Jul 22, 01:11 PM by Steve | Redemption
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Comments [1]Redemption is a dish best served cold. Or was it revenge? I always get those confused. Anyway, I had been looking forward to this racing weekend all year, as this pair of relatively local races didn’t go so well for me last year in cat 5. I got dropped on the final climb at Sisquoc, and dropped after only a few laps in San Luis Obispo, and pulled after only about 20 minutes. This year, as a cat 4, was going to be different. Depsite nearly being taken out in the accident on Saturday (see report above), I was very happy with my performance. I was able to move up when I wanted to, be on front when I needed to be, and was in a great position coming into the finish. Apparently the pace of the race blew apart the field too, which was pretty cool because I didn’t think we were working very hard at all. After the race Kim and I went across the freeway for some smoothies, met Seth and his girlfriend Elisa at Subway, headed out to Oceano for a show (The Great American Melodrama), and later dinner at California Pizza Kitchen in downtown San Luis Obispo.
In the morning I got ready, had some breakfast and then rolled out to the race, conveniently having picked a motel that was close by. I found John at registration and we pinned each other’s numbers while watching the cat 5 race. There were a few Echelon guys...
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Jul 21, 03:41 PM by Steve | Rubber Side Down
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | CommentsI felt really good in the race and was right up in the front coming into the finish, but a Fast Friday rider pulled a bonehead move and took out Chester right in front of me. Tom and Bill bounced off the melée but none of us went down.
The morning started out well enough, we got a really easy start beacause I misjudged the time it would take to get there, but it was good because it gave lots of time to register, take a leak, etc. However, when I started getting dressed I realized that I forgot my jersey… I rembered that I had my skinsuit for tomorrow’s crit. It felt kinda funny wearing a skinsuit for a road race, but it made me really glad I picked the one with a pocket.
Race time, and we line up near the front. Jason was also there, as was Bill, but he was in the porta-potty when we lined up and had to start from the back. There were 5 of us (Chester, Tom, Mark, Doug, and I) there and we were going to try to help Chester get a win. We didn’t really have a plan, and Tom rode off the front about 1 mile into the first lap. It gave me and Mark a chance to do some classic blocking and patrolling the front. There were a few guys up there who clearly didn’t know what was going on. One guy in red kept going up to the...
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Jun 12, 12:24 PM by Steve | 17 minutes flat
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Comments [2]Old San Marcos isn’t very long, but it makes up for it in pain and suffering. A few weeks ago Seth broached the idea of starting a monthly lunchtime time trial up OSM similar to one he did in Pennsylvania.
This is a staggered start time trial where departure times of the riders are based off of previously recorded times up the climb. The slowest leaves first and the fastest last. If nobody sand bags you’ll have a bunch of men, and maybe one day women, to chase to the tree.
As you can guess, a lot of sandbagging ensued as we declared our times. I was hesitant to use my PR time of 17:26 from nearly a month ago as I was feeling slower and had gained a few pounds, so I gave 18:00. I did it yesterday at a high effort (but nowhere near max) with Bill in 18:50, and didn’t think I had a minute and a half in there to shave off. It seems many people took 1 minute to a minute and half off their PR times. Bill did a 17:50 a little while (two months?) ago and gave 18:35; Mark has done 14:30 and went in with a 16:00. I think the biggest sandbagger award has to go to Ron with 17:45, who did a mid-17 on a mountain bike last year! Chester called me last night to “veto” my time, but I guess Seth didn’t change it so I still went at 18:00,...
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May 18, 11:44 PM by Steve | Dirt
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Leave a Comment [2]
I raced on the dirt for the first time today, at the Santa Ynez Classic, in the Cross Country “Beginner 25-29” category. It was an 11 mile loop with 1600 feet of climbing. The ground was baked and cracked and some of the climbs and drops were over 25%. I have a really old and crappy Trek hardtail that weighs well over 30 pounds, so Chester let me use his Gary Fisher “Sugar”. Kim and I spent yesterday evening adjusting the bikes and getting them ready, and went out for a 20 minute ride around Los Carneros Lake to make sure everything was set…
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May 12, 10:34 AM by Steve | The Road to Oildale
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Leave a CommentThe interesting thing about doing all these races this year, is traveling all over California and seeing areas I never would have otherwise gone to. I mean, why would I have any reason to go to Bakersfield otherwise, and especially Oildale. I did the Elite 4 district championships in Bakersfield at 9:30 on Sunday morning, for two laps around a 31 mile loop through oil fields in the middle of the desert.
I’m still having trouble with those long hard efforts, and got popped near the top of the climb on the first lap. I was pretty much at my max HR for about 4 minutes, then gave it everything I had to stay with the pack to what I thought was the top… but it turned out to be a false flat, and when we turned a corner and it kicked up again, I was done. I caught a big SC Velo guy’s wheel that was chasing back on, and tried to follow, but I didn’t have enough gas and settled into my own rythmn to the top. I could still see the pack when I crested, but the gap only increased on the descent… I was working with one other guy (LaGrange) and we caught a few others at the bottom. We picked up more as we went along the rollers and could see a sizable group ahead for a while. We seemed to be gaining on them, which was promising, and I thought our chance of catching...
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Apr 19, 11:48 PM by Steve | Sea Otter Circuit Race: A Whole Lotta Suck
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Leave a Comment [1]From the moment I arrived at the venue today I knew the race was going to suck. At the hilltop dirt lot where we parked, the winds were whipping over us at what felt like at least 30mph. For some bizzare reason I decide to put my 46mm rims on and rode around for a few minutes and thought I would be ok. I ran into Marco on the way down to the circuit—he looked at my wheels, then looked at me, and ummm, convinced me to change them when he said he was tossed around on his regular wheels.
I remarked to Dawn as I watched Mark in his race that I need to buy stronger rubber bands, because mine keep breaking. I was watching race because, well, see what I just said about needing better rubber bands. Mine broke on the 5th lap—or actually stretched to its limit as we came down the start/finish straight at the end of the 4th lap. The field was completely strung out and gaps were starting to form and I had to chase hard to catch back on. I was dangling just behind as we went up the climb and nearly made contact before it pitched up again.
You can see in the chart below that my HR increases much sooner than previous laps and when the pack crests I pretty much give up and cruise back to the start. You can also see that my HR does not recover...
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Apr 18, 08:24 PM by Steve | Sea Otter Road Race: A Lesson on Attacking
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Leave a Comment [1]Today I had a pefect attack on the second lap—it looked promising, but ultimately a rider bridged the gap and brought the field back to me. I attacked again at the top of the climb after the feedzone. It was dicey for a while, but ultimately this one stuck. Another rider joined me later and we rode together to the end. Oh yeah… did I mentioned it was off the back? I sprinted him to the line and took… 40th. This is a lesson I learned from the Cycling Insight podcast, the age- old “attack off the back”. I probably would be more disappointed in my performance if it wasn’t somewhat expected.
I felt pretty good going into this weekend, and I don’t think I rode that poorly, I’m just outclassed by nearly everyone. I’m wondering if I should take some time off racing for a while and just focus on training. Note that the race was fast, the winning time in the masters race would have been 30th in our race. The 35+ race which started 5 minutes behind didn’t catch me until my 4th lap (of 6), despite me losing 5 minutes per lap to the leaders after I fell off the train. The 45+ race caught me a little further in the loop on the 5th lap, and I was able to fairly easily stay behind them (but outside of their draft) for most of the rest of the lap.
Overall, the problem continues to be my...
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Apr 13, 09:26 PM by Steve | Isla Vista Classic & Garrett Lemire Grand Prix
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Leave a CommentI came out of this weekend with hopefully some lessons learned, but nothing in the way of results, not even meager pack finishes.
Isla Vista Classic: Those college kids are fast. A huge cat 4/5 field into a tight first corner meant major accordian. I wasn’t strong or smart enough to work my way up and after maybe half an hour I was finally snapped off the back for good. I considered pulling out, but a few Chicken Ranchers came up from behind and I worked with them. My goal at that point was to just finish. And I almost made it, but we were pulled with 2 laps to go. Drat. Now I’m really nervous about Ojai, but I’m assured by several people that the pace was pushed by those darn college kids, and the ojai course is more suited to me…
Average HR 171, max 184. 1 minute zones 1-3, 11 minutes in zone 4, 24 minutes in zone 5.
photo by John Goodman
Garrett Lemire Grand Prix: The short of it is that I did actually finish the race, and was not lapped. Looking at my data, it looks like I held on for 6 laps and came unhinged on the 7th. Its remarkable how even the lap times were when I was with the field and how uneven they became when I was in a smaller group. After I came off I pretty quickly fell in with other riders, including a...
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Apr 3, 12:19 PM by Steve | Orosi Road Race & Hanford Crit
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Leave a CommentAfter missing the registration for the San Dimas stage race, I signed up for a pair of races up north, near Visalia without really knowing anything about them. I later found out that Orosi is supposedly one of the hardest single-day races in California. Furthermore it turned out that many of the northies were going to be over at the Ronde van Brisbeen omnium that weekend instead. I started to wonder what I was getting myself into…
I almost didn’t go because of the aforementioned fever Thursday morning, but I was feeling normal again Thursday evening and got in a good ride to test myself on Friday morning and decided to go for it. Chester and I got a bit of a late start leaving town and hit the usual end-of-day traffic, but still made good time to our model in Visalia. Oh yeah, Chester named the GPS in my car Cheryl… anytime it gave directions, he would say, “Thank you Cheryl”.
Orosi Road Race: OTB, DFL, DNF. Did the fever affect me? Looking at my data from Orosi its hard to pinpoint exactly where I came off. From what I recall, it felt pretty much like climbing up OSM at a 16 minute pace effort (my PR is 18 minutes). Although we were really moving, I didn’t have any problem calling up a lot of power to hang in there. However, I knew I was way over threshold and as we kept going hard I was...
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Mar 17, 10:20 AM by Steve | LA Circuit Race
Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | CommentsI’m not very happy with how I raced on Sunday. I hardly ever felt like I was working, but didn’t want to make a move in the wind, so it was a whole lot of nothing. The Wind. I’m not good at determining things like wind speed, but I was told it was about 20-30mph, and I believe it. It was a pure tailwind from the start to the first corner, a hairpin turn after a mile, and then 2 miles into the headwind, another hairpin turn, and a mile downhill to the finish.
Of course nobody wanted to work into the wind and the pack (full field of 100 riders) was bunched up 10 across at times. I’ve never heard so much yelling and swearing in a race. A lot of “Hold Your Line!” and “Easy On The Turn!”, and words I won’t repeat because there may be children reading… Despite all that, there were no accidents except for one guy that took the downwind turn too wide and ran into the curb.
For my part, I was not aggressive enough to get good position on the final lap, and went around the final corner maybe mid-field. I did the best I could to accelerate up on the left side, and made up a lot of ground on the middle of the field. But the front of the field was moving way to fastand there was no chance. The 53×11 on my Tarmac (the compact on my TCR only went...
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