Rocky Lied - Banana Belt #3

Everyone thinks if they just tried just a little harder... but it's a mind trick. The body only has what it has, and if it's not enough to keep from being dropped, it's not enough. Rocky lied to us. In the end, if you don't have the ability, you don't have the ability, no matter the state of "heart". 

These are words I posted to my team's forum about my last race, Banana Belt #3.  I got dropped on the second of six laps; just a dismal showing for me.  I have my excuses: I raced yesterday and spent 18 miles off the front, there's the month I took off, the field was small so I couldn't surf up the hills, etc.  As I was talking with my teammate who actually did finish the race, he was saying that, after I was popped off, they went hard to the start-finish, then kind of took it easy for the whole rest of the race.  Of course they did, right?  A 66 mile race will be like that.  Hard in the beginning to shake things up, then easy up to the end.  And this time I was victim to the shakeup.

If only (if only!) I had hung on up that hill the second lap.  If only (if only!) I hadn't given up the chase afterwards and got back on.  Except it's all a mirage.  The mind plays tricks on us.  It is quick to forget suffering, it's quick to forget how extended it is at the time.  You can always wring one last drop out, right?  You can always reach that last quarter of an inch...

And if you could, then the towel is always wet, and your arm is infinite in length.  We have limits.  Sometimes the mind sets those limits, but most of the time the mind is the one cheerleading and the body is the one asked to do all the work.  Bike racing is about finding your limits, your true limits, and extending them.  But extending your limits isn't a matter of will power, it's a matter of training and practicing and racing.  So you train, you practice, you race... and you allow yourself the opportunity to fail so you can continue to improve.

I'm Back - Piece of Cake

Those who know me know my training has sucked as of late.  First week of Feb was the last good training week I had before taking a month off for a trip to China.  The trip itself was 17 days long, but the week previous was bad for training because of all the prep at work and for the trip.  The week after was this foggy hell of jet lag, eating at 1:00 in the morning, going to bed at 3:00 and getting up at 6 for work.

All that and I then go off and try to race.  I race Banana Belt #1.  I felt good right up until I just... didn't.  Then I was dropped, then my legs just didn't work to chase, then I bonked trying to continue on the last lap and had to actually turn my bike around and limp back to the start.  Bad, bad race.  I don't even consider it a race.  I pinned on a number, but then I just sat in and was quietly dropped.  It's one thing to justify sitting in the entire race by winning the sprint, or even just competing in the sprint.  It's quite another to just sit in and then be gone.  The guys up front, the ones actually doing all the work, they didn't even know I was racing that day.

The next week, I get a couple training rides in.  Then Friday night comes and I can hardly finish my work day.  I had developed a cough about Wednesday but didn't think much of it.  Figured I was still getting rid of all the junk in my sinuses from China, which incidentally, has a really bad air pollution problem.  I can now see why the Beijing Olympic athletes arrived in the city wearing masks.  Not a political statement, just realities of competing in athletics in polluted air.  Then with Friday comes the fever.  Go home an hour early, go to bed at 7:00, wake up at 11:00 when the wife comes home, get coined by my mother-in-law (best that this mechanical engineer can tell, it works to reduce fever by bring blood up to the surface of the skin to cool), and go back to bed and sleep till noon.  No training for the next four days.  Another big hit in a series of big hits.  Have all these thoughts about how my season is just ruined and I should just race track this year and ignore my road Cat 2 upgrade goal.  Didn't help that my first team ride the following Saturday just thrashed me.  When was the last time a non-race, 42mile ride resulted in me being thrashed?

Fast forward to today.  Piece of Cake.  Hard mother fucker of a race, for those in the know.  Yea, it's flat, all the hill climbers think it is [should be] easy, but there's wind, and the really strong time trialists are just salivating at the opportunity to pretend to be in Belgium for a day and blow a 50 person field apart in a couple miles of crosswind all by themselves.  Plus there is the fabled 3 miles of gravel road goodness the race organizers threw in for this year.

I didn't warm up.  I never really warm up past a few minutes on the road to make sure everything works. This was a mistake.  The gravel started about 3 miles into the race, and when we hit it, all shit broke loose.  No, nobody crashed.  Okay, one person I know about (on team Ironclad) might have crashed in the gravel, but he was already dropped due to a flat.  In the mad scramble at the gravel, nobody went down.  But the guys on the front hit it hard.  I found myself in the wrong (upwind) track, continually dodging guys who were gaping out and flatting out.  The field was winnowed down to the strong and the well tire-shod.  Six guys or more must have flatted out in the first section.  Funny thing though, after that, through two more crossings, there were only about two more flats.  It really was the guys with worn or fragile or incorrectly inflated tires who were the ones eliminated that first time through.

Unfortunately, this group included my only teammate.

My personal plan for this race was to be in the field at the finish, but invisible.  I wanted to be the guy nobody knew was in the race.  Wasn't going to break away, wasn't going to sprint.  Just follow wheels and sit in.  Kinda fit the way I was feeling about how my training was going.

After jumping past several gapped riders, dodging waterbottles, rattling my teeth and tolerating a numb ass, we get to the end of the gravel and I'm still in the lead group.  Oh Lordy, does smooth pavement feel like glass after riding the gravel for 10 minutes.  The 40 or so person field has been whittled down considerably.  After I stop gasping for air, I settle down and commence with my invisibility plan.  I get on the downwind side of the field, I sit at the back, and I just chug along for the rest of the lap.  People broke away, but these weren't serious attempts.  More like those same hill climbers just being bored with bumping along and taking a turn sitting 200m off the front of the pack.  All of them checked swings.  There's an art to riding in the wind centered around targeted efforts and hiding; woe the person on this particular race who doesn't respect that.

Second lap, I make sure I get up into the top 5 or 7 people going into the gravel.  This helps considerably with the gasping for air problem I had previously.  Much smoother pace when you don't have to sprint around people constantly.  And then I commence with my plan, the only difference being that the heavens opened up and what started out being sunny weather turned real ugly, real fast.  Rain, hail, you name it.  At one point I was being pelted by hail from all sides: left, right, top, bottom.

Right after the hail, I find myself somehow at the front, following a rider who started one of those half hearted breakaway attempts.  This time for the right reason though: it was actually a really good time to go.  Nobody was taking leadership of the front and the weather was still gawd-awful.  I found myself following the breakaway of about 5 people.  But this was another checked swing; the guy who started it was Ironclad's sprinter, and he had better things to conserve his energy for.  Then one of those five makes the start of a serious attempt and I follow that.  And then he cuts off the effort and I find myself in front of  the field, by myself.  One other person is up the road; other than that, it's just me now.  I think about continuing, I stop pedaling, I look back.  The field is just dallying.

Change of plans.

I shift up, get into my rumbling gear, and take the swing.  If you read "Dog in a Hat" by Joe Parkin, he talks about breakaway attempts.  The amateurs tend to slap at the attempt.  Short, sharp, sprint off the front of the field and look back: ultimately short lived.  Kind of annoying to the field but totally ineffective.  The pros, they swing for the fences.  When they go, they put their head down and commit.

Now, I'm not a pro, but I like the idea that when you initiate a breakaway, you commit.  The breakaway becomes the strategy.  It becomes the end game.  There's nothing after that.  No thoughts of conserving energy for some sprint.  No thoughts of what you are going to do once you rejoin the field.  No looking back.  You put your head down, you get your bike in a big gear, and you challenge the field to come and catch you.

So much for being invisible.  On the other hand, it's the first time I've felt good on my bike since the beginning of February.

I cross the start-finish, go up a hill, cross a little white bridge and hit the gravel at full speed.  It is so much easier to ride the gravel if you aren't trying to follow someone else's wheel.  Behind me, as I'll find out later, the field is disintegrating.

The guy up ahead of me, the guy I was hoping to join forces with for the last 12 miles; he flats out just as I am about to complete the bridge up to him, right at the end of the gravel.  Shit.

I'm in rhythm.  Things hurt, but they hurt in kind of a dull, distant sort of way.  My breathing is steady, if it starts to become ragged, I shift to a larger gear and let my muscles takes some of the heat and let my heartrate recover without losing speed.  I do this for the next half a lap.  I gain time when the cross winds pick up, I lose time when some of the strong riders pick up the pace.  For the time being it's a stalemate.

And now I can tell I am getting tired.  It's not the normal indicators.  Not when I'm in rhythm.  I know I'm tiring because my eyes have trouble focusing.  My legs start periodically twinging on the edge of a cramp.  I'm slow to shift gears.  I haven't broken form to take a drink since the effort started and now I'm having trouble swallowing.

I have visions of grandeur.  I'm actually thinking I can pull this off.  I make the turn to the straight headwind section, then another turn that'll take me to the finish in a few short miles.  My mind wanders to my impending victory salute.

Behind me, the field has effectively caught me and they're just letting me dangle.  Bastards.

Finally, two miles from the finish, they make the catch.  I see them coming up behind me and I stop pedaling.  I'm done.  I fully intend to just slow pedal it back to the finish.  15 guys stream past, and then the stream stops.  The field's only 15 strong!  A few agonizing pedal strokes and I'm back in the fold.

The sprint was the slowest sprint I've ever taken part of.  Turns out everyone was thrashed.  We were all on the verge of cramping and all of us were turning way too big of gears way too slowly.  Like sprinting through hub deep mud.  I throw my bike at the line.  8th or 10th or somewhere thereabouts (turns out it was 13th).

Fun times.

I'm back.

As the World Turns

So, I haven't written here for a while.  Long story short, I've been racing a lot.  The track has been good to me (found that I have a bit of talent for sprinting) and the road hasn't been that bad either.  Finished the season with a good start toward a Cat 2 upgrade on the track, and even a few points toward a Cat 2 upgrade on the road.

Big accomplishments...

Had a really good OBRA Track Champs race.  Upgraded from Cat 4 to Cat 3 right at the start of the weekend, and ended up with three gold medals in the kilo, pursuit, and match sprint and a silver in the points race.  All in small fields though, which tempers the glory.  But hey, my times in the kilo and pursuit weren't terrible, and my match sprint performance was not bad either.

Got a silver medal on a breakaway at the OBRA Crit Champs.  That was fun.  Spent over 10 laps off the front; at 5 to go, had a guy bridge up to me and we ended up finishing just ahead of the pack.  The other guy got first, I got second.

Final decent result was a second place finish at the kilo in the OBRA Masters Track Champs.  I raced the match sprints as well, but I really mis-timed my eating (didn't have anything to eat but a bowl of cereal between 8:00am and 3:00 when the race was over) and didn't win a single match.  I could've done better for sure.  On the other hand, there are a lot of very fast guys in the 30-39 age group I was racing against.  Fast and savvy...  I might be somewhat fast, but I have a lot yet to learn about match sprinting.
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With that, the 2010 season comes to a close, except for cyclocross, which I suck at.  Base training for 2011 is right around the corner, and I am in the process of deciding whether to obtain some coaching.  I want to make a serious run at Cat 2 on the road.  A coach will be useful in this.  On the other hand, Cat 2 isn't a destination, it's a threshold.  The aesthetic side of me wants to cross the threshold on "natural" talent (a better term might be "uninvested" talent); the thinking goes if I can do this, I stand a chance of being competitive on the other side of the threshold with the benefit of coaching.

I also have to decide what I need a coach to do for me.  A "generic" coach I have less use for.  I can pull workouts out of a hat more or less the same as any other person.  A "real" coach would be working with me across multiple seasons and get to know my abilities almost better than I know myself.  That might be too much to ask though, either for a coach I hire or for myself and my own commitments to what is still an amateur sport, regardless of category.

Anyway, it's enough to make my head spin a bit.  Having a little talent is somehow vexing.  It seems the path is pretty clear if you are dominant.  Likewise if you suck.  Having a few little successes as I've had this year makes me want to see where the rabbit hole leads, but it also makes me question how much time and energy to place into the endeavor.  But this is the time of the year (with the non-existent training and the play-in-the-mud 'cross fun) to be philosophical.  Wax poetic and philosophical now, put the head down on the trainer in a few weeks.

Nobody Else in the Photo

Tuesday PIR was a wet affair with spring thunderstorms lashing the Portland area.  It was sunny down in Wilsonville, where I work, but looking up the freeway up north, it was like PIR had it's very own dark cloud over it, kind of like those cartoon scenes where the single character is followed around by his own rain cloud.  Still, I wasn't worried because the weather report suggested that the rain was just passing through and it would be out of the area by the time the race started.

Weather.com, you suck.

At PIR, I found Jason and a couple other hearty PV riders willing to brave the rain.  Originally Jason and I were planning to do the 1/2/3 race, however, seeing as we had teammates in the 3/4 race and it was raining and cold, we figured it was worth getting off the road 20 minutes earlier and switched our registration to the 3/4 race.  I figured I would just attack a few times to keep the pace high and the race interesting; try to win a different way and have some fun without all the stress of absorbing Cat 1/2 hammer blows in the 1/2/3s.

The 3/4 field was tiny.  About 20 riders.  We go off and almost immediately, I attack around the first corner.  I don't expect this attack to succeed.  I am not known as an attacking rider and even in the 4's I wasn't the type that goes off the front with any success.  My previous big race attack had me going off the front and dangling out there for an hour before getting caught and blown off the back for about an equal amount of time.

So I attack and I can see a chase developing behind.  I concentrate on pushing the pedals, holding a pace I can sustain.  If I'm caught, I'll just attack again.  That's the plan.

I look back around the last corner before the finishing straight and I still have a pretty good gap.  The guys in the field are all strung out.

Another lap and the gap hasn't changed.  I can see two or three guys gapping the rest of the field.

Another lap and the gap is the same.  I dig in and concentrate on looking forward.  I'm paranoid that at any moment the pack will engulf me.

Another lap; it appears the chase has been temporarily put on hold.  The gap is getting larger.

Another lap and the gap is definitely growing.  Good sign.  I'm surprised at myself.  This is new territory for me.

Another lap and the elastic has officially snapped.  The gap explodes.  Holy shit I might hold this!  Immediately followed up by the thought: Holy shit I still have almost 20 miles to race!

Lap after lap, I collect primes like punching tickets.  I use two gears: 53/13 and the 53/14.  I can see the bottom of my cleats in the reflection from the water on the road.  The gap grows to the point where I can no longer see the pack when rounding the final corner.  I figure they've been neutralized by the 1/2/3s by this point.

The laps count down and I keep my pace.  22-23mph in the back stretch.  26-27 in the S-curves and 24-25 in the finish straight.  Those are my numbers, lap after lap.  My feet are numb and I'm paranoid about crashing in a slick corner.

Finally the bell lap.  I debate a finishing salute vs. doing all this work only to get disqualified.  Rounding the final corner, then 200m, and I finally sit up.  No salute; too cold, too wet.  27 miles, solo, for the win, with nobody else in the photo.

One Good Weekend

Sometimes one good weekend is all it takes to get things moving again.  Such was last weekend.  About the time of the last post (April Slump), I was down in a funk.  Since then, I had a fun time (but unremarkable on-bike performance) with the Ronde of West Portland - one of those uniquely Portland rides where silly people go ride up all of the insanely steep hills they can shove into 45 miles, and the Cherry Blossom Stage Race came and went the following weekend; also an unremarkable performance.

After Cherry Blossom, I took a full week off.  My motivation was at an all time low, and it was constantly threatening to rain and blah blah blah <insert excuse here>.

About half way through my nadir, I told myself that I would ride my sixty mile Hagg Lake loop on Saturday and then race the Estacada TT the next day.  About Friday I started questioning whether it was wise to ride sixty miles the day before a race, but I said "f- it" and told my rational mind to shut the hell up.

Saturday comes, and after getting off work at the restaurant, I head back home and gear up for the ride.  I've done the loop four or five times before, it is becoming one of my regular routes and is almost exactly 60 miles on the nose.  I decide that I won't push myself; I'll just get out there, get some miles, and get the mojo back running again and gear up for the summer push of the road racing season.  From past experience, it takes me about four hours at an endurance pace.  I take off at 3:30 and figure that 45 minutes before sundown is sufficient margin.

Milestone #1 reached: I got on my bike instead of finding an excuse to get out of it.  100 pedal strokes out the door and I am coasting for five minutes to get down into the valley.  One nice thing about living on top of a hill: after the initial 100 pedal strokes, no point in turning around and cutting the ride short.

I start the ride at a good clip.  I set a power target of about 250W just to keep things moving.  I'm experimenting with a new handlebar position.  I've moved the bars out and down to get myself more stretched out.  Turns out that I like it.  Should've done this a long time ago.

I get out to Hagg Lake and I'm starting to feel good.  I absolutely fly around Hagg Lake.  A later look at my powertap data shows I spent a full hour at 300W, which in the middle of a long ride, means I've got some good form.  At this point, all by my lonesome, I've averaged 22mph.  I'm just having one of Those Days.  If you've read Bob Roll's book (Bobke II); if I were as crazy as him, this would be the day I would've gotten myself lost in a snowstorm in the mountains.  Mr. Roll described it as when you push and push on the pedals and your body just keeps giving and giving without a complaint.  Perfect description.

I finish the ride in 3 hours and change, which considering that I have an 8 mile climb to finish the ride, is a pretty fast 60 miles.  On the way back I had some tailwind help, but still.  A Good Day.  Just what I needed.

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Going into the TT the next day, I was a bit sore, but told myself that it should go away later in the morning.  It did.  I was sore when I woke up, but by the time I got to the race venue, all the stiffness was gone.

I rode in with Ron, so all the talk was about time trial warmups and racing strategies.  The best advice being "go hard when it's hard"; of course, because you end up spending more time in the slower (thus harder) sections of the race and you minimize time by powering through these sections and recovering on the faster sections.

I hop on my bike to warm up about an hour before the race.  45 minutes of wiping sweat off my computer later, I'm at the start line.  This will be the first time the bike's been out in anger and I have no idea how my body will handle the aero position I have set up.  The warmup wasn't promising, but then again, warmups never are.

The countdown ends and I pull out of the holder's grasp and I'm off.  I get tucked, and wow, I feel good.  Soon enough I am flying downhill at 30 almost 40 mph.  Flying.  The bike's comfy, or as comfy as one can be at 350W and on the very tip of the saddle.

Interesting sidebar: the TT helmet I was borrowing from a teammate had a useful "feature".  Probably wasn't planned in the design, but every time I looked to the side or down, it'd whistle.  I kid you not.  You think about the damnedest things when you are flying down the road all by yourself at 30mph.  Good reminder to keep my head up and straight though.

I pass my minute man after five minutes.  My power numbers are good and I am flying.  I've never felt this good on a bike before.

After 20 minutes, I'm thinking that a 20 mile TT is a long time to be on the tip of a saddle.  I pass a couple more people.  I'm thinking the turnaround point must be around here somewhere.

I see an orange "bike race ahead" sign.  Ah.  That must be it.

After a turnaround that would make a monkey look smart, I'm off on the second leg.  I'm still flying, and nobody's passing me, so that must be good.

I pass the pockmarked section of road a teammate warned me about.  I experience the pleasant sensation of having both my wheels jump sideways half a foot.  In opposite directions.  In the aerobars.  Curiously, it turns out the bike is actually pretty stable.  Not bad for a $300 Performance Bike/Scattante/Made-In-China-Generic frame.

40 minutes in and my mouth is gaping like a fish out of water.  Mucus runs indiscriminately down my face as I don't even turn my head anymore.  Through my sweat stained glasses I can only barely make out the first two numbers on the powertap readout.  It's all I can do to make the first number read "3" instead of "2".  I'm falling apart.

An orange "bike race ahead" sign.  Hallelujah.

The 200m sign, conveniently placed 400m from the finish.  Almost there.

Pound up to the top of the hill; hit the top; back in the aerobars; click click click the gears.

Look confusedly at a row of orange cones near the finish line tent.

Decide I should probably pass between the cones and the tent even though it looks much too narrow and maybe I'll crash into someone but if I don't maybe I won't get scored and I can't see much of anything through these damned glasses so I'll push the pedals and pass by the orange cones and...

Finished.

It was a good day.  A good weekend.  I feel the season's back on track.

Spring Classics

March is the season of the spring classics here in Oregon, primarily populated by one, three week race series called the Banana Belts.  Don't ask; I have no idea why the name.  There are bananas on the registration table when you sign in, but the course does not resemble anything like a banana.  Racing is every Sunday for three consecutive weeks.

The Cat 3 field does races of 44, 55, and 66 miles respectively.  The first and third feature a sprint finish, while the second is run the opposite direction and features an uphill finish.

Race 1: I had high hopes for myself.  I was feeling good in the first two races of the season, and this one would resolve in a sprint finish after a fairly short race.  Hopes dashed - a third place prime, and nada on the finish.  It was a fun race, but man are there a lot of good sprinters in the field.  I finished nipping at the heels of them all, beating not a one.

Race 2: Didn't know what to expect in this one.  I've raced the Banana Belt series for the past two years, but this was the first time the road was in good enough shape to run the opposite direction.  Found out the hard way I still suck at uphill sprint finishes.  And that the course running five laps in the counter-clockwise direction is a lot harder than four laps in the clockwise direction.

Race 3: Sat in the field while Mitch the Man went out and crushed all from a breakaway starting at mile 2 to win the race.  Good times; hard race because of the climbs and the distance.  Lined up for the sprint.  Suck again.  No legs for the sprint.  No finishing speed.  No kick.  Nothing.

A weekend off of racing and then it's the infamous Piece of Cake road race.  This race would be a parade if there were no wind; basically completely flat.  But there was wind, and rain.  Belgium classic-like conditions: crosswinds complete with spitting, windblown rain, gray skies, and farm fields.  In the first lap, I tried to get off the front a couple times.  I had a hunch that the win would come from the breakaway given the crosswind conditions.  The whole race was one of suffering, looking for wheels to follow and for shelter.  A group eventually got off with a member of a big team and they just shut the thing down.  The pack was crawling; no team willing to bring people up to the front to bring back the break.  A few others got off the front, making a total of 10 people, fragmented in several chase groups.

Finally the sprint comes for 11th and I have nothing.  Again.  This lack of form at the end of the race is getting just a bit irksome.  Just a little.  I even had a good leadout this time... couldn't capitalize.  I should've picked a strategy and stayed with it.  By expending energy early hunting for breaks, I doomed my sprint finish.  Now I know what all fuss is about swinging for the fences.  These short, punchy fliers do nothing but wear down the legs.  I'm not off the front and too fried for a fast finish.  Either stay with the pack and sprint, leave it to chance whether I am sprinting for 1st or 15th, or try, try again for a breakaway.
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I'm being owned at the finish because I am expending too much energy during the race.  Maybe it's as simple as that.  Maybe I'm not as good a sprinter as I think I should be.  Maybe I just generally suck at racing.  I don't know anymore.  All I know is that Cat 3 is for real.  For the first time, all these tactics, strategies, everything that everyone tells you about racing; it all starts in Cat 3.  In Cat 4 and below, you can get away with surfing through races. The guys with natural abilities come out on top more often than not.  In Cat 3, you start specializing.  You don't see the sprinters out in breakaways anymore.  You don't see the climbers in the bunch sprint.  Whereas it might be you and three other guys contesting the sprint at the end of a road race in the 4's, in the 3's, there's 15 guys just like you who are fighting for position right up till the end.  You don't see them during the race at all.  They are like ghosts drifting around and through the pack.  But the 1k sign appears and all of the sudden the front is swarming with them.  The last five minutes of the race are a constant battle for position.  Squeezing into gaps just wider than your bars to get to the front of the field (but not too far to the front!).  You get within sight of the finish and it's a game of chicken to see who jumps first.  Fourth wheel turns into 15th in the span of about two seconds when you're the chicken.

I feel like these March races have been my first real exposure to road racing.  Everyone is good.  Some are really good.  Mistakes in strategy or execution are punished.  Teamwork is alive and real; if you don't have it, you are at a distinct disadvantage to those teams that are organized.  Cat 2 is a dream that, for this year at least, is slipping away.  I have too much to learn still about racing.

Sublime...

I entered Sublime Sublimity Road Race for one reason only.  To see where my fitness sat relative to the field.  It's a race that requires no strategy except to conserve energy as much as possible and keep near the front to cover breaks.  For me, there wasn't even that.  I just wanted to shake the legs out before the Banana Belts and test the fitness against real competition.

Given this, my race turned out good.  First, I found on the first lap that it didn't require that much of me to keep position in the pack on the climbs.  Yea, it was hard, but I wasn't redlined or anything.  Just on the first hill; no warmup and some hard tempo on the climb made for a rude awakening, but other than that, everything was good.

I ended up off the front once with two others at one point.  I got caught.  Stayed back with the pack until half way through the third (and last) lap.  Then dropped up a steep climb out of a gully.  A bit more attention on my part to pack positioning going into the gully hill might have seen me pack slide my way up the hill and keep contact.  As it was, I was a bit too far back in the field and I wasn't able to chase back on the following downhill.

So, the verdict?  I feel good about how my form is coming along.  I didn't like how I got dropped; I would have felt better if I hadn't, but a sprinter getting dropped on this course is not totally unexpected, even if I am a little disappointed at allowing it to happen.  Makes for good motivation to keep hammering those interval sets and getting in those hours on the saddle.

Next up: Banana Belt.  This course has treated me nice in the past... but the Cat3's are a new field.  Should be fun.

Pie!

First race of the season!  Cherry Pie in the beautiful gray skies and wet roads of Corvallis.

PV brought out five riders to play.  The field started off about five minutes early, meaning we didn't have Team Ironclad to deal with.  The rollout: stop and go as per usual.  It makes me wonder when the lead cars at Cherry Pie will figure out that they need to go a bit faster down the hill and a bit slower up hill during the neutral stretch, rather than the other way around.

The race started red hot as everyone uncorked their legs from the long slog of winter training.  This lasted for several fast miles before people settled down.  I can't lie, it felt good to let out the leash in anger for the first time of the year.

After that, the pace settled down, a smallish group of six got off the front and I concentrated on staying up in the top 30.  Nobody was in the mood to catch the little group, so things kind of bumped along for a good half hour, with lots of slowing and speeding up, brake grabbing, and a bit of bumping as people tried to move around in the bunched up peloton.

We get to the finish hill for the first of two times and it's time to test my legs against the competition for the first time of the season.  Surprisingly... the legs are good!  Last year on this hill, I was pack surfing like mad; going from the very front to the very back and not making it back up to the front until the very end of the second lap.  Not the best thing to do in a race (apparently, all us pack surfers going backwards get in the way of the guys with actual fitness), but us sprinters, man, we've gotta hold onto the pack using whatever means necessary.  This year?  I was surfing up the pack(!) and went over the hill at the tail of the front group.  Only a true sprinter can know just how pleased I am by this change of fitness.

The second half of the race featured a successful effort to bring back the breakaway, who I found out from Mitch, contained a guy who was some East Coast State TT champion.  I was able to organize a good chase effort and we caught the guy fairly quickly.  From then on, it was covering attacks and trying to keep Mitch in position to attack the finish hill with the front group.  The East Coast guy attacked several times.  The second or third to last time this guy attacked, Mitch was ready and right on his wheel when the guy took off.  It was about five or eight miles from the finish and it was a good move too, if it were anyone but Mitch who went with it.  Nobody in the field knows the East Coast guy (Mitch knew of him from the internet; Mr. East Coast is a regular contributor on the site "BikeForums.net"), but everyone knows Mitch...  The collective opinion of the field was if Mitch was marking this guy, then everyone else should too, and so the move was brought back in a real hurry.  But besides that, Mr. East Coast was the feature of several breakaway attempts, so it was obvious he was a strong TT type fellow who would be dangerous in the closing miles.

Mr. East Coast went a couple more times; the last time at about 3 miles out.  He made a strong move that nobody followed.  At that point, I was on the front with Mitch on my wheel.  For the next near eternity, it was me on the front with Mitch flogging me for more speed at 24.9 mph into a headwind (I remember the "24.9" number very distinctly...), while Mr. East Coast slooooowly increased the gap, foot by foot, minute by minute.  I finally fell off the front a few minutes before the base of the finish hill and limped home.

In epilogue, Mr. East Coast was finally caught with 200m to go (which means my efforts were not for naught), right before a freak crash-that-can-only-happen-on-the-first-race-of-the-season brought down 10 or 15 people and kept Mitch from a good finish.  As for me, it was a good race: a good test of my fitness and a good indicator that this year should be a pretty good year for me.

The Experiment in Cross is DONE!

Suffice it to say, I suck at 'cross, but it's a ton of fun and now it's time to exit the party and let the people who are actually good at this sport do their thing with the championships and USGP and all that while I go and restore the "home goodwill fund" and "work goodwill fund" so I have lots in the bank by the time the road season starts.  Also, I'm slow and fat and need a good head start on the rest of the Cat3 field so I can actually be competitive come March.

Astoria was a blast with the team all holed up in a house on a pier.  I drew one of the lucky straws and got to sleep on the floor.  I had assumed it was carpet... but everyone knows that hardwood is easier to care for and prettier to look at.  Let's just say I awoke on Sunday morning with a real straight back.

Saturday was the serious race... which of course meant that it was this race where I blasted past people on one of my better starts and into the first section of mud and promptly flatted my front tire.  Talk about taking the wind out of your sails.  Since I was on tubies, I can still ride, so I rode the bike to the pit where neutral support took a gajillion years to put my new wheel on (which was pumped up to, like, 100psi) and included a full brake job along the way.  (Even if it sounds like I'm complaining... well, they were actually great and having neutral support is awesome even if I found first hand why it's probably of some importance to bring your own wheels to the pit.)  When I finally made it back on course, there was no one in sight.  I eventually picked off 10 of the weakest 'crossers in the B field and called it a day.

Sunday was a blast.  I had a great costume that was totally team spec'ed and B. Johnson doctor-cum-engineer modified so I could actually see and breath.  It was a "Guy Fawkes" mask, wig, and hat a la "V for Vendetta" and even though I could see and breath, unlike some of my other teammates who were without the Doc. Johnson approved modifications, it still sucked to race in it.  Astoria convinced me that I am just bad at all the things 'crossers are supposed to be good at, and I'm not like some of my teammates who have the fitness to make up for it.  But I had a lot of fun.

I have a feeling that, in the future, unless I have a series standing that I am protecting, my 'cross season will end with Astoria.  The costume race is an awesome cap to the short off-season-season and there's some good symmetricality (I think I just made this word up - probably supposed to be "symmetry") to the season with it being on Halloween.  Now to hunker down in the bat cave and start doing intervals and suffering through 3 hour rides in the rain.

Beer Race

http://www.flickr.com/photos/brujo/sets/72157622001377539/

Jeff Harwood from Ironclad and I cleaned up in the Cat5's on the track at the Team Beer Race at Alpenrose. We ended up tying for first, with the tie-break going to Jeff because he beat me in the final race of the omnium.

Felt really good in this race. Felt like I could throw myself around the track and concern myself with only the "racing" part of track racing, and not have to worry about the "riding bike" part of track racing. It's a welcome turn of events. I've finally figured out that my crash last year on my first ever race on the track really fucked with my head. I have been timid and tense when I was out on the track earlier in the year.

Something changed. Maybe it was mashing my bike into a real track bike, from the street fixie it was. Maybe it was just time. Maybe it was the speech on Friday by Luciano, our announcer, who made a point of pointing out that the default line in a mass start race is the outside line, not the inside near the sprinter's lane; i.e. to use the whole track when racing: attack going over the top of the pack, instead of underneath.

Whatever happened, I felt absolutely comfortable out there racing. Fun, for a change, instead of nerve racking.

Next stop: Cat 4. And match sprints. I can't wait!

Track... and Redemption

My last post about the track was a total bitch session. Today, after not racing for the last month and hardly touching my bike the last couple weeks, I went out onto the track for the penultimate race week to get some more experience.

Last time out, I had a bike that had a track geometry but with a road fork, a crankset that was too long and a bushingless singlespeed chain. After that last time, I upgraded the fork to a carbon fiber track specific fork which had a 30mm rake instead of the 40mm rake that my previous one had. I upgraded the crankset to a real track crankset with shorter arms so I could spin faster. And I upgraded the chain to a real track chain. But I didn't get to race. I skipped it the next week, but I would've been rained out anyway, and I was rained out on two consecutive weeks afterwards. That last race would've been my fourth and final race as a Cat5. Then I got off the track kick and started training for Cascade.

Today, I decided to give the track one last shot and cram as much track experience as I could into these last two weeks. And it went so much better.

See, after crashing out of my very very very firstest race on the track, I've been a scared kitten. I didn't so much race to win or even to have fun, but to not crash. Today changed all that for me. I only had to warn one person to hold his line, and besides that, it was a safe race day and I was competitive to boot.

The new bike (the fork changes everything... it's new now, a completely changed beast) handled marvelously. It's a crime that the bike sellers sell track bikes with road forks to beginners. The beginners are the very people who need a well behaved bike. Instead, in exchange for a couple bucks saved, they get a twitchy bike that is even too twitchy for the match sprinters. It's hard enough to hold a line on the bank the first few times out without having to fight the bike as well. My bike, before the track fork, was skittish. I had to fight it on every turn to keep it on a line. Now, with the new fork, it goes where I look. No fighting anymore. I don't have to watch the lines on the track to follow the bank; I just look around the corner and it goes around perfectly. I don't even have to consciously bank the bike into the corner. It goes around like it's on rails.

Anyway, it was a Cat5 race, so there isn't even bragging rights to go along with it, but a couple guys I've met in road races were there in the field, which was good because I knew that these particular folks could ride a bike. The first race was a 10 lap scratch; just a race to the finish line. Found myself at the front after a couple laps. I went up the bank to give a turn on the front to someone else and found I had a gap. So I zoomed down the bank, into the sprinters lane, and took off. Didn't look back. Just hit the gas for the next two laps as hard as I could. A teammate of mine told me once that breakaways were different on the track. You give it a full effort so that you get ahead by about half a lap, then you can back off and just cruise. You don't need to go full bore like in a road race because the pack dynamics are different. It has to be a long points race before you can get a group of even three people to cooperate and chase.

When I finally looked back, I saw I had about a third of a lap lead. I backed down a bit to just match speed with the chasers and rode out the rest of the race. Every half lap, I peaked back to see how the chasers were doing; if they were gaining on me, I'd give it more gas. If they were backing off, I backed off. I ended up holding on for the win.

The next two races... well, let's just say that it was evident that I expended a lot of energy in the first race. I mean, after that first race, I was tasting a trace of blood in my throat from a few burst alveoli from the effort. The second race was a 15 lap points race, with points for the first four positions on laps 5, 10, and 15, with double points at the finish. I wasn't able to do much of anything until the finish, where I was pipped at the line for third place.

Going into the final race of the omnium, myself and two others were tied for first. The last race was a "Tempo" race, meaning it was a race to the line each and every lap, with the first two racers to cross getting points. I got no points. I was fourth or fifth (I think) across the line at the finish, but I was far enough behind the leaders (obviously the race blew apart, which tends to happen on this type of race) that I wasn't even sure when the race ended.

In any case, I had amassed enough omnium points on the first two events to to eek out a second place for the day. And I didn't feel threatened at all. I felt perfectly comfortable in the field and racing, my bike handled great, I had fun, and I wasn't a scaredy cat. A good day.

Cascade... and the end of the season

First thing first, the Cascade Stage Race. This is probably the first time I went solidly into a race with reasonable expectations and solid form. Needless to say, in my first half season as a Cat 3, I did not do well. Way off the back of the field in the road races, (surprisingly) mid field in the ITT, and just hanging on by the skin of my teeth in the Crit.

The first stage found me seeing my teammate (the only one with a legit shot at winning the GC) pulling and me slotting in ahead of him on the first two mile climb out of the staging area. I went up there, matched pace which put my heart rate right into my FT, and pulled the field up the hill. I got swarmed at the top, but it was a good test of my fitness in this (still) new field which I've only been part of for three races. I ended up doing way too much pulling in the first stage, which was partially because I felt that my teammate would stick his face in the wind if I wasn't up there, and partially because I knew I wouldn't be competing up the finishing 10k climb and I wanted to test what I could do. I was fairly pleased with my efforts up until the hill, when the field just blew by me on one of the steeper slopes (I was pretty tired from pulling). I ended the stage side by side with a teammate who wasn't feeling well, way down in 92nd place (out of 96!). Because I didn't blow myself up trying to move from 92nd place to 80th, I actually finished the stage feeling pretty good.

I was one of the first to go off for the ITT in the Cat 3 field because of my near lanterne rouge status. I brought two bikes to the race, one my "good" Trek race bike, and the other the my "crit" bike which is my old steel frame road bike dressed up with modern Ultegra components. A little heavy but solid as a brick and just flexy enough to make it corner like it's on rails. I also brought a time trial cockpit for one or the other of my bikes in the off chance that I was doing well. I didn't want to be in the situation where I had a phenomenal day on stage 1 and was out of contention on the TT because I didn't bring a stink'n TT bike. Anyway, because I was well out of contention, I simply used my Trek road bike without any aerobars or anything for the TT.

I started out great out of the holder's hands. Bolted up the hill out of the parking lot and settled into my rhythm, looking at my powertap output and trying to maintain 350W. Being that I had raced hard the day before, I ended up not being able to maintain much more than 320W or so on the way up. I caught my 30s man almost immediately once I got out on the road out of the parking lot, and I immediately zeroed in on my 1min man. I could see him up there in the distance, but was closing very slowly. He, I think, caught his 30s man, and after the turnaround, I think I caught him as well. Flying down the hill (out was uphill and back was downhill) as fast as I could push the 53/11, I couldn't quite get up to the 1m man, but I got close by the turn back into the parking lot. Accelerating out of the turn, screaming from the effort, I was sprinting for the line 400m away. Almost caught the guy.

I didn't know the time until later, but it turns out that I ended up beating one of our best TT'ers by 2 seconds (he was having a bad day, obviously) and getting roughly mid pack in the field at 50th or so place. Not bad for a recently graduated Cat 4 sprinter on a road bike.

The crit was uneventful. I got a great start and was in the top 20 or so in the field for the first few laps. Then it went like this:

grab that wheel...

losing it...

getting passed - PUSH IT! - grab that wheel!...

losing it...

etc.

I finished with the pack, but never saw the front and was never doing anything but hanging on by the skin of my teeth. Terrible performance for an alleged sprinter. Something to work on for next year; gotta make it to the finish at the pointy end of the pack before I get the privilege of contesting the sprint.

One good thing to come out of it was the realization that my discomfort in small spaces in the pack was mostly due to the very little details of my positioning. I have been crashing a lot, which is mostly because I am contesting the sprints, which means that I get to be in those tight positions when everyone's all crazy and stuff. We had a bike handling class the previous thursday which showed me two things:

First, that it's not such a terrible thing to lean on another rider. You just need to guard the handlebars but aside from that, everything is all fine - lean all you want.

Second was just a little thing that our team's coach mentioned during the clinic a couple times, but almost in passing. If your bars are in front of the rider next to you, you own him. I put this theory to to the test in the crit and as a result, I never, during the entire course of the race, even running into the corners 3 or 4 wide, felt threatened. It works both on the inside and outside guy. If you are able to get this bar forward position, you can take whatever line you want in the corner. If you don't get the position, try to get at least even so you won't get pushed around. If you fail to get the position, back off so you don't get pushed around. Positioning becomes a perennial battle where you want to lead going into the corners, and if you fail, you either accept the risk of getting pushed off your line or you back off. Even if you accept the risk, you go into the situation eyes-wide-open, which in itself lessens the risk.

Anyway, finally, the last stage was all that was ahead; a circuit race - four times around a 17 mile circuit which the first half featured a nearly constant downhill and starting around mile 10, a nearly constant uphill with a "wall" at about the mile 14 mark followed by more climbing. Just a really tough course, and something which was surprisingly suitable to my style of racing. I was inspired by Thor Hushov's ride in the Alps a few days before where he, a classics sprinter, went on a rampage off the front of a field packed with climbers on a climbing stage so he could soak up 12 sprint points and all but wrap up the green jersey in the Tour de France. I was determined to try to make it to the end of this race with the field. If I could survive the hills, this was a course with a real sprint finish!

We coasted down the hills and I got up near the front for the first uphill at the 10 mile mark. Remarkably, mostly because I am used to being blown out of the water on the climbs, I stayed right with the pack, not even giving up too many positions. I was right at my FTP heart rate (I don't wear my powertap in races; too heavy) of 170bpm and it was pretty uncomfortable, but I was hanging. Pat on the back. At the wall, I enter it in the top five or so spots and almost sprint up the wall, in the process finding on the fly that it is possible to shift the front ring while standing, if you are really careful to back off the chain tension first. Probably not the best place to experiment with this, but it is what it is. Then the long grind up the hill on top of the wall and I start giving up lots of positions. Eventually the hill ends though and I am still at the tail end of the pack. A second circuit earned.

The second circuit went the same way, except that I lost momentum on the wall when I had to dodge a guy who put his chain into his spokes (and I was tired, of course, too) and found myself somewhat off the back about half way up the grinding hill. The ground leveled out a little though and I was able to make it back on before the top of the hill.

The third circuit, I got popped at the feed zone. I went back for a third bottle to dump on my head and lost track of the peloton. Looked up and found I was 100m back. Chased, along with several others, but to no avail. I ended up not getting back on and rode the rest of the third lap and the fourth with a guy from Therapeutic Associates who had also been dropped.

Overall, I was extremely happy with how the stage race turned out. I learned that I was not as far behind with my fitness as I thought. I also found that I steered my training pretty much correctly to peak right at the race. It was not a sharp peak, but I didn't go into the race unprepared, nor did I go into it overtrained/burnt out. Now, as far as I am concerned, my road season is done. I'll take some time off of serious training, for a week or two, then start in on long endurance and tempo rides (and just having fun with commuting and such) and start losing weight for next season and building base, with some 'cross races thrown in to keep myself sharp. My goals are to raise my FTP another 10% to about 350-360W, and drop my weight another 10lbs to 165lbs. We'll see. This is the first time I've ended the season on my terms and on a relatively high note with a definite plan on what needs to be done for next season.

I also spoke of Thor; that guy inspired me. I now know what kind of rider I want to be. Everyone needs a focus, and now that I have two years of racing under my belt, I think I have a good idea of what kind of rider I am. I am a natural sprinter. That is one thing I've learned. I have a great kick. I could be a crit or track specialist if I wanted to. But I don't want to. I'm going to be a "classics sprinter" like guys like Thor, Boonen, Zabel and O'Grady. My focus of the season will be the spring classics with the peak in the spring stage races in April. I'll be working primarily on my aerobic base so I can motor with the best of them on the flats and climb reasonably well. If not well enough to chase the little sprites up the 10 mile climbs, then well enough to stay with the pack to contest the sprint at the end of a long classic style road race.

Silverton FAIL plus Track Rant

The race report for the Silverton RR is a short one: FAIL.

Got dropped after a lap and a half, then rode the rest of the lap with John Kim, a friendly sprinter type who is a monster on the track, but hills, like me, not so much. Quit after two laps of three; no point in thrashing myself on another lap after the hammering I took on the first two.

I did do a little racing early. It's not like sat in the pack and waited for my turn to be dropped. After we started up the first hill of the day a break formed. I got Mitch into a chase group which didn't quite get away, but the fireworks started by the chase led to both the break and the chase being swallowed briefly and the break reemerging with Mitch as one of the members. So, after that little amount of racing, I went to sit in in the chase group. Actually, I drifted almost all the way to the back of the field, and was just getting my breath back when version two of the breakaway went off.

I learned some little things about myself in the race. I learned that my training (and weight loss, I now tip the scales at 180lbs, 5-6lbs less than a couple months ago) was working incrementally. I was able to dig harder than I have previously to keep on the wheels, and I think I stayed on much longer than I would have two months ago. Who knows though. Two months ago, the guys racing now were not in as good form as they are now, so perhaps the tide is raising all boats and I am just trying to keep up.

Also, I learned that the trick to squeezing though narrow gaps just wider than your handlebars is to look at the wheel you are following through the gap, instead of looking at the handlebar you are trying to avoid. If you look at a handlebar on one side of the gap, you'll hit it. If you look through the gap and just move through, you'll go through without the slightest problem. Another thing about moving through gaps is that it is safer to move through them than backing off and exposing your front wheel to someone's rear wheel. Better to be squeezed with your shoulders between two hips than having your front wheel trapped between two rear wheels. I think that's what is meant by "protecting your front wheel". You place yourself such that any swerve on anyone's part will be met with your shoulder or hip, not your wheel.

So, a little racing before I got dropped, some deep digging, and a little more pack riding experience is my takeaway from Silverton. It's a tough course.

On a final note about track.

It's a tough community to break into. The Alpenrose track is a hard place to race because of the high banking so a high level of experience is necessary, but getting that experience is tough. There are classes, but you don't get the racing experience you need from a class. So to protect the Cat4 racers and up, everyone, from Cat3 roadies making the transition to complete bike racing noobs who have never turned a pedal in anger are thrown into a novice field. It's almost a gauntlet with the range of bike handling skills ranging from okay to mediocre to absolutely dismal. Survive the gauntlet four times and take a class and you can get upgraded to race with the guys who actually know what they are doing. I've got to make a decision soon whether to press further into track racing or just shit-can the whole endeavor for being too risky. The way it is now, the noobs are left to fend for themselves; any that survive can race with the real racers. I'm not sure if I am willing to go through with that.

Last race, last Friday, I was criticized a little for riding off the front when I asked a question about the upgrade requirement. The organizers basically said that I didn't show any bike handling skills in a pack because I was off the front the entire time. Now, that's not entirely true, but it's true enough, by design really. I raced that way because I don't trust the other riders to be good bike handlers. I know that I am a decent bike handler, at least enough to keep a line and avoid dumping the bike if I get bumped. But I've seen enough in my first race last year to be really suspect about the others' bike handling skills in the novice field. They'll let pretty much anyone race in the novices with a helmet and $10. If I ride this next Friday in the novice field, I can't say I'd ride any different. The upgrade criteria is basically subjective, and I don't know if I can satisfy their bike handling requirement by riding outside or on/off the front the entire time. At the same time, I don't think I am willing to just soft pedal in the field, just to display my bike handling skills, and risk a crash.

Track

Finally got back on the track today. Last year in my very first race, a 12 lap (2 mile) scratch race, a crash took me out and ended with me landing on my head and shoulder.

So today, I'm still a Cat5 on the track, so I raced in the novice omnium to see what it was all about. The first race was a 10 lap "tempo" race, meaning that first person crossing the line every lap got two points, and the second person got 1 point. I started the race at the back and almost riding the rail to stay out of trouble. I started moving up, which was hard because I was still staying up-track. But I eventually got to the front with, I don't know, 5 or 6 laps left, and managed to drop everyone in the race.

Second race was a 10 lap "scratch" race, meaning that it was 10 laps and first to cross wins. Very simple. This time, I got to the front in two laps and proceeded to just hammer. I managed to drop everyone but one guy. I just kept pulling him around the track and he came around me at the end for the win. I'm second. Not a great strategy, just leading around the track, but the intent is to learn my limits on the track and this is a decent way of doing it. I found that for an eight lap TT, the 49/15 gear I was running is a bit steep. Anyway, got second.

Third and final race was an "unknown distance" race. The racers don't know how long the race is until the bell is rung marking the last lap. I got up to the front with the racer who beat me in the previous race and we traded pulls for a total of a single exchange, and then I managed to drop everyone again. The bell was rung at lap 4 and I won easily enough.

Obviously, I'm not a Cat5. Next week I'll try some match sprinting and then request an upgrade so I can race in the Thursday omniums.

PIR 4/28/09 - win but an acid aftertaste

My second win of the season, with a big assist from the team as per usual. But not the ending I would have preferred.

The day wasn't looking too good from a weather standpoint. I got to PIR and while it wasn't raining, it was threatening to. The field was really small, only about 40 people, instead of the 70-100 we've been getting used to. Counterclock-wise is the direction, which usually means a tailwind at the finish, but not today; it's a headwind from the right.

Our crew consisted of six of us. I was sitting first place in the April series; Matt was third. The team plan was to get me the win in the race and the series.

An Ironclad guy was sitting in second, only two points back from me. I had a suspicion that he was going for all the primes this day, so my goal was to shadow him and follow him out on the prime laps, hopefully to deny him an advantage, or at least mitigate the damage to my lead.

So I find Ironclad guy during the warmup. The Ironclad boys were out in force this day with 11 riders to our six, in a field of 40. Between the two of us, we are nearly half the field. As we roll out, I find out quickly that it's much harder to hide in a field of 40 than it is in a field of 100 like last week. I'm actually doing work rather than just sitting back and watching.

A group gets off the front almost immediately and sucks up the first of the prime points. So far so good. I'm starting to admire the Ironclad guy for the way he moves around the pack. Very smooth. Hard to follow around, especially considering that while I was watching him, he and his teammates were watching me and it might have been my imagination, but were doing some boxing of me as well.

By now the break is sucked back in and the bell rings a second time for the second prime. Better get on Ironclad guy's wheel. He's moving well through the pack because he is following his teammates around. Myself, I'm getting boxed in everywhere. Down the finishing stretch, he's got a leadout from about 3 Ironclad guys, and I'm still untangling myself. I am left in admiration of their organization. Ironclad and his leadout gap the field a bit; I surge to get back on his wheel. He kicks, I kick and I am gaining, but the line comes up out of nowhere and we go 1-2. My lead is now down to a single point. Shouldn't have let off after I got on his wheel. It's a mistake that will be remedied with experience. Just get up there, coast up to his wheel to catch a breath for a moment and immediately kick again to avoid killing my momentum.

We get reabsorbed. I follow him around the group some more. The bell rings a third time and it's game on again. I'm getting tangled up again, boxed in trying to follow his wheel and end up losing it again. I get Matt to help take me up to the front and lose his wheel. Not going well at all. I finally get back up to Ironclad guy as we turn onto the finishing stretch. Matt's up at the front now, looking to lead me out, but I am trapped in the middle of the group. Matt goes to plan B (get the points himself), but Ironclad guy times his move just right and pips Matt at the line. Now I am two points back to Ironclad guy. I have to win the race to win the series, and I need him to get third if I want to win the race.

One lap after the last prime, the bell rings again. WTF! Turns out that the race is being shortened by one lap. There is a group of four off the front who went off after the last prime as the sprinters were getting reabsorbed. Unbeknownst to us, one of our teammates was in the break. Ironclad just materializes all over the front of the field, forming a leadout train at least six guys strong. Alex and Matt find me and we start forming a miniature leadout train of our own. Going into the final 'S' curves before the finishing stretch, Alex takes our little train right up the left side and past the Ironclad train. Just an awesome pull to get that done. Now we are finally in control of the race. Alex pulls off right as we get on the finishing stretch and Matt takes over.

It's Matt, then an Ironclad leadout man, then me, then, I assume, my Ironclad competitor. Matt takes a super strong pull to about 300m out and he's off, leaving the rest of the leadout to Ironclad. Ironclad leadout guy keeps the pace high and I am waiting for the launch point.

Then a sickening sound.

Like a corrugated metal sheet being run over by heavy wheels.

The line comes up and I sprint around the Ironclad leadout man to claim the race win and turn around. My Ironclad competitor is nowhere to be found. We coast to the end of the straightaway and turn back around to see what happened. Obviously a crash happened at 35+mph and we are all asking around to figure who was involved. Turns out that Ironclad guy was one of the principle victims, locking handlebars with another rider while fighting for my wheel and coming down on his head and shoulders. One of my teammates was also involved as well (and maybe another, I'm unclear on this right now) and got pretty banged up.

Suck.

I hate this. A grand sprint battle fucked by some bad luck. That's racing, I suppose. I didn't cause the crash in any way, so it's not like it's unsportsmanlike to claim the win. But I don't like it. I'll leave it at that.

PIR 4/21/09

First win of the season!

PIR - 4/7/09

Pic is from: http://aggregatecyclist.blogspot.com/2009/04/comeback-complete.html

Racing out at PIR is always fun, unless, that is, you end up on the ground. Fortunately, that didn't happen this time, unlike last year about this time, when I broke a helmet and gained the inspiration for the title of this blog.

Yesterday was the first PIR of the season. I started the day loading the bike in the car thinking I was going to do a group ride in the afternoon. Halfway thorough the day, I said "what the hell" and ended up at PIR. We had large group of 10 guys: Matt D., both Jasons: Feig and Flemming, Alex, Ty, Johnny Rockets, Jeff Henderson, Mitch Lee, Mitch Gold and myself. Pitted against us were ten guys on the Ironclad team, as well as 57 other racers. Only 10 clockwise laps to account for daylight, which doesn't mean an easy race, it means a fast race.

Everybody marked Mitch Lee. He went off at the gun and everybody chased. He's got himself quite a reputation. Ironclad and Portland Velo were in a Steel Cage Death Match of breakaway and bridge attempts. We would send a guy off, and they would chase. They would break away and we would chase. So it went for the entire race, all 26.5mph average worth of it. It was a fast race.

The big moment for me started in the last lap. I had been covering breaks, bridging and chasing all race. The last lap started like this with Ty and I moving up to the front to chase back a lone Ironclad guy on a bell lap breakaway. Getting around to the back side of the course, the Ironclad guy safely back in the field, everyone started positioning themselves for the sprint.

I was up against the infield wall and made my way to the outside, reasoning that the outside will remain unblocked. I'm coming up the side of the field and I pass Matt D. just sitting pretty on the left side, about 20 wheels back. I get up next to him and get him on my wheel. We move steadily up the side of the field as we make it through some of the preliminary "S" curves; we are sitting about 10 wheels back as we round the final corner. At that point, I just drill it. Just like at Banana Belt leading out Ron, I stayed seated and just started ramping up the torque.

I come out of the corner wide, way wide of the peloton which is hugging the infield wall. It was weird, because we were 20 feet off to the side of the peloton and nobody thought to cross the chasm over to where we were, preferring instead to fight for position out of the wind. Myself, I'm okay out there because I'm not hauling this truck all the way to the line. 200, 300m short of the line is good enough for me, which makes the wind okay.

So there we are, accelerating past the hard charging pack in their own little world way off to the right of us, and then we are free of them with nobody on Matt's wheel. I take a peak under my legs and see a steady wheel not more than 2" away from mine. Sweet. One of the things that riding with Dave Haag taught me was that a good leadout makes the sprint just a done deal. And that's what it was here. I started laboring and slowing slightly, Matt came around with a good kick and there was nobody behind him contesting. I sat up, moved over to the right just a little to get a bit in the way of the sprinters coming up, and coasted across the line in second place. It was a sweet win for the both of us.

Cherry Blossom SR - Stage 4 and recap

Reposted from the Portland Velo website:

Crappy day. 

Crappy weekend. 

Watched the lead group ride away from me 3 miles into today's race and the second time up the hill, watched the chase group I was in (with Matt, Dan, Paul, Sasha etc.) ride away.  Finished a very painful last 15 miles mostly by myself.

Summary of the weekend:

Stage 1: two flats, but not at the same time.  Go off road.  Rear tire flats, chase back on (with Tom Ricciardi's help; much appreciated), front tire flats during the chase (got back on just as the rim hits the ground), get another wheel and chase back on again, and then dropped.

Stage 2: Good data from the TT on the powertap.  Verified my FTP again.  Paced it well.  The lone shining star of my weekend.

Stage 3: Break the rear shift cable an hour before the crit.  Rode back to the hotel to try to fix it but ran out of time.  Raced the crit in the 39/12.  Hurt afterwards, but finished with the pack.  Contemplate borrowing a bike for stage 4 but manage to fix the cable and get shifting back that night.

Stage 4: Dropped 3 miles into the race on 7-mile hill (actually 5.5 miles, but who's counting).   Limp in very painfully.

Cherry Blossom SR - Stages 2 & 3

I'm playing catch-up here a bit.  This is reposted from the Portland Velo website:

The TT went relatively well for me.  I got 15th in the stage and got some useful powertap data.

Going into the crit, I was looking forward to it.  Ron and Alex, our two GC guys, were just sitting in, so I was going to contest things at the end.  All set, in the parking lot rolling around and my shifting is doing funny things.  Ride over to the venue and the right shifter is still doing funny things.  It's not shifting up to larger cogs very well.

Going around the course, I'm rolling and playing with the shifter a bit, and boom, the shift cable breaks.  I've got an hour before the crit starts so I go back to the hotel to try to fix it.  Get there and discover that the cable-stop at the end of the, now broken, cable is stuck inside the shifter.  I play around with it for about 20 minutes, but it's getting close to the start time, so I have to cut it short and single speed it in the 39/12.  As I was riding back to the venue I was kicking myself because I should have adjusted the limit screw to put it in the 15 or 16 tooth cog, instead of the 12 to get two useful gears instead of one.  Next time the cable breaks, I'll know better :).

So I race with a singlespeed.  Going up a slight rise on the back side I was way overgeared, and going down the down-wind section towards the finish, I was undergeared and couldn't move up in the field.  I saw the front once in the last three laps, but couldn't hold the position in the run-in to the finish line.  As it turned out, Sasha took 4th, so the day was good for PV.

I was contemplating the possibility of borrowing someone's bike for tomorrow's stage, but I ended up getting the little end of the cable out of the shifter and re-cabling the bike.  So I get to ride the next stage on my bike.  And damn, my legs are sore.

Cherry Blossom SR - Stage 1

Stupid, stupid flats. That's all I have to say about yesterday's stage. The day started with a sea of blue and black of Portland Velo at the start line, what with 13 of us in the field. With a total field size of 86 riders, moving up in the field was a bit tough. That's the start of the story of flats and chasing.

Right off the bat, when I was seeing that the field was so congested, I had thoughts of moving up. I tried the middle of the field, but there weren't any gaps that I was comfortable moving up through. I tried the centerline and same thing. I had more luck over by the shoulder side of the lane. I was slowly moving up through the field led by a large contingent of blue and black, when the field went around a corner and shifted a little, pushing me off the road for a very brief spell, maybe 5-10 seconds tops. I think little of it; it was a hard packed gravel shoulder; get back up on the road and think nothing of it.

Then someone yells up to me from behind that he thinks my rear tire is going flat. I say, "no, my bike feels fine." I bounce on it a little, it feels fine. Then it feels soft. Then I am on my rim. This is 3 miles into the race. Fuck. I drift back through the field to the rear and stop as the wheel car stops right behind me. Shout out to the driver that I need a Shimano 10 speed, and digs one out. I slap it in, do a cyclocross remount and I am on my way. Tom Ricciardi, on of my teammates but one I didn't know very well, offered to wait for me as I was drifting back and I took him up on it. I owe him a beer or something.

Anyway, I am off at a full sprint to get back up to speed and I see him up the road noodling along, waiting for me. I blow by him and then slow a bit so we can work together. We work together smoothly and the field isn't actually that far ahead of us. Midway through the chase though, I notice my front wheel is feeling funny. I blow it off. Can't think about that now; my only thought is to get back to the field, which we are slowly gaining on. Then I start hearing my front tire making a "swish swish" noise. I blow it off again. We are getting closer. Now, along with the swishing noise, the tire is feeling soft. I look down and can see it sloshing side to side as I push on the pedals. Fuuuccck. This can't be happening. Now my entire weekend is in danger because the wheel car is ahead of me and if I get a flat now, it's a long walk and DNF or wait and beg a wheel from the wheel car of the next field, which they are not obligated to give me.

We are getting close now to the rear of the field and my rim is getting closer and closer to the ground. I tell Tom, who is on my wheel, that I'm just going to push it really, really hard and sprint the 100m left so I can get to the wheel car and get a new wheel.

I get to the back of the last car in the caravan and try to get the driver's attention. No response, but as I pass the car to talk to the driver, I find it's just a random car and not the wheel car. My rim is on the ground now. Up ahead of that car is the wheel car. I get up to it and tell the driver I need another wheel. We stop, I get it, and after futzing with the skewer for forever, I am off again to chase, this time by myself.

Now, the story gets boring. Chase, chase, chase. I am passing little fragments of the field who are getting blown off the back. I pass Rob who is dragging a brake pad. He hangs with me up the hill for a little, but he is eventually dropped from the pace. I get up to the top and I join up with a group of 4 or 5 riders, including Tom, who apparently made it on just in time to get dropped again when the course took a turn into the wind and uphill. Dropped riders make for bad chase companions though, and I end up pulling most of them along, with them taking short pulls and myself taking longer ones. One last push, and I am back on the back of the field, just in time to finish the first lap.

Going into the second lap, the pace rockets sky high as the field turns down-wind and starts chasing a couple of riders who broke away. We are flying at almost 40mph over level ground. After chasing the field twice and spending a hour at threshold, this eventually drops me. I limped in about 8 minutes back.