my weekly race log

Woo-hoo! Due to my foolishly quick start yesterday I'm right at the front in the first photo that they took of the race yesterday. Fame at last!

http://www.cycleweb.co.uk/newsite/gallery.htm
(San Fairy Ann Spring Crits 2 09 seniors)

http://www.cycleweb.co.uk/newsite/albums/sffa092y/IMG_9066001.sized.jpg

loooool

wanna see him shoulder that (tho it looks like hes got road shoes going there)

i mostly want to race CX and track, but would def like to try a road race sometime.

the problem with cx is that the fastest guy almost always wins. same with xc.

start racing then, gbx. don't worry about a team yet! track is not a team sport anyway.

I got savage cramp in my right calf that just wouldn't go.... I'm hobbling around now. Hopefully this is just a short term effect.

Still limping around now more than three days later. I must have actually strained it. I can't see myself riding at all for a couple of weeks at least and I don't think I'll be racing again for quite a while :-(

Bad cramp hurts a fair bit for days, but you'll be fine soon, I promise. Quicker than you expect.

Hope so. How are your ribs coming along?

Not bad - every day they're improving. Today is going to be my first day without pain relief - feeling pretty fine so far. Thinking of cycling to work (gingerly and slowly) tomorrow.

Funnily enough I woke in the middle of the night with a fierce cramp in my thigh - wonder if that's going to hurt for a while?

raced a crit. no moves were getting away. sat up for the field sprint, no thanks.

fun though, and a great workout.

my first big road race is saturday--
http://tourofthebattenkill.com/

my team is a favorite for the cat 3 race, one of the three of us can definitely get on the podium, i think

that website hurts my eyes

just dug up the minnesota racing calendar, btw

think i might enter.....a crit??

wait, is this on unibet?

kill em.

what is unibet? floyd landis is racing the tour of the battenkill!

gbx, did you buy a license?

figured i'd just get a one-day? i mean, i doubt i'll do more than one or two

k. not all races do one-days so be sure to check. and be careful. a cat 5 crit is not where i would have my first bike race.

h'mmmm....road race, maybe? i think there are like a bazillion more crits than there are day races, tho? also a lot of TTs, now that i look

also thinking i'll have to get this, huh: http://unattachedrider.com/current.htm

you are in illinois, correct?

http://www.bikereg.com/events/?et=1&rg=4

nope! i'm up in minnesota now, for med school.

should be plenty of road races in minnesota broski

i will look~~

wow there are none

http://www.bikereg.com/events/Default.asp?et=1&rg=MN&ns=&ne=15&btnGo.x=9&btnGo.y=19

http://mcf.net/calendar/

there's a handful of RRs, but it's like all crits all summer

Twenty years ago this exact weekend, aged 15, I did my first ever time trial, 10 miles in 29.00 on a 'dragstrip' course (i.e. on a flat, straight dual carriageway with cars and juggernauts thundering past at 70mph or more and nightmarish dangerous sliproads joining from the left). A week later I did another, this time on a 'sporting' course (i.e. on relatively minor twisting and undulating roads without much traffic) and got a 29.49. I know this because fortunateley I kept a race diary. By the end of the 1989 season I'd got my PB down to 28.00 and by the end of the 1990 season it was 27.15. Then I gave up for half my life.

Today was the first time trial of my belated comeback, by freakish coincidence on the same sporting course where I did my second ever time trial, and I managed a 29.00, by another freakish coincidence the exact same time I got 20 years ago on the dragstrip. I'm pretty pleased with that (although, obviously, I was at the wrong end of the results board - I think I managed to beat five people out of about forty-five). There was a headwind for the first 5.5 miles and I thought I was going to fail to get under 30 mins (which was my target), but then I was able to hammer it on the return. My target for the season is to try to get back up to the standard of my old PB, but that will be tricky as I'm going to restrict myself to sporting courses (as I think it's a bit mental to ride on roads which are virtually motorways).

One crucial difference between 1989 and 2009: every other competitor had tri-bars (apart from me) and most of them had low-profile bikes with disc wheels and aero helmets and stuff. I just had my normal road bike. Maybe I should get some tri-bars? I've never ridden with any, so I don't know what it's like. I certainly won't be bothering with the other stuff (partly because I'm much more interested in road racing than time trailing, but mostly because I don't have thousands of pounds to fritter away on such things). I was also the only rider without shaved legs, but that's a whole other issue.

Oh, and I had the humiliating experience of being caught and instantly passed and quickly left behind by my minute-man after just 1.5 miles (he eventually finished third in just under 23 mins).

CUTTY

HEY CUTTY

hey!

so my team won the cat 3 race. teammate kyl3 p3pp0 got 1st and I was right behind him in 5th. the race was brutal, kind of like a paris-roubaix. no cobbles, but a significant portion of the race was packed dirt, gravel, rocks, raging downhills and general craziness. our 3rd teammate in the field crashed pretty bad and ended up with a concussion (helmet cracked) in the hospital.

here's the course profile:

http://i44.tinypic.com/2dlqf11.png

i really started drilling it at the halfway point, 40 miles in, with a rider i know to be strong and capable of working pretty hard. we totally broke the field apart and the chase was on for us. i almost went off the road on a dirt descent at one point and totally fell off my bike at another. didn't lose any momentum and chased back on. i was feeling 100%.

around the 50 mile point i looked behind me and my teammate had caught up to us, leaving 7 of us in the lead group. we stayed away for the rest of the race. my teammate is definitely the better sprinter and i decided i would not contest the sprint to ensure we would win--i offered up the lead out to him. but the finish was confusing (we should have checked it out before hand) and it came sooner than we expected. 3 guys surged and my teammate came up on the left and passed them all at the line.

it was totally fucking PRO, my fist in the air in 5th place while my teammate wins. no other team had 2 guys in the break, we were the favorites, totally marked, and we still won the race.

we had stayed upstate the night before at another teammate's place. i texted him yesterday morning "wake up we have a race to win" and then we did exactly that.

it's moments like these where all the training is worth it. my team is awesome and we've already won 3 races in 2009. very psyched for this season. i'll post vanity pics if i get any!

also with yesterday's 5th place i am five upgrade points away from my cat 2 upgrade

excellent

awesome!!!

that's great. I was kind of excited just reading that

nice!

wait, what's the deal with cat3 "green" and "blue"?

they split the cat 3 and 4 fields into two separate fields because the race was so in demand. it's probably better though, because a 200 person field would have been a total clusterfuck.

that's great. I was kind of excited just reading that

OTM. Sounds amazing!

my team's website is live, check it!

http://www.jonathanadlerracing.com

here's someone else's race report from the same race:

http://blue-mondays.blogspot.com/2009/04/little-more-battenkill.html

This is a series of three dirt rollers. Taken individually, none of these would be much of a challenge, but the combination of the three of them proved tough to handle. Matt Cutler, of Adler, came to he front and put the hammer down. I jumped on his wheel with a few others following along. I pulled through a few times, but Cutler definitely did most of the work, dropping nearly everybody left in the field.

braggin!

hey, i didn't write it!

Cutty, your team website is pretty great! Also, tell me more about this Laurel girl.

she dates another teammate, you letch! ;)

Haha! Do you all take it in turns to ride behind her in a chain gang? (Yes I am being horribly sexist but I bet you do)

what are you implying sir?

http://bicycling.com/blogs/alloverthemap/2009/04/20/in-the-eye-of-the-battenkill/