct the traffic. I used Google Maps to scout the car park size. I reasoned that I needed to be there super early to get a nice spot.

I chatted to Siobhan and Alek as we signed on. I did three practice laps. I could not muster the courage to ride the drop. Valdis was making his CX debut in the Dublin area. He had previously raced north of an imaginary line. We watched the Women's race. Most of them were riding the drop. I retreated to my automobile for the thirty minutes before the race to eat, drink and pin on numbers. I forgot to check my tyres for pressure. The rear tubeless tyre was still leaking air out of one spoke.
I went over to the start line, and took a run the first part of the lap. Upon my return, I discovered that the grid was full. I would be starting from the back. There was five minutes to go to the start. I seen a track pump beside me. I had no place on the line to lose. I himmed and hawwed about it, and decided not to. I should've pumped my tyre there.

I was beside two youngsters from the Kanturk stable. They would be starting a minute after those who've been through the heady days of college life. Two pizzas, fifteen cans and a mosh to "Killing in the Name of" a week, I'm still feeling the effects of after four and a half years.

Race

Lukie Räikkönen need to whip out some Michael Schumacher type shit, except wearing a helmet and cycling on-piste. So I did what Schuie would've done, I cheated gained an advantage over my rivals. I held onto the railing and had both feet already clipped in. I felt like an absolute wanker. I havn't been drinking very much alcohol, the feelings of shame and guilt are not masked for me anymore. Those feeling quickly disappeared as I started making up places. I was in the thick of it for the first lap. I jumped down the drop, and ended up running most of the forest section. I even passed John. Then I slowly lost all the places I made up.

The socks were not so white in the later laps - Sean Rowe.

On the second lap, a guy on a Mountain Bike was trying to come by me at the start of the Off-Camber section. There was thistles to the right of the narrow track. I popped out my elbow, to defend my space. He decided to bide his time to make the pass. Opting not to cycle through the thistles. He passed me on the second climb of that section.

Most of the rest of the race I was competing with a guy in a black and white harlequin patterned jersey. I didn't descend the drop during the race, as I was losing all faith in my brakes. There was a little kid at the entrance egging me on to ride it. I had a fair few falls. I passed Michael in the forest section once. His balding rear wheel was not aiding his cause in the mucky section. Just after I passed him, I tried to remount. My pedals were so full of crud, that I could not clip in easily. I slowly fell over, as I shouted out "cunt". I had a collision with a tree trunk on my second last lap, I entered the start of the forest section with lots of speed, but I couldn't steer. I went straight into a tree trunk, my second tree collision of the season. On my last lap, I fell on the mucky downhill after the forest section was cleared. Someone bike hit my hip, but he didn't fall.

Discussing forestry with Mike - Sean Rowe.

I did fairly well in the "spiral of confusion", I was just aiming for the greenest parts that dwindled as the race wore on. On the other muddy sections, I also followed the principle of staying on the green areas on the side of the trail in the other muddy sections. The problem with the traction on the course was that there only one section for the tyres to accelerate to a speed where the mud would reach escape velocity. From the wall section to the end of the forest section, it was just constant slow speed riding and mud.

My main fear was burping my rear tyre, and/or denting the rim. The pressure in the rear wheel was slowly vanishing into thin air. I didn't put the Stan's Yellow Tape in the rim, as I thought that the standard blue tape would do the job. I do believe that this was the ride that helped seal the one spoke where air was escaping. Every time I hit the root in the wall section or the curb at the end of the lap, I could feel the rim. My rudimentary bunny hopping skills debilitated to front wheel popping skills as the race wore on. So I was not able to avoid these obstacles. But I feared the burp on the bridge. As I got to the other side of the crossing, the rear of the bike would slide all over the place as I put the power down. But the upshot of the low pressure was fantastic control in the mud. I finished the race with 20psi in my front tyre and 10psi in the back.

At the end I took an extra lap. I don't know why I did it. It happened. I'm not proud. My life was divided into two parts, before that extra lap, and after that extra lap. I just live day to day now.

The finish, or what should've been the finish for me - Sean Rowe.

Post-Race

I was so covered in shit, that I just said hello to a few people and went back to the car. I used the three pieces of Kitchen roll that I brought to get the largest pieces of muck off. But alas, Plenty Kitchen roll's CX bike cleaning properties were not as effective as Occam's Razor or Newton's Flaming Laser Sword at disproving Last Thursdayism.

The tyres were caked in shizzle, but they cleared on the path back to the car.

I ate and lounged out in front of my computer watching some meaningless crap as darkness crept up on me. I had to clean the bike with minimal lighting, in colder temperatures.

When the results were released, my extra lap made me feel really bad for taking the extra lap at the end. But then I went to the Ireland vs. Bosnia match and that made me happy again.

What was Learned

• Get to the grid early,
• It takes less than five minutes to pump your tyres,
• Stop off at a garage on the way home to clean the bike,
• Clean your bike in the daylight,
• Cheating is extremely effective.