my weekly race log

niiiice. (dont get hurt)

sorta convinced that 10/11 spd is scheme to ensure that you MUST replace drivetrain often.

...and then you learn that dura-ace cassettes run about $250... thank god shimano is downmarket compatible.

what is the stereotype of the "track racer"? tbqh i see a lot of fat mantises in the masters ranks. does a gut act as a type of fairing?

So my purpose is clear working this weekend's stage race. Instructed to put minimal effort into TT, focus on chasing down breaks on marked riders in tomorrow's grand prix criterium, if it's a pack finish I am responsible for getting into the leadout train, preferably third (from the end). Same expectations Sunday which is the road race which will be interesting, flat but technical, supposed to be very fast. Team riding! yet I'm slow as fokk right now! Getting stronger but ehhh... Would like to see some results at any rate.

stage races in march. california, what a country!

San Dimas and Redlands coming up yo!

Yep. I'll at least be at one of the Redlands days for sure. Also wondering if I should sign up to volunteer at the Baldy stage of Tour of CA, or if I should just pick a good spot and watch the race.

San Dimas High School football rules!

Taking my brand new track bike (Masi Coltello) up to the ADT Velodrome in Carson CA for our club's workout / orientation day. This is where the track events at the 1984 Los Angeles olympics were held, and is a 45 degree banking, indoor, wooden track. I'm very excited! After that I'll be certified to sign up for race days there. Supposedly the distance from the top of the high banking down to the floor is 2 stories. Crazy.

Saturday, got crashed out in lap 34 of a 40 lap criterium with a sketchy profile (you can only guess where I got smashed up):
http://www.topsportcycling.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/downtown-grand-prix-course-map-v3.png

Feel okay with it, the pace was pretty sickening and I wasn't doing much for the team other than "patrolling" the mid to back of the strung out field. Got reinserted in the back of the field once the fireworks started going off and just called it a day. Hey why not another DNF?

Today, in much contrast to yesterday's sun and heat, was a chilly rain. 72 miles through rolling country manure soaked roads. Mmm dairy farms. We had a plan except our sprinter couldn't make it down for the race leaving us three non-sprinters to contend with a 80+ field of high octane muscleheads. Three of the steeper rollers came about 5miles in from the finish so my plan was to lead our strongest rider as close to the finish as I could from as far out as possible. I went through a bit of a suffer around mile 60 so it was odd a few miles later to get some life back into the legs and lungs. I took the front on the rollers (three sets of 40 second "stairs" if you will) and then hammered the descent with my dude on my wheel. I went straight into TT position telling him to tell me to ease up if it got too intense. I kept it around 27-28mph until 2km to go and then I took it to 28mph-29mph up the last false flat to the finish. I blew up with 300m to go and my teammate peeled around me and hung on for dear life as the sprinters came through. He took 8th (I went from first wheel to 41st wheel in a matter of 300m! lol) and we were modestly pleased considering we had very little options. It was my first time leading anyone out other than myself and I was stoked! Team racing is pretty dope imo.

Have my first multi-day event, the Tour of Murrietta omnium, coming up this weekend. It starts off with a 6.5km TT on friday, 2.5k of which is a 2% climb on an unpaved road. I'm actually happy about that, as it makes me not feel as bad for not having a TT bike. Saturday is a standard downtown crit and Sunday is a circuit race. I can't wait to see where I measure up.

video recon of the TT Course:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B4VyJBGGTw

I'm in! Just received the start list and I'll be doing my first 'proper' road race (i.e. on the open road, not a closed circuit) in just over a fortnight's time. Just under 50 miles, nearly twice as far as any race I've done before. The (ten-mile) circuit passes within about 100 yards of the house where I grew up. I'm equally massively excited and terrified.

TT complete. I passed 2 people (riders were sent off at 30 second gaps ), almost washed my front wheel out around some of the dirt turns. The finish line was about 500M earlier than I expected so I finished with more in the tank than I'd have liked. I had to leave before results were posted but a teammate stuck around and said we all got in the top ten, so I hope I'm up there. One of our cat5's posted the top time, and its even faster than any of the 4s or 3s. Dude has won 3 races this year already, though.

Stage 2 of the Omnium, a 30 min crit, complete. Course was 6 corners (turn 4 a right, the rest lefts) around a downtown-ish course. Slight downhill on the back section (with all the turns) and uphill on the long finishing straight. Our goal was to keep our guy who got first in the TT out of trouble and deliver him to the end. The field was VERY nervous and very slow. I got frustrated with all the bad cornering and bunching up and moved to the front to pick up the pace through laps 7-10. Some people were shed off but everybody else was smarter than me and as soon a I pulled off the pace went right back down to turtle-like. On the final lap the pace picked up a tiny bit but the cornering got even more scary, I haired out and let myself get boxed out through all the turns on the back side and came around the final corner in something like 30th place. Passed enough people on the finishing straight to get back up to 15th or something. In the points for the omnium but who cares. Our #1 TT guy easily won the crit and has a wide lead over the rest of the field going into tomorrow's 35 mile circuit race. I'm pretty dissapointed with how I handled the race, as I easily had the fitness to be at the top of the field, and I'm big enough that I should have done more bossing-around rather than being bossed around, but somehow I got the fear in me and couldn't get over it. The other crits I've done have been nearly as sketchy and I felt a lot more comfortable/reckless in them and finished much better.

Well here's looking forward to tomorrow's RR. Racing.

How do I do crit racing?

Pittsburgh Downtown crit is coming up and I figured I would be worth a shot at not coming dead last. 30mins on a 0.8mile rectangle downtown. Not deal flat as it runs over two bridges, but close enough.

Any tips?

Ed - what are you like at cornering at high speed in a bunch? That's probably the single biggest thing to get the hang of. You can be as fit as fuck, but if you haven't got the technique it won't count for anything in a crit (assuming this really is a rectangular course).

My first race of the season this morning. A 25-mile time trial on a course I've ridden several times before. My PB for the course is 1:06:19, set last September, and my time in the same event this time last year was 1:09:32. I was supposed to be doing it as a two-up. My partner was the same guy I was supposed to do a two-up with back in June (but he dropped out at the last minute because his wife was ill) - he showed up today because he was determined not to let me down again, but admitted he'd had a chest infection for a month. While we were warming up it was clear he was still really ill - he had to stop at the side of the road and hack his guts up - so I told him there was no point him starting and he should go home to bed. So I did it solo. As always, there was a wind from the north, which meant I was assisted up to the turn and hampered on the way back.
http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r299/crunchydog_2006/leavalley25_13march11.jpg
You can see this clearly in the graph - never below 22mph on the outbound section, and almost never above it on the return, while my average speed slid steadily down from 27mph to 22mph. I finished with 1:07:42, which I'm happy enough with - I'm ahead of where I was this time last season, and I rode within myself today.

The young Sky pro rider Alex Dowsett was last man off in this event - apparently he said when he's not being used for real races, he'd rather do some local time trial than just go training as he gets a harder work out. I spoke to the guy who came 2nd today - he did 56.44, which is a very respectable time on such a slow course. Dowsett just ripped everything apart and set a staggering time of 49.40, smashing the course record to pieces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4vHiIAHTdg

Sunday was day 3 of the Tour of Murrieta Omnium. Cat 5 Circuit Race over a 3.5 mile long loop on flat to rolling terrain through a bunch of pastures and paddocks. Roughly rectangular, with 6 total corners, 2 rights on the long side of the course and then a right-right-left-right complex coming into the finish line. My team had people placed #'s 1 and 3 in overall points, and a guy in fifth, but in striking range of the podium. After my decent placing in day 1's time trial, I had a bad day on day 2's crit, finished outside of the points, and figured I'd be out of things, so I'd just do work for the team. Our #1 guy is strong enough to be a 2 already (his TT time would have put him 2nd place in that category) so the idea of having to 'do work' for him is kind of silly, but still, cat 5 races are for learning so there we go. From the start I was feeling well and sat on the front with another teammate who has been racing longer than I (but is lagging about getting his upgrade) and who gave me real good on-the-bike advice and calmed me down. We stayed within the top five of the field for the first couple of laps. Around lap two the kid who was sitting second on GC attempted to go up the road with two other guys, but my companion at the front jumped on their wheels while I pulled the rest of the group and picked up the pace a little bit. When the front group noticed my teammate was sitting in with them they were a little dispirited and I slowly brought the group back up to them within a half a lap. I got a head nod from my teammate in the break once they came back and a nice back-pat from our GC guy. About a lap later a different group of 4 tried the same thing and this time it was my turn to chase. I put my head down, made it up alongside at them and just looked over and they all kind of sighed and gave it up. Felt like a dick and super PRO at the same time. At that point I drifted back in the pack a few places to rest up and check things out. A few guys had fallen off the back but we were still mostly together. By lap 9 I was back up at the front with one teammate on my wheel and then the 3 guys we were trying to bring up in GC close behind. Before the final turn complex an attack went off and I jumped on. Finally we were fast enough and strung out enough to make it through all the finishing corner complex quickly, without touching brakes or any dumb cat 5 stuff like that. Two turns before the end our #1 GC guy came around our train and basically soloed away the last 500M to a huge victory. Nobody could hang with him but the fight was still on for 2nd. I was about 5th by this time and still hanging on when our GC guy who was in 3rd in overall points jumped right before the final corner and outkicked the #2 GC guy to take 2nd place on the stage and 2nd overall. Our 5th place guy finished somewhere behind me, I stayed strong enough to pass a couple of people who had also jumped around us but faded and came in 9th, which put me up to 6th overall in Ominum points. Our team finished the Omnium taking 1st, 2nd, 4th, 6th (me) and 10th and 11th out of 50 entrants. We won a cool team classification trophy, as did our 4's team (in a much closer battle with a pretty well-stocked rival team), our 3's team and our 2's team. This is for a club (San Diego Bicycle Club) that only 2 years ago had hardly any people on the development team and was considered kind of a 'old guy century riders' club. I think our women finished really well this weekend too.

Racing like that as a team was really fun, and to be able to be that organized within the race was amazing. I was really pretty dissapointed with how I had raced on Saturday, but that one day on Sunday turned it all around.

strava data of the race:

http://app.strava.com/rides/345526#

Nice work. Cat 5 racing is really amazing because you have such a disparate level of talent in the field. You'll have like elite level MTB or Tri or Runners against people who have just started physical fitness riding. Some of my hardest races were cat 5 races because you're racing against guys who will soon end up in as 1/2s but are just trying to get their 10 races in. I found the 4 races to be a much easier and consistent category.

Did another 25-mile time trial this morning. Exactly the same course as last week, and very similar conditions (i.e. tailwind on the way out, headwind on the way back - last week I got to the turn at 24mph, this week at 24.2mph). Somehow I ended up going nearly a minute slower. Not happy abou that, especially as I've got my biggest ever race next weekend. Also, possibly foolishly, I wore shorts today for the first time this year (despite the temperature not being remotely condusive to it) and tried out some warm-up oil - now, many hours and a shower later, my legs are incredibly itchy.

was in perfect position for sprint finish in crit today, some dude wiped out my rear wheel and i hit the deck hard. 4 cracked ribs and fractured right clavicle. dammit :(

oh that sucks.

sorry to hear that SLP, speedy recovery wishes.

ouch ouch ouch

You poor bugger. Take care and recover quickly.

get well soon

Hope you recover well, SLP. Did it happen at Ontario?

Naus are you in LA proper? Thinking about racing memorial day weekend.

I'm in the IE, closer to Riverside than anything else.

yes, Ontario. The final turn was a left hander, and I worked it so I was about 4 wheels back, on the inside of the turn, so I'd have room to jump to the left, as people on the right side got boxed against the curb. We all got through the turn fine, and were sprinting for the line. At 200M to go I moved from the right to the left to come around the guy in front of me, felt something hit my rear wheel from the right side, hard, and before I knew what was happening I was on the ground, disoriented. Maybe I should start trying to win from a break, rather than a sprint....

Which race Shasta? the ITT champs?

There's some crit that's over the hill from my relatives in the valley:

http://www.barrywolfegp.com/

4 corner boring industrial park crit but it says it's "So Cal's Finest Crit".

OTOH, I saw that there was a stage race in Ventura last year that is not happening this year. That really bums me out as I dig Ventura, I spent about 6 months there before moving to SF.

Also, it's a total pet peeve when race organizers call their district championships "The State Championships" (NCNCA is guilty of it as well). No, it is not a state championship.... NCNCA = NorCal/NorNevada district, SCNCA = SoCal/SoNevada district. The only state championships I know of is the North vs. South cyclocross smackdown.

I see people wearing CA state champs jerseys all the time, i guess there are doubles?

Yeah, but it's dumb imo. Either call it a district champ or have a proper state championship...

OR

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ZdOxeIWfXc

Meh. Bag of shite.

First road race on the open road. Longest race ever entered (just under 50 miles, the longest I'd ever done before was 31 miles). Highest quality field I'd ever been up against. On a 10-mile circuit which consisted entirely of roads I used to ride on when I was a teenager and which passed within 100 yards of the house I grew up in. It's fair to say I was well up for this one. I'd spent the two previous Wednesdays heading up to the course and training on it.

The clocks went forward last night and what with one thing and another I only got about four hours sleep, but that didn't have any bearing on my performance (just meant I was very tired when I got home afterwards). I was right at the back of the bunch on the start line (I'd thought there would five minutes post-briefing to warm up, so I was caught by surprise when people headed straight for the start line and got there after nearly everyone else). I'd been planning to move up through the bunch, but the pace was very high right from the off and it was more a question of holding position. I had a brief chat with a (much stonger and more experienced) clubmate when the familiar concertina effect kicked in and things slackened a bit. He said he was going to head forwards before the hill where people were likely to attack. I thought 'that sounds like a good idea'.

I worked my way past about three or four riders, but it was tricky as we were going full pelt on twisting and narrow country lanes. We went down a hill with a sharp bend at the bottom where a couple of oncoming cars had pulled to a stop and I had to ease off a bit. Immediately after that we hit the climb and I could see that a couple of riders had attacked off the front of the bunch. The pace went whoosh and I found a gap opening in front of me. The hill was followed by an annoying drag and I just couldn't close the gap. It opened to about 15 seconds and then the commissaire's car came past us and we were effectively abandoned. We hadn't even done 3 miles at this point!

I was so pissed off, but basically it was game over already. We were now on a fast section and the bunch were in full cry trying to chase down the break. I was going full gas but the gap was just steadily opening. There was a guy who was just sitting on my wheel so after a while I motioned him to come through - he did a bit of work but was clearly suffering. By about 7 miles we'd lost sight of the bunch altogether, but were chasing down another guy who'd been dropped. He gave up after one lap, but then had a change of heart and came back to us and straight past. I chased after him and caught him, but dropped the other guy. He then dropped me on the same climb I'd been dropped on before. I then spent about 7 miles chasing him as hard as I could, but only managing to keep the gap at 10 seconds the whole time - God knows why he didn't just ease off for a moment and let me work with him.

He then quit for good after two laps and I trundled back to the HQ to hand in my number and drive back to London in misery. Except I didn't, because there were a couple of other riders in the car park who had abandoned (punctures) who were talking about rejoining the race. I was pretty sure this wasn't allowed, but me and another guy rode back round the course very slowly waiting for the bunch to come along so that we could jump in behind the commissaire's car and get some training in. It turned out he'd been one of the attackers on the very first hill, but had punctured. Eventually the convoy came along and we leapt into action, going from a standing start to sprinting at 30mph to get up to the back of the cars. We followed for about 5 miles, then I lost contact again on another long drag. This time I really did call it a day.

The bunch finished the race at just over 25mph. I'd managed 23mph for the first lap and 22mph for the first two laps, but just didn't have what it takes on the climbs. I could have been better positioned coming into the first hill, but realistically I was going to go off the back on one of the climbs pretty early on.

(I did myself a very slight disservice above - having checked again it was actually 4 miles I lasted last week, not 3)

Back into action today, this time a 4th cat race at the Hillingdon circuit in west London for the first time. I like this circuit - it's about a mile long, not flat but without proper climbs (i.e. you can easily stay in the big ring the whole time) with a few tightish bends that aren't a problem because you don't hit them at such high speed as at the Hog Hill circuit (where the bends come after descents).

I finished somewhere in the middle of the bunch, I'm guessing about halfway back out of about 35 riders. As far as I know we all finished together, but there might have been one guy ahead of us on a lone break (he attacked about halfway through the race just at a moment when I was moving up on the outside, so I tried to chase him down but couldn't reach him and I don't recall him being reeled in). The average speed was 25mph, which is the fastest I've ever managed, but it didn't feel too bad: I mean, it felt like an effort, but I never felt in trouble.

My confidence was badly dented last weekend, so I needed this to get it back again. I kept telling myself in my head things to do: keep moving up when you can - if you just stay on a wheel you'll gradually move to the back; don't brake unless everyone else is - just copy the person in front and follow their line; as soon as any kind of gap opens to the wheel in front close it down immediately. The only tricky thing with moving up is you can't safely do it through the middle (well, you can, but it takes ages to find enough gaps) so you have to head out into the wind and charge up the outside - but when you get to the front you can't just muscle your way into the line so you're either left dangling to one side still in the wind, or doing a turn right at the front.

Photos:
Marking a move in one of the early laps
In the thick of it a few laps later
Sleeves up and nearer the back as the end approaches

Haven't posted in a while because my fitness was such shit and it was getting a little :-(

HOWEVER!!!!!11
About a week ago I must have been rummaging through my bike closet and actually *found my legs*. I had 2 really great back to back workouts leading into the weekend of a circuit that suits my fat-mantis lifestyle. The circuits were pretty short so I regged for 2: a 60 and 75 minute race.

The circuit was a long rolling 5.5 mile out and back but the turn-arounds were significant: the far-end was a tight/sort-sketchy u-turn at the bottom of a mild descent. The start/finish turn-around was an 8-corner "+"-sign shaped route through a downtown square that was almost like a technical crit. I had two teammates with me, all very different riders: a climber/2km TT guy, our GC guy (really strong right now) and my old, fat, slow ass. We were patient and on the hill after the u-turn with 1.5 laps to go, a group of 7 guys attacked and our GC guy was in there so my other teammate and I sat-in and looked to jump on any bridge attempts. The gap stayed around 8-10 seconds until the final lap when the 2 bigger teams that didn't have a man in the break started to get organized. My teammate and I jumped in the stretched-out paceline and when our turns came, we did some soft-pulls (22-23mph vs. 26-27mph) which was enough to get ID'd as blocking and allowed the break to stick. When it was apparent the break would stay away, I started moving up looking for the right wheels to get position on the field sprint. My sprint was pretty weak (took 5th/12th overall). Our guy got 3rd... his 4th podium of the year.

28.1 miles
24.6mph
avg pwr 287W (3s = 1155W, 1m = 538W, 10m = 362W)

Second race spelled trouble when 4 cars pulled up about an hour before the P1/2/3 race started and 10 guys from one of the stronger Bay Area teams rolled out. The punchy first lap saw 2 of the 10-man team launch an attack after going in very hot into the U-turn. There were a few bridge attacks but our P1 guy did not get in anything that stuck. I tried to launch one bridge effort for our guy (who is moving to Europe next week) but it just wasn't in the right spot, instead just a sea of green (big team) every time the race got interesting. There really was only one place to get away and it's on the hill after the U-turn and it was kinda sketchy. Our P1 was really impressive, always in the top 10 riders biding his time but there was just too much green presence. I felt bad, would have liked to send him off with a little bang. Oh well, the break of three stayed away. Kinda funny: the winner got DQ'd for a "F#CK YEAH" across the finish line but the judge eventually relegated him to 3rd. I launched a suicide attack with 2km to go that got shut down FAST... lol. I got some kudos for the bravado, but some lols at the response from the front. I guess my ass is THAT big, just too juicy to pass up that draft.

33.8 miles
25.0 mph
avg pwr 316W (3s = 1149W, 1m = 545W, 10m = 376W)

lots of watts, nice.

Back in action again today. We've been having fantastic sunny weather for the last few days. I bit the bullet and entered another 3rd & 4th cat race, so a higher quality field than last week, on a tougher circuit (Hog Hill, with its....hill) and a longer race. My track record going up against 3rd cats is rubbish, but today went better. I was able to stick in the bunch for 25 minutes and only lost contact because the guy whose wheel I was on let a gap open in front of him - by the time I realised he wasn't going to close it down it was too big for me to do anything about. The bunch fragmented a bit at this point: I ended up in a group of four, with another group of about six just ahead of us (that we never caught - they just stayed 10 seconds ahead for the rest of the race) and the bunch ahead of them very slowly easing away. Quite a few had been shelled out before me and we were constantly catching and passing people: I couldn't tell if we were lapping them or if they'd been dropped after us and then blown up. To confuse things further there was a sizeable women's race taking place simultaneously (they set them off maybe 30 seconds after us) - we lapped them fairly early on, and then they split into several groups so we would work for a while to chase down a group only to discover as they came within reach that it was another set of women who weren't in our race.

My legs were cramping badly after about 40 minutes or so: I had been big-ringing the climb (which is a drag followed by about 100 metres of 1-in-8) because there was a tailwind, but by this stage I was reduced to small ring and staying in the saddle. The leaders finally passed us after one hour - there were only two laps to go at this stage so I did one more as a warm-down then watched the finish.

Photo from when I was still just about hanging in there:
http://www.londoncyclesport.com/index.php?option=com_jphoto&view=image&id=3957:img-3115001&Itemid=79
(That group in the distance is probably the women's race - there can't have been that many men dropped at that stage)

I didn't race today (still nursing broken clavicle/ribs but there was a crit in town today that my team was out in force for. We had 20 guys in the 4s field. With a lap to go a junior pulled out of his pedal and laid it down, and about ten riders hit the deck hard. Our best guy made it past and won by about ten bike length in the Sprint. This guy has won every race he's entered but one this year, and he was third in that one.

Anyway, all this crashing kind of has me a little down. That is not why we race. That dumb pain just has no reason. And still all I want to do is ride and race. So emo.

today was "mead-roubaix," a new course forced by relocation of boulder-roubaix. there was concern about the section of dirt road at the bottom of a big hill. wanna see why? scroll the next 20 pics or so:

http://303photo.smugmug.com/2011-road-bike/Mead-Roubaix/afternoon-waves/16552246_LG7nV#1246977704_y2RkL

apparently, this happened in cat after cat, and got worse as the sectioned softened throughout the day.

Ugh, found out that one of my teammates that crashed yesterday cracked his pelvis. Fuck.

thats really terrible, a horrible aspect of the hobby.

i got asked to race a team tt this weekend- i registered as individual already. don't know these guys, no idea the ability/experience. my own experience is only one team tt, while well-trained, on a more familiar bike. i really don't need a cracked pelvis.

NB&S, I have a friend who is racing the Hog Hill in 3rd/4th categories of late... keep your eyes (ears?) out for a Yank.

I think he's racing for Cambridge... (White/red kit?)

Will keep my eyes/ears out. A quick scan of the results shows there was a guy called F3l1x B4rk3er riding for Cambridge in my last race.

the man changed the forecast for my first race tomorrow to rain/snow and 40 deg. FUCK that, aint racin in any bullshit. ~the joy of age and not really givin a fuck~