Sep 22, 12:38 AM by Steve | Everest Challenge Day 2

Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Comments [2]

Things started out well today but fell apart somewhere on the second climb. On the first climb up to Glacier Lodge I kept the tail end of the front group of 11 in sight and was only a few minutes off the front at the turnaround. Two of the riders stopped at the checkpoint and I was sitting in 10th for the the descent and was chasing down one guy through Big Pine to the start of the second climb, but we were both caught by a group of 4 other riders and the lot of us went up the climb. I figured the group would stay pretty much together but at one point another guy came up to our group and after a few minutes rest attacked us and the group shattered.

I had nothing to respond and continued at my own pace with a Sho-Air rider from the masters field. When I saw the front of the field coming back down, I timed myself to the same spot and clocked 9 minutes. I got to the bottom and begain the final 20 mile, 6,000+ foot climb with just over 3 hours on the clock. Last year the climb took me nearly 3 hours (2:52) and I thought I felt much better then, so I was figuring 3 hours, at least.

I fell in with a group of 3 other riders for much of the climb, although a few others from the 4/5 race came up to and passed...

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Sep 21, 06:55 AM by Steve | Everst Challenge Day 1

Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Comments [4]

Kim got a great picture of me “suffering” about halfway up the last climb just as it pitched up to about 10%…

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Aug 23, 07:33 PM by Steve | Lemonade

Posted in Cycling & Race-Report | Comments [10]

When life, or in my case today, the racing officials give you lemons, make lemonade. I had driven up with a friend Bill with the hopes of racing with him. I also had some other friends in the race. No teammates though, they were all in other categories. We lined up a few minutes early and I met a guy from bikeforum (pelikan) and some of his Roaring Mouse teammates. I noticed a few teams with good numbers: there were 4 Roaring Mousers, 4 Webcorers, and 5 or so Colavitians. Then there was me, Bill, and a few friends from UCSB.

However, none of that mattered because we were two riders over the field limit, and the official decided to split the field by bib number. Riders 241 and up, you are field B. I look over to Bill and his number is 240. What’s my number? 246. Crap. Everyone else I knew was still in the first field. They go off and all that was left were 11 of us. 11. “This is going to suck”, I thought. As it turned out, there was one guy from our field (245) that left with the first field.

Now this is a flat race. I’m a climber so I wasn’t even planning on doing it but my teammates insisted that I can’t waste my current form. Who am I to argue? I was pleasantly surprised that there was a bit of a climb. Not much, just about 200 feet in 3...

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Jul 22, 03:11 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, 05:41 PM by Steve | Rubber Side Down

Posted in Cycling & Race-Report

I 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, 02:24 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 19, 01:44 AM by Steve | Dirt

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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, 12:34 PM by Steve | The Road to Oildale

Posted in Cycling & Race-Report

The 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 20, 01:48 AM by Steve | Sea Otter Circuit Race: A Whole Lotta Suck

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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, 10:24 PM by Steve | Sea Otter Road Race: A Lesson on Attacking

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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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