Jamie's Cycling Blog

2008-02-29T14:07:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow

I get to find out exactly how out of shape I am

I get to regret not being able to ride all week in the sun, but enjoy riding in the rain

I get to race for the first time with my new team

And last but certainly not least I get to drown my sorrows in cold beer and cured meats.

2007-11-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

Rise of the Machines?

I'm not making this up, the UK in the process of upgrading their military satellites with £3.6bn project called "Skynet."

I for one, am not looking forward to being shot by some self aware robot. Thanks a lot UK. You were already in the doghouse for warm beer, Cockney accents, and the extra "i" you ruin the word aluminum with, but bringing about the extermination of the human race at the hands of hordes of evil robots with glowing red eyes is just plain mean.

2007-11-07T08:36:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: I actually wrote this on the flight home from LA, but haven’t gotten around to posting it until now because I’m a worthless sack of flesh.

Not only have I not updated my blog in ages but it has been forever since I did an installment of “by the numbers.” Both errors that I intend to correct now.

National Track Championships by the Numbers.

Number of Marymoor representatives: 9
Number of medals won: One (bronze)
Seconds away from silver: <1
Percentage of pros on the gold and silver squads: 100
Percentage of pros on our team pursuit squad: 25
Percentage of pros that got dropped in our team pursuit: 100
Number of hours spent in horrendous pain from food poisoning: ~12
Months until I will want to eat sushi again: undefined
Number of times I crashed in the Madison: 1
Number of laps completed before crashing: 0.25
Ratio of my speed:traction speed through banking while crashing: <1
% of last year’s Madison championship team that I took out: 50
Level of chagrin on scale of 1-10: 13

Enough by the numbers. How about a little game I like to call highlight lowlight

Highlight: Getting to race on the only indoor track in the states. It’s smooth, it’s wood, it’s beautiful, it’s an amazing track.
Lowlight: It’s in LA. I officially hate LA. Within our first 24 hours in LA we noticed the following. Numerous (lost count) ads for “breast augs” and other plastic surgery on the radio, the ability to drive for two hours in search of food and find nothing but 24 hour Donuts, $0.99 stores, nasty tacos, and fast food hamburgers. Finally we found an Asian restaurant of some indeterminate variety and when as we were going in the following conversation took place.

Guy standing outside putting on makeup (GSOPOM): You’re here for….

Me: …Food?

(GSOPOM): …The movie

Me: No…just food

(GSOPOM): We’re shooting a movie, would you like to be in the movie?

Me: We don’t want to be in a movie we want food (it’s9:30 at this point and Wes and I are very hungry)

(GSOPOM): You don’t want to be in a movie (look of total lack of understanding shining through layers of foundation and highlights)

Me: (backs away slowly and ends up having a cheeseburger at In N Out.

Ok, no more highlight lowlight, how about highlight, high-ER light
Highlight: Track racing is over and Wes, Jen, Kenny, and Heidi and I are all out getting drunk on cheap beer, foosball, Pacman, and flip cup with a bunch of college kids.
High-ER light: Drunk Kenny drunk dialing Friedman. It went a little something like this

Drunk Kenny (DK): MIKE! How you doin?

Man I Krashed Earlier (MIKE): mmm….mm.m….mmm (I can’t actually hear what he says)

DK: You’re in bed?!? Are you touching yourself? Stop touching yourself, get out here and drink

MIKE: … long pause …

DK: …Mike…you there?

MIKE: mmmm….mmmmm….mmmmm…..

DK: Yeah, my madison partner says he’s sorry that he crashed you out.

That's it for now, maybe I'll update this again before 6 months go by.

2007-06-21T08:30:00.000-07:00

The quick update, I am in Minneapolis racing with Kelley Benefit Strategies/Medifast. How I ended up here is a bit convoluted, so I'm just not going to say that it all worked out well.

**Wednesday Evening, June 20th**

It's just after the first stage and we're back in the loft drinking high life listening to the latest album by the Blue Scholars, waiting our respective turn to take a shower in the European style bathtub. You know the kind...the one that is 3 feet long by two feet wide and you have to bathe yourself while sitting cross legged Indian style. The topic of conversation moves quickly away from racing and towards...fake breasts. I'm not entirely certain how we got here, but it may have something to do with the fact that two doors down from our loft is "Sinners" and just beyond that lies "Sex World." Regardless, our soigneur Larry offers Johnny 10 million dollars if he will get a set of implants for a year, one B cup, and one DD. This is of course contingent upon Larry winning the Powerball, but slight details like that are ignored. Those who don't have to race tomorrow (and Johnny) are on the way out to the bars, and I am hitting the sack.

**Thursday morning**

My results for the first stage were far from impressive. I'm not happy with them, but I'm not unhappy either. I was middle of the pack for most all of the race. I had a brief bit of excitement when 20 minutes into the race I came down on my saddle hard tilting the nose down at a ~45 degree angle. I had to ride that way for 15 minutes until I got stuck behind a crash and was able to stop by the pit and get it fixed. I spent the rest of the race similarly middle to trailing edge of the pack until about 5 to go when there was a crash in front of me that split the front group off. I'm guessing I finished about 30 seconds down, but can't say for certain. Considering crits aren't my strongest discipline and this one had some turns described as "barely legal" I'm OK with how it turned out. I'm just glad that it didn't rain. It was threatening throughout, and we had plenty of crashes even though it was bone dry.

Today is the first road race. It's known for brutal cross winds that shatter the field. Last year it blew up 8 miles in and never came back together. I'm going to try to get up front and do what I can to get my wind blocking butt in a favorable position for my teammates. I'll let you know how it goes.

2007-06-12T14:13:00.001-07:00

As Andrew pointed out it is the one year anniversary of my blog's coma. Seems like as good a day as any to update the tired thing. I'm not sure anyone even checks anymore, but given that I'm currently struggling not to scream at the "all representatives are currently busy voice" that I've heard ~ 15 times thus far, I haven't got much better to do. I'm in the middle of canceling my non-refundable ticket to Nature Valley after that plan completely collapsed. Bummer, but shit happens. On the bright side my ticket was non-refundable and now I'll get to be in town for the meeting on the 20th that I was eager to be absent for.

YAAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!

What's new...I'm worthless at updating my blog, my end of April slump showed up despite best efforts and intentions (as evidenced by lackluster performances at Walla Walla, longbranch, and Enumclaw), but on the bright side, Paris Hilton is in jail (I wish that I could say that I was ignoring it completely, but I'm not-so-secretly enjoying it).

I didn't race Ballard because I'm a big fat rain weeny when it comes to crits. Instead I sat on the sidelines, drank beer, and heckled people. Actually the only person that I really heckled was Harry, one of our cat threes, but it was fun. The weekend before was Ravensdale and we had what I'm convinced has been Wines' best team performance since I joined. It was the 9th race in the 10 race series that is the Washington Cup. Since I was in the leaders jersey and Tubbs was in second there was very little chance that HB would let a break with me get anywhere so I mostly sat in for the race while my teammates covered the breaks (normally my job to try and make the break). An early move went with Campbell, Hone, and Ian Mensher. It seemed like a long way to go for only three guys so I wasn't too worried. They came back not too far into the race. The next notable move was started by Nathan (have fun on the East Coast, deserter) Schneipp bridged up to him, then a couple more groups bridged up with Andrew sitting on one of them. Soon there was a group of 8 up the road with two BRI, two Garage, two HB, and Two Wines guys. With no one putting in a concerted chase effort the gap continued to grow until the finish. Andrew won from the break and Jason took third. Ian Mensher (who was in the first break as well) took second after spending pretty much the entire race off the front. I took the field sprint for 8th and clinched the Washington Cup (by my calculations...I don't have official word, but I think that I have more than 100 points on 2nd with one race to go).

I was really glad to see Andrew get his first win, Tubbs called Andrew as the winner with one lap to go when we were talking about who was in the break. Too bad he couldn't zip up his Jersey for Amara.

I like the course out there but if you are paying $30 per person for a race then I would expect more than $60 and a piece of donated Microsoft software for first place. Joe Holmes charges $30 for Blackberry but hands out $5,000 for the pro 1/2's at Blackberry. None of us are doing it for the money, but that's just getting a bit silly. Heck I won $60 at the track the other day, it was $15 entry, and I didn't even win (I'm not particularly good at the track just yet...working on it though). Done with my mini-rant.

Well I'm done with the Northwest Airlines refund hotline, and as I suspected, no refund for my ticket just credit towards a future ticket purchase minus a $50-$100 gouging...oops, I mean service charge.

Just got another call as I was typing that sentance, it looks like while the original plans fell through, I might be guest riding with Priority Health. I don't know what is going on, I'm dizzy. I'll post again when I figure out wtf I am doing.

2007-04-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

I raced like butt this weekend. Not only did I race like butt, but I raced like dumb-ass, sub-normal donkey butt. Racing poorly is one thing but making stupid errors, that just aint right. Saturday was TST and I was the entire WOW contingent. I didn't make it with the lead group of 12 or so over the KOM hill, but they weren't too far ahead. Over the next hill and the rollers that followed I was chasing or attacking with some help chasing from Galen. Everyone else had a man up in the break so was sitting. Finally I managed to attack up the side and get off without towing the entire pack of ~25 riders behind me, and I bridged up to the lead group of 12. That was no easy task as two riders had attacked from that group so they were trying to get away and the remaining 10 were chasing. The fact that I managed to bridge up to the lead group is nice and all but here is where my sub-normal donkey IQ came into play. I thought that we were on the part of the race where it was mostly rollers and descent to the finish, but about 10 meters after I caught the lead pack we turned and headed up Dewatto (sp?), the final climb. I had completely biffed my location on the course and as soon as I saw that hill I knew my race was over. I had dug a pretty big hole for myself bridging up to the lead group and had nothing left to get up the hill. The lead group walked away, then the pack behind caught me and rolled right on through.

D'oh!

Sunday was the Seward Spring opener (crit). Early on my legs were a little heavy, but I made a couple moves, followed a few more, but nothing that developed. Halfway through the race I saw Chad Nichols getting ready to attack up the hill so I jumped on his wheel and we went flying up the hill. Coming around the hairpin at the top of the hill I started pedaling too soon and clipped a pedal. I'm not 100% certain what went down after that (other than me that is). I skitched and it felt like I was going to hold it up for a split second but then no way, I was down. Next thing I know, I'm on the ground and someone is rolling over the top of me (Joe Holmes I believe). I get up and my tire has rolled off of the rim, and though I didn't notice it until after the race, I had cracked the rim in two places as well. Completely my fault and completely avoidable. Many apologies to Joe for attempting to break his elbow for a third time. I heard someone say that he was well but I didn't hear it from his mouth. Hope that it's true.

Walla Walla will be better next weekend, but it will have to be better without a rear race wheel.

2007-04-09T08:57:00.001-07:00

Tell me why...
I don't like Mondays. Actually on second thought, I'll tell you. I didn't get to race this weekend because I promised I wouldn't race Boat Street if it rained. Now I'm all pissed off that I made that promise because I HATE NOT RACING!!!

In addition to being mad at myself for not racing, I can't find my ipod so I have no music on my commute, the first two busses that went by this morning had full bike racks, so I had to wait, when I finally did get to work I realized I forgot to pack a shirt, it's going to be a bitch of a head wind on the way home, and the work is piling up about 10 times faster than it is getting done.

Fortunately I do keep a spare shirt in my locker just in case I forget to bring one in (like I did today), unfortunately it is the free 787 Hawaiian shirt that the company gave out to a bunch of people. It's somewhat hideous and absurdly huge. I know that I'm fat for a bike racer, but fat for a bike racer is emaciated for a desk-jockey engineer, and these shirts are sized for desk-jockeys. It's like a damn moo-moo.

I don't like moo-moos, and even if I did like wearing them, I would expect to have some kind of beverage that has lots of alcohol, big chunks of fruit and a little umbrella while I was wearing them.

Stay tuned for an announcement on my birthday party later this month. You're invited.

2007-04-02T17:03:00.001-07:00

This weekend can be summed up by saying I had decent results in somewhat dull races.

Saturday was the North Shore Circuit race put on by Western. There weren't many people interested in getting up in time for an 8:00 AM start, so we were left with a field of 30-ish starters. The course was an 8 mile loop with a decent sized uphill on the front side, and one on the back. On the first lap we were neutral up the front side, but on the backside hill Tom Peterson, Nathan Smith and Lang Reynolds attacked. They built a gap that looked to be growing so when we came back to the hill on the front side I bridged up. Saying "I bridged up" is a lot easier than the actual bridging, then when I got up there I looked around and noticed that each of them was probably 50-55 pounds lighter than me. That was my first indication that it wasn't going to be a fun day for me. A couple of laps later Lang flatted. We started to wait for him because we had a follow car but the follow car quickly cam zooming up to us with no Lang in tow and informed us that they had no wheels with them. Ooops.

Apparently the pack never really mounted a chase effort because the three of us proceeded to put about a minute/lap into the field. At the base of the backside climb, halfway through lap six our follow car zoomed up to tell us that we had six to six and a half minutes on the pack when Peterson attacked. I had been on the front and just pulling off so it hurt a lot to accelerate up to him on the climb. I caught him and Nathan just over the crest and sat in for most of the descent. I knew that the skinny kids were going to keep picking on fatty and figured I may as well sit in and last as long as I could. Nathan attacked near the bottom of the front side hill and Tom let him go. I say "Tom let him go" because he had a choice in the matter, me...not-so-much. Besides Tom knew what I knew which was that he could wait for Nathan to build up a gap then drop me on the climb and bridge up to Nathan and that's exactly what happened. At this point I had 6 and a half minutes on the field a power meter and two laps to go. I figured stick it at threshold and I should be able to TT into the finish just fine. I did that for half a lap when the follow car dropped back to me at the base of the backside climb and told me that they had shortened the race by a lap so I had half a lap to go instead of a lap and a half. I was in no position to complain. I had seen that Tom dropped Nathan on the backside climb but was too far back to put up any kind of chase with half a lap and both climbs to go. I took the remainder pretty easy figuring I wasn't going to catch Nathan or Tom and the pack wasn't going to catch me. That's how it turned out, Peterson 1st, Nathan 2nd, and me 3rd. Lang obviously managed to get a wheel and chase back on because he finished fourth with Michael Murdin right on his heels for fifth. The two of them had a good gap on the field sprint which got bungled courtesy of the race promoter who pulled his car into the final 200 meters not 15 seconds before the field sprint. Glad to see that college education in action. Everyone managed to sprint around it no harm done, but still.

Second most entertaining moment of the day (the first being the above mentioned race promoter field sprint debacle) was when the 4/5's came around after the first lap and one of them repeatedly yells "I need a Heed Bottle, I NEED A HEED BOTTLE."

How exactly do you need a feed in a 40 mile race and expect to get it in the section where everyone is going 35 mph downhill?

No matter.

Sunday was the third and final in the Tour de Dung series. I went into it with the series lead and I wanted to leave with the series lead. Early on Peterson attacks and dangles for a bit waiting for someone to bridge up. Tubbs actually came up to me and said what do you say we just let him go? I said, "fine by me." So my guys didn't chase, his guys didn't chase, nobody chased. We went really slow. It was pretty boring. It would have been more interesting with more teams, but we had minimal numbers from Axley and First Rate, no one from Garage (they had to run the race and were short on volunteers), Zoka, or The Valley, and less Hagens Berman guys than I'm used to seeing. Of the ones that did show up, there were three guys that I wasn't going to let get up the road without me (Jake McArthur, Lang Reynolds, and Ian Tubbs), and they weren't going to let me get up the road without them. I tried several times, they tried several times, but for the most part we just plodded along. There were a fair number of attacks from individuals that weren't a threat to the overall, and Lang in particular did a lot of chasing in the last lap or so to bring them back (where's the Axley support for Mr. Boots?). In the end Peterson won by something absurd (15 minutes plus or minus) John O'donnell went off the front for second and Higgy off the front for third. I took the field sprint for fourth on the day and first place in the overall.

Earlier in the day our Morgan on or Cat 4 women's team took their race, my race bike from last year won the cat 4/5 race (I suppose that Geoff Casey did a pretty good job riding it...) and Suz Weldon won the women's 1/2/3 race.

2007-03-30T08:37:00.001-07:00

SWEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!!!!

That was for Martha.

2007-03-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

Here is the short version:

Saturday
YAY!

Sunday
Ouch...

Before I get into the details, lets go over the stupid shit that I managed to do this weekend.

Back to back 60 mile breakaways
Celebrating Saturdays win by going to the sketchiest bar in the area
Taking a bottle with me on Sunday that had been mixed a week and a half ago and had grown sea monkeys
Drinking said bottle
Getting all excited about my new PT SL hub that I had laced into my Zipp and then installing a harness that doesn't work

Saturday was pretty miserable weather, but being a big fatass horrible weather tends to be comparatively good to me, so I can't complain. The course was four laps with one decent size hill and one about half that. After the neutral rollout we went into the false flat through the finish and up the first hill. Lang Reynolds set a strong tempo up it but there weren't any attacks until we hit the rolling flats down the backside of the climb. There they started launching fairly regularly, but a group of four with Kyle Valenta (CMG in Oregon) Mick Walsh, Rich McClung, and Shawn Ongers (I think) made it off somewhere on the back stretch. Nothing too exciting happened over the smaller hill, and we finished up the first lap with The Garage doing some good chasing. Coming into the false flat a little over a K to the start of the second lap the pack slowed down with Andy Luhn hanging off the front. I jumped up to him and we started rotating through. Going through the finish line the officials said the break had 40 seconds on us.

As I came around the corner at the bottom of this picture I thought I saw the last wheel going around the corner they are on now. So when I got to the hill I drilled it.

It would have been nice to see how many watts it takes to push that belly up the hill, but like I said, I had installed a harness that didn't work. Speaking of that belly, Hey Pruitt, can I reserve a LARGE jersey for next time? I got a medium at Market Street, and all that was left at independence valley was a small. As Andrew would say "It jiggles." You should have seen Pat Stanko's face on the ferry ride home after Sequim when I demonstrated my girth by busting the stomach out. It was equal parts abject terror and unequivocal glee. I didn't know such a combination was
possible, but he managed to pull it off.

I lumbered to the top of the hill and caught the break just over the crest (they held up at the top when it became obvious I was going to make it). The five of us started working together but we lost Shawn in the rollers on the backside of the course. Coming into the second Hill Mick was looking pretty gassed and had been sitting on for a couple of miles, he popped off on the climb. I would say that I hate to see Mick get flicked, but then I remember what he did to me in Wenatchee last year and I stop feeling bad. The rest of the day Kyle, Rich and I worked together and for the most part stayed out of sight of the pack. There was one wide open stretch of farmland on the backside where we could see the lights of the peloton behind us before we ducked back into the trees, but that was the only section where I saw chasers. The only notable event was when we passed a guy walking four of his dogs and they tried to eat Rich. He was sitting in third at the time and they gave us all a good little scare. Kyle and I managed to roll through it without slowing down much, but Rich got a little stuck. He made it out unscathed and we were waiting safely up the road for him. On the last lap with maybe two miles to go Rich curses a little and says he's got a flat. We didn't have a follow car so he had no chance of getting a wheel change which really sucked because he definitely deserved a sprint finish for all the work he had put in. Instead he just rolled in the last two miles on the rim and still managed to stay ahead of the chasers. What a beast.

Kyle and I rolled into the last couple of K at a pretty easy pace without any messing about or cat and mouse until a K to go. There we kept it fairly even or a little staggered until the 200 meter sign (which looked a lot more like 120 meters, but whatever). I jumped maybe 20 meters after the 200 to go and came across in first.
Yay.

In the women's race Tricia Bailey and Sirikit Valentin came in first and third respectively, and Todd Bandy won the Masters A/B race. Go Wines of Washington.
It was particularly special for me to win a race that supports the Multiple Sclerosis Society given that both my mom and my aunt have MS. So many thanks to Group Health and Erik Anderson for putting on a great race that supports a great cause.

That night it was off to Leny's Tavern where my friend Mike was celebrating his birthday with 30 or 40 of his closest buddies. Truly impressive/frightening statistic of the night. They put in a thirteen hour shift and closed the bar down. There was some big time intoxication going down. I managed to get away with only 3 beers and a shot of tequila which, believe me, is getting away easy with this group.

Sunday was Tour de Dung number 2 and after one lap I was once again was in a break with 60 miles to go. It started off with three Hagens Berman riders, Rob Campbell, Nathan, Higgie, and myself. For the first lap or two Campbell was doing the Campbell in a break thing. I would explain what that is, but if you've been in a break with him before you already know, and if you haven't...well I'd hate to ruin the surprise. Two of the HB boys flatted out leaving Pat Stanko as the sole HB representative in the break and Nathan broke a spoke. Why he broke a spoke I can't imagine, I thought heavyweights were supposed to break spokes, not the lightweights. You been eating too many Krispy Kremes Nathan? After that we were done with the stupid mechanicals, I wish they hadn't happened, but that's how it goes I suppose. We had as much as 2:30 on the field and as little as 1:00 with two to go, but we managed to almost stay away the whole day.

I say almost because with 3 or 4 k to go a group of three including Kenny, Lang, and a guy named Jake McArthur who I don't know but who is now sitting second in the Tour de Dung standings, bridged across to us. As soon as they caught us Kenny and Rob started barking at each other while Lang kept on rolling and turned it into an attack. With Rob and Kenny just sitting on the back we stopped chasing and Lang opened up a gap. Finally they agreed to pull through and with one rotation we brought it down to a gap of maybe 50 meters. Then they stopped pulling through again. This is where sprinters completely baffle me. Both of them have engines plenty big enough to have pulled through one more time and had they done so, I'm certain we would have caught Lang, but they would rather stare at each other and watch first place roll away. As someone who is far more likely to win in a break than in a field sprint I guess I can only say cheers to that, and good move Lang.
The three that bridged took first through third while I trickled in for fourth. It was extra painfull. I had been done with 2 laps to go REALLY done with one to go and completly fried with 200 meters to go. Ugggh.

All around a good weekend.

2007-03-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

Ack, work is crazy, no time for a full report so y'all get stuck with the dinky version this week. Mason on Saturday was wet and poorly attended. There was an unrealized attempt to make it "Work for Mick" (St Paddie's) day, but no one told Mick and he dropped back to pace one of his teammates back onto the pack. So we never really put the plan into action. Sorry OAD, but the thought was there. I was all kinds of disaster that race, I forgot food, one of my bottles, and my shoes. I had to borrow shoes and cleats from Michael Klisch (One of our Cat 3's with big feet), and a pedal wrench and 8mm hex wrench from Amara's dad because of course the Dura Ace pedals I normally use won't accept a pedal wrench, and the Campy ones that I borrowed won't accept a hex wrench. Can't we all just get along?

The Michael squared break got away pretty early (Emde & Murdin) and stayed out for almost the whole race. I flatted just before the last lap and called it a day. Then I went to my little sister's 14th birthday party and watched her and her friends try to tie maraschino cherry stems into knots with their tongues. My dad, my step mom and I made quick work of a couple bottles of wine.

Sunday: Market street/Ravensdale. Round three of the Washington cup. I like the course though I would have liked it more dry. There were a few good moves through the race but nothing that stuck.

There was a bit of entertainment between The Axley and HB squads when Pruitt was off the front with Higgins. Not certain what was going on but it looked like one of the HB guys was getting mad at one of the Axley boys cause they were disrupting HB's chase effort. I didn't hear the entire encounter but I saw HB grab onto Axley's jersey, force him to the left and then he stopped pedaling so that Axley was in effect pushing him up the hill that we were on. I didn't hear or see the whole encounter, I just moved to the right in case they decided to literally throw down.

I attacked halfway through the last lap but got caught just at the 1k to go sign. I think it might have ended up different of I had had someone else with me, but who knows. I know that the pack was working hard to catch me so I suppose that's a small consolation. I managed to give one last surge in order to hang in there for 7th. That one hurt. I heard my move described as both ballsy, and stupid. Each seems reasonably accurate.

I'm still hanging onto the Washington cup Jersey by the thinnest of thin margins, 5 points over Darth Tubbs and 15 over Mr. Campbell. Looks like it could end up being an interesting series. It also looks like I'm going to have to learn how to sprint if I want any chance of taking the cup home. Unlikely, but stranger things have happened.

Oh yeah, .nathan. called me fat in the parking lot. I couldn't argue with him.

P.S. Hey Ross; the video at the finish line had your numbers obstructed by one of the riders from the masters field that we sprinted into but I made sure that they had you correctly placed. 1 down, 29 to go.

2007-03-14T12:03:00.000-07:00

It's frickin Wednesday and I still haven't got anything posted on Mason number two and Tour de Dung number one. I'm lame, but I'm going to blame Boeing.

Pruitt's prediction of a cold and wet Mason Lake was a week early. We got the nasty weather this time around. The first excitement of the day came when Pruitt attacked the neutral rollout. I'm not certain if he was trying to stay warm, channeling the spirit of Johnny "but I was just following the lead car" Sundt or if the concept of neutral rollout just eludes him. Whatever the reason he distributes fine eyewear and he gave me a tee-shirt so I'm willing to forgive all wrongdoings, even Ronde-Ohop.

Not long into the race a break of nine formed with Tom Peterson (Team Argyle), Ross Spero (Hagens Berman), Ben Rhodes (Recycled), Michael Emde (Axley), I thought his name is Nick but I can't remember (# 25 from First Rate), and myself. We were cruising pretty well until about halfway through the race when I flatted my rear tire. Our gap at the time was about 2:30 and the wheel car was behind the pack. So I sat back, had a few sips of water, ate a cliff bar, had some more water, fiddled with my helmet, and after what seemed like a lot longer than two and a half minutes got the follow car to stop and give me a wheel. Then I had to chase back onto the pack which took a good little while as the wheel change while greatly appreciated was less than speedy. So I chased back on (with the help of my team who dropped back to help pace me up), was in the pack for a while, then bridged up to Galen (Recycled) and Shawn (Axley). Once I caught up with them we chased down the second half of the original break that I was in. Apparently not long after I flatted Peterson drilled it and shredded the break. Emde later told me that his HR never fell below 180 after Tom got on the front. The first half was waaaaaaay out in front of us. Long story short, after lots and lots of chasing all day long my group got caught. The leaders finished an eon in front of us, but a small group of three including Jason from my team got off the front with 3 or 4 miles to go. I was covering people that were trying to bridge up, and the three of them stayed away. When it came to the field sprint for 8th or 9th, I tried to go but my legs just laughed at me as Tubbs walked away. I had chased or been in the break almost the entire day and was pretty darn cooked.

Sequim

Heading out there was interesting. A touch windy would be a huge understatement. In fact Joe almost had quite the incident crossing the hood canal bridge. The crosswind was so strong that half his fork popped out of the tray. Fortunately it didn't fly off and they were able to pull over and fix it. Thankfully the course itself was substantially less windy and even had some sun peeking through at points. Three cheers for the rain shadow.

Shortly into the race Ben from Recycled and Mike Hone from HB formed a break. Ben is strong, and Mike will bury himself to make a move work, but Ben was in the break all day Saturday, and a two man break is very hard to make work over a course as flat and windy as Sequim. There were quite a few attempts to bridge up to the break, but the pack didn't seem very interested in letting anything go. I tried once early on but quickly realized that after chasing all day Saturday I was going to have to budget my efforts at Sequim. So for the first half of the race I mostly sat in. The pack would surge a lot sometimes getting very close to catching the break, and then slowing down enough for them to build up a good gap again. Halfway through the race there was an Axley rider that looked like he was going to make the bridge work, and I saw a decent opportunity to jump up to him and join the break. I got away from the pack but not without Nick Clayville from HB. I caught up to the Axley rider with Nick in tow (he had Mike up the road and no reason to pull through yet). Just before we caught Mike and Ben, Mike blew up fairly spectacularly. He had been in the break a good long time, probably saw Nick and sat up. Ben was with us for about a lap but eventually he dropped off as well. I was pretty happy with the break, The Axley guy (whose name I forgot because I suck) was plenty strong, and Nick is a horse. I remember a very impressive win that he had at Market Street last year. He was in a four man break for a long time, and then he was solo for (I think) the entire final lap. With two to go we had a solid minute and a half gap, but when Ben dropped back to the pack they started turning the screws. I hear that Peterson was rallying the troops and even got Zoka (who had all of two people in the race) to get up to the front and take pulls. They brought the gap down by a minute in one lap and caught us a little over half way through the last lap. Attacks started going as soon as they caught us, but none got very far that close to the finish. Michael Murdin had a move that was looking pretty dangerous with a mile or two to go, but he got reeled in somewhere in the final 1000 meters.

I lined up behind Joe and Chad from my team more than a little worried that my legs would pull the same stunt they had at mason. Fortunately they didn't, I got a lead out that left me less than 100 meters to sprint (good given that I didn't have a lot of juice left) and I managed to cross the line first. I didn't realize that we had caught Murdin, so at first I didn't realize I had won.

In another brilliant maneuver I didn't know that I had more than a bike length on second and busted out the wholly unnecessary bike throw for the line.

I get a nice round D- for situational awareness on that one.

Sunday was a great day for our entire team. One of our cat 5's, Mike Schwindeller (whose last name is almost as prone to getting mangled as my own), won the 4/5 race. Mark Hinman, who upgraded from 4 to 3 last year, won his first race as a three, and Amy Schmid picked up her first win as a cat 3 in the womens 123 race. Way to go Wines of Washington.

For more photos including Mark's win check out Fred Soo's photography.

2007-03-06T08:19:00.000-08:00

Flames everywhere.

Flames on the new bikes, flames on last week's post, the world is engulfed. If you haven't been keeping up to date on my blog (like me) here's the quick rundown. Anonymous doesn't like me.

Or in his own words

"I've never raced against you until this wknd - I'm not impressed. In the closing efforts of Mason 1, one of your mates yelled "All you Jamie!" (or something of the sort) as a prompt for you to throw down a solo effort as you left the pack in your wake - for 4th place mind you. Were you disappointed when you had your d*ck knocked in the dirt *after* you looked at me, said "Oh. Hey, I guess that's me." and then tried to "take off"? Dude please, we ate you up like a stack of hotcakes. Sure, you're trying *not* to come into the season hot, but don't mouth off like you're some crazy superstar. Just shut your cakehole, ride your bike and stop being a punkass. Flames on the frames? Pah-lease."

How can I sleep at night knowing that anonymous doesn't like me? Well to be fair, I just found out this morning so I haven't had a chance for it to disturb my sleep yet. I guess I don't read my blog very often so I tend to get behind on the comments.

Now I know so time to catch up. Russell Cree was kind enough to rush to my defense/deflect the blame to Michael Pruitt. Now I know that a major thesis statement of last week's post was
Michael Pruitt = Source of all evil
but upon further reflection, that may have been ever so slightly exaggerated. That and I'm sorry to say, but Anonymous is on your team Russell. Towards the end of the last lap (maybe two miles to go) I was up towards the front with a whole mob of Hagens Berman riders, Anonymous included. We were hangin' out, havin' a good time on the front so I introduced myself. I figure I know most of the HB guys, but not this one, I might as well get his name. Then I promptly forgot it. Anonymous shouldn't feel bad that I forgot his name, it usually takes me a few tries to remember someone's name unless they are

a.) female and
b.) hot

Don't be upset anonymous, It's not you, it's me.

We've established that I can't remember his name...not Ian, not Anton, not Adrian, not Alfredo, not Todd, not Sam (who is a much better draft than Todd), whatever. It doesn't particularly matter. But as I was saying, I'm in the unwise position of the front of the pack with a couple miles to go, I've just introduced myself to Anonymous and one of my teammates behind the mob of HB riders is yelling for me to go. This is when I roll my eyes and in the most sarcastic, I'm not looking forward to this at all, voice that I can muster say "I guess that's me." Apparently either I need to work on my 'dripping with sarcasm' voice or anonymous needs to brush up on his English comprehension, because "I guess that's me" really doesn't qualify as "mouthing off like some crazy superstar."

As I was saying, I don't particularly relish the idea of a two mile lead out, and even if I did I wouldn't want to lead out the wrong team (mob of HB riders on my wheel). so I'm clunkin' along on the front trying to get off of the front but none of the HB boys are interested. My team is clamoring for us to pick up the pace when Ian McKissick goes blowing by on the left side. No reaction from the HB boys, so I jumped and chased after him figuring that if HB didn't seem to have any interest in letting me off of the front I could at least make them chase me instead of dragging them to the line. I did, they did, they caught me (as expected), the field sprint followed, and Wes from my team took 2nd (5th) wile Jason took 5th (8th). So we missed the break which is too bad, but had a decent field sprint. Big congrats to Lang for the win, he is looking strong this year.

Not so confidential to Anonymous;

like you said, you've never raced with me until this weekend. I'm trying to give you the benefit of the doubt on this one, but it's difficult. Let me try to explain, you see it's Mason Lake. Sure, everyone is trying to win, but nobody really cares, and I'd rather chat with people than put on my angry man race face. Before I introduced myself to you I was talking with Anton about his engagement, I was chatting with Ian M about the ToC, I was chatting with Ian T about getting a PT SL laced into his Zipps (I'm totally doing it) I was chatting with Rob and Derrick about the (lack of) new Bob's Bicycle team kits, I was chatting with Harm about how his new Rubicon outfit makes him look like a pumpkin. I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that I talk a lot, and if you ask around you'll find that it's not trash talk, it's *just* talk. I like to get to know the people that I race with, to be friendly with them.

If that isn't sufficient reason to convince you not to flame my blog, I'll point this out. This blog was originally started as a way for my non-cycling friends and family to figure out what I do every weekend. In other words, my little brother and sister read this blog (she's still in middle school), my parents read this blog, my grandparents read this blog.

So next time that you want to talk about having my "d*ck knocked in the dirt" how about you do it to my face?

2007-02-26T14:11:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since I've posted. Mostly cause I'm a lazy bastard, but also because...let's just leave it at I'm lazy. It's been a bunch of months since I last posted but everything is pretty much the same as it was then. If I'm not at work trying not to laugh at the latest proposed schedule then I'm on my bike. Racing has started again though and that has provided the impetus to jump start the blog.

Saturday I made the mistake of allowing Pruitt to talk me into doing Ronde Ohop. Don't let his 'I'm a nice friendly father of two sunglasses rep' exterior fool you. That man is responsible for all that is evil in the world. Ronde Ohop in particular. If I cut straight to the chase I got a rather unimpressive ninth out of twenty-odd starters. Now comes the part of the post where I make excuses for why I didn't win. Little known fact, but in addition to that 30 points required to upgrade from a cat 2 to a cat 1 thing, the only other requirement for becoming a cat one is that you solemnly swear to provide at least three excuses...pardon me three reasons, three explanations for why you didn't win any given race.

Without further ado,

1.) The sun was in my eyes.
2.) Kenny was there and his hair gives him magical powers.
3.) I got boxed in in the final sprint.

OK, there's my three, but given that it was cloudy and rainy all day, the sun in my eyes excuse doesn't hold much water. Also, Kenny wasn't there, and I don't think that any group had more than two finishers by the end, the whole boxed in at the sprint thing isn't going to fly either. On the bright side, I did have a few mechanicals. After lap three of 20 I couldn't get into my big ring, and I had to stop twice to fix my brakes (the first time after rolling straight through turn one despite having my levers pulled all the way to the bar). I know, I know, what kind of a sissy wants to slow down in a race; the idea is to go faster. Generally that's true but when turn one is at the end of a downhill and takes you through a big pile of gravel and mud it's a good idea to shed a little speed. After getting gapped off when I couldn't stop, I kinda lost my motivation a bit and just rolled the last half (that's bike racer lingo for I turned into a little bitch).

I thought that last season I peaked a bit early. I was doing well up through Walla Walla (late April), and then I wasn't able to put together any good results until the Lake Washington Velo series (late summer), and that was more luck than fitness anyway. The luck being Todd Herriott saying hey, you want to win this one? Let me drag you around the course for 8 laps and then lead you out into your pathetic slow motion sprint. I of course said that sounds nice, and then proceeded to suffer like a dog as he dragged my big butt around the course. This was compounded by the fact that my big butt is a solid foot above his little one so my lower calf got a nice draft but the rest of me was SOL. That and Todd puts out 500 watts before he starts to sweat.

I also started racing the track which provided valuable entertainment to everyone in the stands

I've intentionally tried to avoid coming into the early season too hot again, and judging by Ohop I'm doing a fine job of going slow. We'll see how going from my 105 equipped, fully fendered rain bike that won't shift or stop on a bumpy muddy dirt trail to my brand spankin' new Dura Ace decked out Madone (sans fenders) on an actual road works out. I'm guessing I'll still be slower than I want to, but in theory I want to be slower than I want to right now.

That makes my head hurt.

And remember, Michael Pruitt is the source of all the evil in the world. Anton (the Pleasure) Jackson and Todd (the Punisher) Herriott realized this before I did and have started the pre-season with a bout of psychological warfare by emailing him with tales of how they are planning to crush his body and spirit this season. Pruitt counters by questioning what a man who garnered 12th place at the US Pro national championships last year is doing talking trash to a 36 year old father of two that trains two hours a week, and what a man who refers to himself as 'The Pleasure' is doing...wait--who refers to themselves as "The Pleasure?"

Honestly.

See you fools at Mason next week.

-j

2006-06-12T09:55:00.000-07:00

Saturday was the Ballard crit, and to my great joy the sun was shining and the weather was beautiful. After a morning of mudding up holes and cracks before I paint my soon to be new bedroom I rolled down to Ballard in time to catch the finish of the women's race. My teammate Trish won it which is pretty frickin awesome given that she just started racing this season, and already has her first win since upgrading just a few weeks back.

As for my race, I didn't do quite so well. I don't think that I raced a bad race, but I'm not at all confident that I raced a good race. Early on, maybe fifteen minutes in I put in a little attack off the front, but I was solo so there was no real hope of staying away. Fortunately, one lap into my little attack the prime bell rang and I was able to stay off the front to take that fairly easily. Unfortunately that was probably my highlight for the evening. I put in a few other attacks that didn't really go anywhere, chased back a break or two, and all around raced a little below my potential. In the last third of the race the flat backstretch was prone to a lot of surges making it substantially more difficult to just get up front and stay up front. Especially if (like me) you are a sissy in turn three and don't like bombing along the inside and then chopping people in the corner. With five minutes to go I had myself in pretty terrible position. I managed to get myself up into 10th or 15th position on the last lap just before turn one, but between turns one and two the pack caught Johnny Sundt who had been off the front and was going backwards fast. I ended up right behind him and hemmed in on both sides. I lost position and momentum and didn't have the time to make it up. Ooops.

Ended up 15th with energy to spare. Overall a decent effort, fun and all that, but I need to work on my positioning and willingness to take more risks through the corners.

2006-05-31T10:27:00.000-07:00

Slow month for racing. I ditched out on Enumclaw (hence the no update), and the only racing I've done in the past couple of weeks has been last night (Tuesday) down at PR, and the monthly drunken midnight race around Greenlake.

The monthly drunken midnight race lived up to its name in all ways. I started the evening with critical mass followed by several hours of struggling heroically to remember my highschool French. My Uncle's girlfriend (French) had her family in town and they speak very little English, so between mouthfulls of fondue and wine I was doing my best to communicate. Either I didn't do too badly or I was a lot more drunk than I thought. Either way, after that I rolled over to my friends Riain and Heather's, house had a beer with them. It ended up being a very French evening as Heather had her friend from France visiting. At ten till midnight I hopped on the fixie and met up for the race. I wasn't intending on winning, but I saw that the prize for first was a bottle of Makers Mark. Can't say no to that.

Didn't do so hot in the track stand or ghost racing (running your bike to the start line and giving it a mighty shove to see whose bike rolls the farthest before crashing)competitions. Lee trashed me in the track stand, and I was second to last in the ghost race, but I still get to keep the trophy for the month and have a nice bottle of bourbon sitting at home. The next day Henry said "my girlfriend told me I was there last night but I've got no recollection." 'Bout sums it up...

Last night was point a lap down at Pacific Raceways. I had never done that one before, it's fun. We had some fast guys down there. Richter was there (congrats go out to him for landing a new contract after the Monex debacle--wishing him luck in Europe over the next couple of months), Hone had a couple of teammates this week in Tubbs and Pleasure Jackson, and there were a bunch of other fast dudes as well. I rounded up six points by taking three laps fairly early but then only managed one more second place for a total of seven. On the last lap Richter and a couple of guys attacked and I chased them down thinking that Dave had more points than he did. He had been up front for a lot of the laps, but I didn't realize that he was giving the sprints away. Any-who, I spent it reeling them back in and Mike...well I forget his last name, but Mike somebody (used to race for BRI, number 85 at PR) took the final sprint and three more points bringing his total from six to nine. Seven was good enough for second for the evening.

All in all a fun night. Unfortunately at the bottom of the track before the finishing stretch Ian Tubbs ended up doing some off roading... through the turn... on the sand... fast. Not a good combination. I heard him sliding out behind me and he managed to just about save it but his front wheel ran into someone's rear wheel as he came back onto the pavement. It looks like he got a nice big patch of road rash, but was otherwise OK. I hope that doesn't put a sour taste in his mout for PR (just remember to take that turn a touch wider next time).

I'm feeling recharged though maybe a touch over-rested (fat), but I'll get some hard workouts in over the next week and a half, maybe do an alleycat or two, then I'm looking forward to Ballard. My race starts at 7:30 PM on the 10th and it's a great one to watch. Do a good weather dance then come out and watch.

2006-05-19T15:10:00.000-07:00

All right JERKS I'm updating my blog. You would think that I would get a little bit of slack given the whipping I just received and the ginormous pile of work that I still have sitting on my desk...err inbox. Stupid email.

So first a Gila wrap up. The TT had come pretty big hills and I did pretty crappy. I was hanging tough on the way out on the uphills but was just getting whored on the downhills. The gearing wasn't nearly enough and I'm not a real big fan of trying to TT on my road bike. Ian McKisick is really on form though, he got 10th overall in a pretty darn strong field. I got a lot slower than that.

Stage two I got popped pretty early on the final climb then I was in an echelon with a couple other guys when the dude in front of me slams on his breaks and violently swerves a foot and a half to his left (a gross overreaction to a gust of wind that nudged the dude in front of him slightly to the left) sticking his skewer into my front wheel and ripping the spokes out of the rim. I finished up the race on a new rim and rolled home.

Stage three didn't have any really big climbs, but enough good sized ones to put the hurt on. Especially when Toyota United got on the front and put everyone in the gutter. That sucked. I managed to get over everything with the main group and was up near the front as it turned onto the main highway (roughly three miles to go). From this point on strong cross winds, lots of attacks tough to hang in and move up. Owen Gue did a really good job of staying up front but I let myself fall back. With a mile to go a the whole field was single file and guttered. We were on the shoulder of the highway which was covered in debris and the Target Training guy in front of me hit a rather large chunk of wood, flatted, and went straight into the guard rail. He and his bike hit the rail hard then flew over it and hit the ground badly. I finished with the pack 7 seconds down on the leaders. Target Training broke his femur. Shitty. Gue finished top ten and Sam DNF'd after spending most of the day off the front solo. Brave effort for sure, but it killed him.

Stage four was the crit. The three remaining climber types (Owen, Andy, and Evan) were planning to let the crit roll pretty easy and sit in on the pack while J-mo and I knew that we didn't stand much of a chance going up the Gila monster on day five. I was in some attacks early that went nowhere, as was Owen. J-mo put in a couple, but none of us were in groups that stayed out long and no primes to show for it. With six laps to go I started working my way towards the front and made it up to the top 10 or 15 with about four laps to go but I stuck myself on the inside of turn three while I was trying to reintegrate into the pack. I wasn't getting let in then felt myself getting elbowed into the curb. I had to slam on the brakes just in time to see Wherry go around and another 80% of the field behind him. If you're going to get served may as well be by a national champion. After losing position I just finished in the back of the pack. Owen snagged another top ten which was good work on his part.

Stage five sent you up and over the "Gila Monster" (after 50 something miles), out to a turn around, and then back up and over but with another 30 or so miles to the finish. I was climbing with the pack until 2 miles from the summit when I cracked. Shortly thereafter our team car rolled by and my teammate J-mo (who had pulled off at the first feed zone) yelled "See you in the next feed zone?" I said yes, rolled there nice and easy, and abandoned.

In short I had a lot of fun learned a lot and got my ass thoroughly kicked. I am guessing that a climbing race at altitude in the desert isn't the best NRC event for a fat kid (comparatively) from sea level in the Northwest. Word.

Last weekend I went to the Washington state omnium out in Wenatchee. Did terribly in the TT and couldn't figure out why until I was taking off my rear wheel. My brake had been rubbing the entire time and I felt like a total choad. Ian McKissick won with a new course record and a very impressive time.

Going into the crit I was just angry. I knew that my GC hopes were down the tubes so I just wanted to try and be aggressive in the crit grab a few primes and come away with something. While Jason, Wes and I were warming up on our trainers right next to turn one this portly late thirties to early 40's woman walks up to me and in a voice that is half southern drawl, and half white trash says

"Mah friends dared me tuh pinch yer butt."

and with that she pinched it once then took her big ol' meat hook and full on grabbed it a second time and shuffle/ran/waddled away giggling. I was laughing hysterically, Jason was thanking the lord that it hadn't happened to him and Wes was wondering aloud why his butt hadn't been molested.

The race started and immediately Wes and someone else were off the front. They got a bit of a gap and Ian Tubbs went up to chase them down. I sat on his wheel then when we started to get close Dave rang the bell for a prime. I jumped from Ian's wheel at turn 4 and was able to take the prime and keep rolling it into an attack. I spent a few laps off by myself but the two Ian's (Tubbs and McKissick) bridged up to me. We built up a good gap, quickly but I was more interested in Primes than making the break work. I took my pulls when it was my turn but finishing position didn't really mean much to me so I wasn't selling it to try and make the break work. Long story short I got two or three more primes while the three of us were off the front before we were chased down by the pack (and when I say the pack I mean Kenny Williams for the most part). After we were caught I picked up a few more primes bringing my total to six of the first six primes. Not a bad percentage. After that there was no more glory for me. I hung in there and was reasonably aggressive for the rest of the race but didn't create an opportunity to contest the rest of the primes or a good finishing position. I took eighth and was happy walking away with $150 and some random merchandise (some recovery gunk, a hat, a cycling computer, a shirt, and an I.O.U. for a couple of tires).

In the road race...I didn't do so well. I've been typing for quite a while now and don't particularly want to go into it, but sufficed to say that with ~10 miles to go once I had gone over the big climb twice and was once again on the flats I cramped up so badly that I had to stop and get off the bike.

Not once,

not twice

but three times. I had enough liquid but I think I just lost too many salts and my body was not a happy camper. I promised Mick Walsh that he would make my blog for hauling my butt most of the way up the climb the second time (until I got dropped at the top), but I 'm too lazy to give a full account.

This coming weekend I'm doing Enum-scratch, but I'm not too optimistic. Not feeling the least bit fresh these days, but we shall see how it goes. I shall let you know (hopefully in a more timely manner).

2006-05-01T12:11:00.000-07:00

As I write this I am sitting in a coffee shop sans internet connection so it won’t actually be posted until this is all old news. None the less, typing I am and typing I shall continue to do. The prologue is about an hour and forty five minutes from beginning. It’s 2.8 miles total starting in downtown Bisbee. When I say downtown you need to take that with a grain of salt. Apparently Bisbee was a mining town but the mine shut down in the 60’s. It’s up in the mountains a solid 5,000+ feet above sea level nestled in between some peaks. Apparently when the mine shut down people left en mass. Some hippies stumbled upon the town and bought up all the property dirt cheap. It’s a very cute little town.

But back to the cycling. From downtown we ascend through the town for a little under two miles. It isn’t terribly steep, but it’s definitely up. With about a mile to go the route leaves town and becomes decidedly steeper until it ends at the summit. Right now, and likely when we start, there is quite the nasty headwind the entire way up. Should make it interesting. I’m not sure how I’ll fare but my strategy is go hard for the first two thirds then go a lot harder for the last bit. Get to the top and fall over gasping.

So far we’ve had one adventure. On the way to the grocery store this morning we were pulling into the parking lot when suddenly there was a TT bike hanging off the side of the car. Due to space constraints I didn’t bring my TT bike so I was fairly confident that it wasn’t mine. From the back seat I hear Justin Morgan say “I guess I should have zip tied that.” No real harm done, but it was extra funny given that J-mo and Andrew Fischer had just been reassuring Andrew McDirmid that Broadmark cycling was held together by Zip ties and they had never lost a bike.

**Three hour time lapse**

Well we’re done with the prologue and at our host housing. Jeffrey (our team manager) and his girlfriend Laurie are cooking up what smells like a fantastic dinner which is very good news. It means that I can look forward to a good meal and try to forget about the prologue because the prologue sucked. I have no idea what the times are I just know mine wasn’t very good. I’ll find out how I did relative to the rest tomorrow. Yuck.

The host housing that we’re staying in is this great adobe style house just outside Bisbee. I haven’t met our host or her Great Dane yet, but apparently he has a habit of peeing on peoples beds and belongings. So far I’m very happy here, I’m just hoping to avoid waking up to a Great Dane Golden shower.

**Two day time lapse**

Well, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that I got my suck out of the way, the bad news is that I sucked. Prologue, as mentioned above, was relatively booty. Stage one wasn’t bad for the majority of the race. Andrew Fischer, Justin Morgan, and I were doing a good job of making every break. At the first sprint I led out my teammate to and we took second and third (time bonuses). Andrew made a break that we all did a good job of marking the chase groups. Then at the end I positioned myself stupidly behind a group of people that got gapped and I couldn’t close.

While I was warming up for the TT I flatted twice. I gave up on my disc and begged a training wheel off of one of the Velo Bela girls. My TT was unimpressive to say the least. Justin Morgan on the other hand put out a blazing time that was good enough for 3rd.

In the final stage we had a long descent then at the bottom a break went off. I moved up to try and bridge, but halfway there my front derailleur cable slipped and I was stuck in my small chain ring. Stuck in my small chain ring with ~80 miles to go. Just before the final climb I totally cracked. I had spent so much time and energy spinning my legs off trying to stay with the pack on the flats and downhill stretches that I was completely done. I DNF’d.

So that was at the same time the biggest race I have been to and the worst I have performed. I expect that there will be more competition at bigger races and I might not do as well, but I know I definitively underperformed. Some of it was bad luck, but some of it was just stupidity on my part. I am going to take that, learn from it, and do better at Gila.

The plan from here on out is three fold

Step one: Pull head out of ass
Step two: Get bike fixed
Step three: Do well at Gila

Steps one and two have theoretically been completed, but will have to wait until step three for confirmation on that. I’ll update when I can.

2006-04-24T10:05:00.000-07:00

Looking forward to Walla Walla I had arranged everything. I had a carpool lined up, host housing lined up, the bikes were ready to go, I was all set. Except I forgot to register. It was three days past the deadline, the TT start times were posted andI was SOL. I tried calling Steve Rapp to get an exception (despite the web site clearly stating No late registrations. No day-of-race registrations. No exceptions.). Steve stuck to his guns and I was SOL with no-one to blame but myself.

I really hate that, it's so much more satisfying to blame someone else. As a last ditch effort I emailed Gina Kavesh and asked her to appeal to Steve on my behalf. She agreed to but By Thursday evening I hadn't heard anything. I was in an exceptionally bitter mood over my stupidity so after riding ~55 miles I raced Seward. I don't really plan on doing Seward much this year so I just went for the first couple of primes (got 'em) and tried to keep it together for a sprint finish (didn't manage that, Richter and someone got away to take first and second). Rode home that night with a stiff knee and blown legs from that and the prior weeks training. Next day at work I get an email me telling me I'm in for Walla Walla. I'm psyched that I get to race this weekend but further pissed for trashing my legs the night before.

That's OK but now I have to get ahold of Angelo to make sure that I've still got a ride, get a bunch of work off my desk, attend this SNAFU emergency meeting, then bike from Everett back home to Seattle and pack everything. Sweet.

Well it all got done one way or another and Saturday I was in Waitsburg warming up for the TT. My first run with my new (to me) disk wheel. The course was out and back 5.3 miles total. Slightly uphill on the way out with a light head wind and the opposite on the way back. I knew that the way back would be fast no matter what I did so I front ended the piece substantially. I had made a fake attempt to mess with Ian's TT. My teammate Angelo was Ian's 30 second man so I wrote "IAN pass me on the LEFT!" on his race number. I figured if Ian was laughing hard enough it might throw his game off.

At the turn around I was feeling pretty blown but the wind and the slight hill made a huge difference. After a few pedal strokes I was in the 55-11 and cruising. The legs were loaded but I was rolling and the finish line arrived quickly. It was a very solo effort as I was the last one off and my 30 second man (Russell Stevenson) never showed. I saw my minute man at the turnaround, but that was it. Finished with no idea how I had done then went and snagged some pancakes and eggs for breakfast. The funny thing was while I was eating I was chatting with Ian Tubbs and Andrew McDirmid about how good/bad the TT had felt and the three of us made up the top three. I thought that I had done mediocre at best given the way my legs felt but I won, just goes to show, never believe what your body is telling you. Your body lies--punish it.

The road race was another story altogether. Anton summed it up before the race when he rolled up to me and said "I don't envy your position at all." Yea...

The "neutral" rollout was defined as the lead car going 18 miles an hour up a 3k climb. I don't know what world 18mph uphill is neutral on but the leadcar just walked away from us. Well the lead car and Johnny Sundt. Classic Johnny just sitting on the bumper, he couldn't have gotten any closer if they had a roller on there. It was pretty funny. Over the top the lead car finally made Johnny wait (after the neutral rollout which seemed wrong, but whatever). Hone then put in his obligatory early attack. He was off for a while but it was all back together for the first real time up the finishing climb. There the wheels started to come off. Ian didn't make the initial group over the top as people were sprinting for the KOM points. I was working with Emde, Sundt, and Richter to try and hold him off, but Ian isn't the kind of guy that you drop on a fast downhill. He fought back on and when we got onto the backstretch the attacks started. They didn't stop until the race was over. On the last lap Ian and Emde got away and stayed away. The field was down to just over 10 people, at least three of them were Broadmark riders, I'm out of water, and cramping. Almost enough to make you want to curl up in a corner and die. Fortunately for me there are no corners in Eastern Washington, just lots of rolling hills, and I was too dehydrated and tired to curl up and die. On the final climb Sam Johnson went off the front while Anton and Andrew set a slower pace up front. My legs were seizing up and I didn't have the juice to go chase him. He finished 21 seconds ahead of me, fortunately I had 24 on him from the TT.

Heading into the crit Ian and Emde were untouchable in first and second respectively but I was a very vulnerable third. Fourth and Fifth place were Sam Johnson and Andrew Mcdirmid, 3 and 13 seconds behind me respectively. With two, two-second time bonus primes and 10, 5, and 3 second bonuses for first second and third anything was possible. Despite an inauspicious start (massive blowout on my rear wheel in lap two or three), I had a really good race. Before the crit Johnny had some really good advice for me. He told me to bring the fight to Broadmark, don't wait for them to do it to you. That strategy wouldn't have worked if it was only me doing it, but what was left of the other teams realized that if we all didn't work to put Broadmark on the defensive they were going to own us again like they did in the road race. In the crit I made a conscious effort to attack Broadmark just after they had reeled someone in, particularly when it was Andrew or Sam who had done the work. Johnny was right, everyone started keying in on it and Broadmark was suddenly on the defensive. Don't get me wrong, Broadmark had a good race with Anton collecting more primes than anyone else but they were definitely knocked onto their heels a bit and it felt good to see the tables turned. There were a couple of times late in the race were I let Broadmark put me in a bad position. I had won the first two second time bonus, just out-sprinting Sam for it and then turning that into an attack as I saw that he was pretty gassed from the effort and wanting to make him work to get back on. Fortunately enough the next time around they rang the bell for a $20 prime and I was able to stay off the front to collect that too. When the second time prime came around I was caught resting in the back when Sam managed to get off in a break of three without me noticing. Bad race awareness on my part. He took the time prime and the three were in danger of opening up a big gap. Two guys from the Garage were working on the front but they were getting tired and the gap was growing. I got Angelo to go up front and help out. He put in a blowout effort for half a lap and coming into the start finish stretch I made my move to bridge up. I managed to do so without pulling anyone along with me, but Broadmark quickly chased us down now that I was with the lead group. That was fine by me, I just wanted to make sure that every time that I was working they were too. No free rides.

The second time that I let myself get into trouble was at the end of the race (somewhere around 5 or 8 laps to go) when Andrew McDirmid, Johnny Sundt and a third rider were off the front. I made my move with four laps to go (again on the start finish stretch which now had not just a head wind, but a brutally strong head wind). Once again I was (through a fortuitous combination of luck and skill) able to get off solo. It took me an entire lap to bridge up to the break, but I made it. When I arrived people started to sit up and Johnny attacked. The third unknown rider said "I'm not working with that guy" and dropped back and I sat on Andrew's wheel as he chased Johnny down. With two to go it was Andrew, Johnny and myself. Andrew and I traded pulls and coming into the last lap Broadmark had finally started to chase us back in the main pack but we still had a pretty good gap. I was feeling pretty strong so I pulled most of the last lap not really caring if I got 1st, 2nd, or 3rd just so long as Sam didn't and Andrew didn't finish with a time gap on me. Coming into the last corner I had a little gap on Andrew so I started my sprint long and had a good gap on him coming into the final straight away with it's wicked head wind. Unwilling to blow it at the last second I kept the hands on the bar and waited until I was actually crossing the line for a victory salute.

Final GC standings were pretty much the way they were before the crit, but I walked away with my first crit win. Afterwards Johnny came up to me and said "Look at you, you just won a crit."

My response was (and is) yea...go figure.

As it turns out I was a little excited by my victory. Hence the yell.

So two stage wins and third GC. I would have obviously liked to do better in the GC, but given the caliber of the Broadmark riders coming after me in the road race and the limited support that I had that was about as good as I could have reasonably expected. Next week I'll be racing with some of those guys (as a guest rider on Broadmark's elite squad) down at Bisbee and Gila. It will be nice to work with them for a change.

2006-04-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night at Pacific Raceways.

Tuesday night was the second PR this year, counterclockwise down the fire escape. I attacked from the start just like last week, but unlike last week it was just for fun. After staying away solo the entire time last week I didn't particularly expect them to let me go this time. Besides, the races are pretty short down there early in the year, may as well make sure that everyone gets a good workout. The pack did not disappoint. They chased me down in just under a lap. There were a bunch of attacks throughout the evening and I went with at least half of them, but nothing was sticking. For the first prime there was a lot of energy as the pack seemed pretty excited at the possibility of winning the Oh Boy Oberto polo shirt that was up for grabs. I went to lead out Joe and was laying down a really aggressive pace around the bend coming into the closing 200 meters with him on my wheel when I heard him yell "go for it." We had opened up a sizeable gap on the peloton and Joe let me take the prime since I had opened up the gap. For the second prime it was pretty similar to the first except replace Joe with Andrew and stick Richter on his wheel. As I was sprinting for the line trying to lead Andrew out, I hear Andrew telling me to go for it and see him drop off. I barely managed to hold off a charging Richter who didn't appear to immediately notice that Andrew had let a gap open. As we crossed the line he was a little pissed at us for our "tactics." I explained that I didn't think Andrew was sweeping and he was just gassed.

Unbeknownst to me the second prime also marked two laps to go and the next time around was the bell lap. I was sitting pretty far back but Byron pulled me up to the front with Joe on my wheel. Down the Fire Escape there was a recycled guy and a BRI guy off the front but Jon Ryan and got up to the front and put in a good pull to start reeling them in (after a little pushing with Johnny Sundt). We hit the climb 20-25 people back and finished it about ten people back. At the top Andrew came up and worked his way onto my wheel in front of Joe. With three or four hundred to go I started ramping it up passing the 5 or six guys left in front of me. I kept amping the pace up and Andrew was feeling a little gassed and didn't have the juice to come around me. Joe was waiting for Andrew to go and waited too long. Richter, who had jumped onto Joe's wheel as we rolled past, read it well jumping with ~75 meters to go. Joe jumped late only 50 meters from the line and Andrew and I rolled in for third and fourth respectively. I'm not certain who took fifth but they were a ways back from the front four. After the sprint I went up and congratulated Richter on the win and was happy to see that he agreed Andrew hadn't been sweeping in that second prime. Never good to walk away from a race with people pissed, especially a training race.

Overall a pretty good night, I was riding aggressive, took both primes and we took second, third, and fourth place. We should have walked away with the win too, but weren't firing on all cylinders. No big deal, it's PR and that's what it is for. Practice.

PR standings (I think)
Me in first with 11 points
Dave and Joe tied for second with 8
Andrew in third with 5
Pruit and whoever took fifth last night tied for fifth with 1

2006-04-18T13:58:00.000-07:00

TST

Sleet fell from the sky, dogs attacked Rob, shit hit the fan.

That race was hard. Very, very, hard. It was raining before the race started and it never really stopped. Well unless you count when it turned to sleet and then snow. It definitely wasn't raining while it was snowing but those are some pretty fine hairs to split. Ten minutes into the race I couldn't really feel my fingers or toes and by the end my manual dexterity was pretty abysmal. I could barely pull the breaks, I couldn't squeeze my bottle, I didn't even try to open a cliff bar and eat, and shifting gears consisted of taking the frozen lump of ice on the end of my wrist and swinging it at my levers in a somewhat controlled manner. As a result upshifting when I meant to downshift and vice versa happened several times.

There was a break early on that got a couple of minutes or more on the field which was making me very nervous, especially in the middle when everyone seemed pretty content to just roll along at a fairly unaggressive clip. At one point I tried attacking and got a little gap on the field when one of the flaggers at an intersection was yelling at me. All that I heard was "blah blah blah left. Blah blah blah left." So I turned left. Turns out that was wrong. Probably for the best anyway as I didn't have much of a gap and they didn't seem to want to let me open it up. None the less I was pissed. I managed to make it over the first few hills in the top ten of the main group. As I write it staying up front over the hills sounds like a good idea--seems easy enough, but man did it suck. I nearly cracked going up every single one of those. That being said, I didn't crack and was even the one pushing the pace a couple of times. At least I was until Ian Mckissick, Andy Fischer, Sam Johnson, or Tom Peterson would cruise by and really put the hurt on.

Damn them.

When the last big climb rolled up I started up front but was getting the hurt put on and ended up on the wheel of someone who was dropping fast. I passed him and tried to keep pace with the leaders but as we crested the top and started into the nasty rollers along the top I was about 20 meters back and it took for frickin ever to get back on. I did make it back on and after a short breather felt pretty strong again. Over the rollers and into the descent there were a bunch of small attacks a couple of which I was in, but none stuck until with two or three miles to go Ian Mckissick attacked and floated around 100-200 meters off the front for a while. I thought about trying to bridge but would have just pulled everyone up with me. I was somewhat surprised that Broadmark (who had 3 of the 14 riders in the group) didn't set up a chase. Someone pointed out to me later that the Broadmark riders in the lead group weren't really local and may not have known that Ian can hold a gap like that and won't just die if you don't chase him hard. As we rolled through 500 meters to go I was sitting on Kenny's wheel in good position in the pack. Kenny realized he was in shitty position and slowed up/pulled off. Being the idiot that I am I said "dum-dee-dum, better start my sprint WAY TOO FRICKIN SOON!" So I did. Needless to say a got passed by a lot of people starting 50-100 meters from the line. Moron. One of these days I will learn that lesson, but in the meantime the competition is going to keep beating it into my skull until I get it.

So I totally biffed the sprint, but I'm happy I made the lead group (well, technically, the second group given that Ian won off the front).

Oh yea, as the first line indicates Rob Campbell got bit by a dog. I didn't see it but apparently this dog just ran up to him and bit him on the arm...WTF?!? I hope that he bit it back.

In other news, after the whole Brad Lewis cardiac arrest thing I went in and had a stress test. I wasn't worried about my heart or anything, but then again I've never had it checked out so I figured that I should. Long story short, the doc says I'm fine for racing but I do have high blood pressure (already knew that) and an Atrial Septal Aneurysm (ASA--didn't know that). This isn't like a brain aneurysm he quickly explained as my eyebrows flew for the ceiling. I couldn't help it, somebody tells you that you've got an aneurysm and it doesn't sound good, right?

Anyway I asked a few more questions about what causes it, what I can/should do about it etc. It's congenital (thanks mom and dad), and while it is a risk factor for embolic strokes, I am healthy enough in pretty much all other departments that the doc is totally not worried. If he isn't worried then I'm not worried. Doc said that even a daily aspirin would probably be too severe a treatment, he just suggested I try to work on lowering my blood pressure. As for the blood pressure, I'm working on it.

2006-04-10T07:01:00.000-07:00

No humor this time.

From bikecafe.net

Seattle, Washington - Today was a very sad day for the Seattle cycling community as Brad Lewis passed away while racing the Boat Street Criterium Category 1/2 race. Early reports indicate Brad suffered a cardiac arrest in the race causing him to pass out and crash.

Brad was well know in the cycling community, riding for the Recycled Cycles Racing Team.

BikeCafe will pass on more news as it becomes available. Our thoughts and prayers are with Brad's wife Emily and their families.

A memorial vigal will be held at Recycled Cycles Monday April 10 at 8pm

My first real encounter with Brad was after the Blackberry Crit at the end of last season. I had crashed and broken my frame when he approached me saying that he new the warranty guy at Cervelo and would do what he could to help me out. I didn't know Brad well but in every encounter I had with him he exemplified generosity, kindness, and class. We are worse off without him, and he will be dearly missed.

2006-04-07T08:11:00.000-07:00

With regard to a good night's sleep, many claim that the night before the night before is more important than the night before. With that in mind I had the bright idea of going on the .83 Thursday night ride last night.

Last night by the numbers

Number of bridges/ overpasses I jumped off of ........2
Dollars earned for doing so .................................$22
Number of pallet boards burned in Fremont fire pit ...15-ish
Number of people who ran through the fire ...............3
Number of people who did it barefoot .....................1
Number of guesses you get to figure out who that was ..1
Number of times fire department showed up .............2
Number of times SPD showed up .........................1
Number of teeth lost by end of the night (not mine) ...1
Hours of sleep last night .............................<4

Idiocy, you have to love it.

2006-04-04T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm a lazy bag of poo. I apologize. I said that I would have a race report up soon the Sunday before the Sunday before last. I guess that makes me a lying lazy bag of poo. I'm more of a big picture guy any way, I don't tend to muck around with the details too much. Unfortunately this leads to problems every now and again.

For example:

Big Picture Idea (BPI): Race my bike
Slight Detail Forgotten (SDF): Don't crash

BPI:Lose weight for impending climbing races
SDF:Six LARGE cookies today 'aint going to help

BPI:Going to the Dentist sucks
SDF:Brush your teeth moron, it'll suck less (eat less cookies too)

BPI:Having a car sure would make it easier to get to races
SDF:Maybe I should think about getting a drivers license first

BPI:My tummy hurts
SDF:Again with the six cookies...I'm retarded

BPI:Write fun race reports so my friends can follow how I'm doing
SDF:Actually write them

So in short, I should probably mention the in addition to being a lazy lying bag of poo, I'm an idiot as well.

Three Sundays ago was the Market Street road race. It was out in the podunks and my teammate Wes and I got pretty lost but managed to find it eventually. We showed up, raced and I got sixth.

Not much of a race report I will admit, but it's been long enough that I don't particularly remember or care to transcribe the details. It was my 5th road race of the season and my first one outside the top three. That was coming though, next I should look forward to my first finish outside the top ten followed by my first DNF.

I'm chalk full of optimism today, it might have something to do with the fact that today was my first day back at work after a week of training down in the sun near Palm Springs. Highlight of the trip had to be riding through Joshua Tree National Park. That was cool.

Seeing as how I didn't race the last two weekends I have been usurped as the undisputed champion of nothing (WSBA rankings). I'm back to racing this weekend though, and looking very forward to it. The training down in CA felt good, hopefully I'll be able to produce some results with the miles that I put in.

If you are in the Seattle area this Sunday I should (weather permitting) be racing at the Boat Street crit in the U-district. Come holler, boo, throw stuff at me, whatever. It's a fun course that is good for spectators.

2006-03-20T13:10:00.000-08:00

Mason Lake #3

Number of obligatory March Madness references .....1
St. Patties day pre-race rituals not to be repeated .....1
Crashes (that I am aware of) .....1
Final (meaningless) ranking in Mason Lake Series .....1st
Current (meaningless) ranking in WSBA results .....1st
Number of times I totally imploded .....1

The third and final Mason Lake race was on Saturday. St. Patrick's day was Friday. One of the .83 people (see link on right if curious) is putting on a series of underground uphill sprint races. Friday night was the first of five. I went out and sprinted up a small hill in Discovery park six times followed by drinking a couple of Guinesses at a party and then ice cream and naked hot tubbing with some friends. Fun, yes. Good pre-race plan--not so much.

Low and behold it was nice weather for three Mason Lake races. That's nice and all but I'm pretty sure that it is the third sign of the apocalypse (MJ being the first, and The Red Sox winning the world series being the second). With nice weather we started to race. We had a few of the big boys that we hadn't seen yet this season including Russell Stevenson (leader for local team, BRI, but he just moved down to Portland so probably won't be up here as much), Dave Richter who is riding for Monex this year (domestic pro team), and Tom Peterson who jumped up to the domestic pro ranks this year on TIAA Cref. Lots of attacks were flying off early, but everyone was still pretty peppy so nothing got much of a lead without being chased down. I was in a couple of the attempts, but nothing was really getting away. Early on the third lap (I think) as we were heading up the slight riser after turn one there was a crash just in front of and to the right of me involving Kenny Williams (First Rate), Joe Baratto (Wines--that's my team in case you don't know), and Robert Valez (Valley). There may have been more, but I didn't take the time to look because
a.) I can't stand rubberneckers, and
b.) Dudes started attacking.
Attacking during/just after a crash is bad form and all, but I'm not convinced that the people up front knew that there was a crash and there had been attacks at that spot every lap prior.

At some point Ian Tubbs (Broadmark) and Derik Archibald (The Valley) went off the front, but I don't actually remember when. There is a fast downhill followed by a fairly sharp right turn a little over halfway through the course. After we went through that on the third lap they were maybe 150-200 meters up the road. The pack slowed way down after the turn and I was at the front, but most of the big guns from the other teams weren't. Fortunately for me I must have caught them off guard, I made a good jump, and only Rob Campbell (Valley) chased. The Valley already had Derik Archibald in the break and I didn't particularly want to tow Rob up there for three reasons.

1.) He has a certain reputation for not working in the break
2.) He is a better sprinter than me
3.) He was the only guy out there that could overtake me in the Mason Lake Series points standings...they don't mean anything--but I'd rather take 1st place in something than second.

So Rob was chasing me as I was bridging and he actually got into my draft just as we hit a slight increase in the grade of the hill. I gave it a little extra and next time I looked back Rob had his head down, I had a five meter gap on him, and it was growing. Whew, dodged a bullet there. I caught up with Derik and Ian and we started rotating through. At first Derik was sitting hoping that Rob would get a second wind and compleat the bridge up to us, but it didn't happen.

Ian and I are comparatively large cyclists while Derik is substantially smaller. Note that this image is of a three man break. I know, I know you can only see two guys, but trust me Derik is back there. He's just a lot smaller. He's plenty strong though, he beat me soundly at the Ice Breaker time trial, and anything he lacks in size is made up for definitively by his sweet stache. It may even be superior to the 70's porn facial hair sported by Gonzaga's Adam Morrison (March Madness baby).

For all you haters out there, I'm not even being facetious, that thing is awesome.

Stature and facial hair aside Derik was sitting on for most of the last lap and a half cause he was gassed. He would pull through every now and again, but he was hurting. As you can tell from the picture Ian and I weren't feeling particularly strong either. As we approached the 1k to go sign on the final lap with a two minute lead everyone started sitting up and the cat and mouse games were about to begin. Just after the 1k sign there is a steep little downhill--generally not the best place to attack, but we were all going slow so I did. I got a 30 meter gap and it was a perfect move for 700 meters to go. Unfortunately I had 950 meters to go and blew sky high 250 meters from the finish line (oops). The legs just stopped functioning. It was nasty. Ian reeled me in and passed me for first place and I rolled in for second. Derik had been truthful when he said he was blown earlier because he didn't pass me on that last little bit, though I think that saw a couple of banana slugs that did. Can't be certain though, things were a bit fuzzy.

My consolations are that I lost being aggressive instead of defensive, Ian was hurting too, and lastly if I'm going to lose to someone, I'm glad it's to a guy that does his smack talking with his legs and not his lips.

He got the hands up for the victory salute, but getting the head up may have been too much to ask.

As for me, I'm blowing..blowing..BLOWN!

Final standings for the Mason Lake series were as follows
1 James Stangeland Wines of Washington .....39
2 Robert Campbell Valley Athletic Club .....23
3 Ian Tubbs Broadmark Capital/Hagens Berman LLC .....21
4 Michael Murdin Garage Racing .....15
5 Derik Archibald Valley Athletic Club .....14
6 Michael Emde AxleyUSA.com/Spoke & Sprocket .....12
7 ADRIAN HEGYVARY RECYCLED CYCLES RACING .....10
7 Steven Holland Emerald Velo Cycling Team Inc .....10
9 Andrew Martin Wines of Washington .....8
10 Douglas Beardsley Unattached .....6

I'll get the Market Street (Sunday) race report up when I get a chance.

2006-03-13T16:55:00.000-08:00

SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!

Last week by the numbers is back, and it's badder than ever (said in Governator voice)

Number of races.......................................................2
Number of miles raced........................................................156
The sum total of my final placings (all of which were odd).......4
Percentage of my friends who can figure out what that means..10%
Money won...............................................................$75
Take home after fees, gas, ferry, and treating team to dinner.$-13.00

Two races this past weekend, Saturday was 72 miles for the second of three in the Mason Lake Series, and Sunday was 84 miles out in Sequim which is the first "real" (not training) race of the season. In other words, that one actually counts.

Mason Lake was another lovely day for racing in the Pacific Northwest. It was cold, but sunny and dry which is A-OK by me. In other good news our team kits finally arrived (for the most part, 9 of 11 boxes showed up). This meant I finally got to wear a clean kit without any holes in it. There were more than a couple of comments made by my friends about how they couldn't recognize me in a clean outfit.

The race started with a flurry of little attacks that would either go nowhere or just dangle out in front for a while. The Garage (that's one of the local teams) was being pretty darn aggressive and doing a good job of getting in or starting all the breaks. One of their riders and Ian Tubbs (strong man on Broadmark) were off the front for a few laps. I tried bridging up to them a few times, but the pack was having none of it. I would accelerate and build up a gap and would instantly have the whole field, especially The Garage, chasing me down. I tried three times but with no success. We caught Ian and the Garage rider (I thought that it was Jason Bethel, but was later told that was wrong so I'm not certain who it was). We eventually reeled them back in and there were some other attacks that didn't stick. A couple of miles before the last lap Michael Murden from the Garage was off the front by 100 meters give or take so I started to bridge up to him and miracle of all miracles, nobody chased me. Probably because it was a stupid move to chase. There was very little chance of Michael and I getting enough of a gap to stay away with only a bit over one lap to go.

I bridged up and immediately pulled through with Michael hopping on my wheel. I wanted to expand the gap quickly because we were in the twisty part of the course where it's possible to get out of sight without too much difficulty. Just after the start finish the course turns onto a small highway and you can see for a good distance there. I wanted to be out of sight by the highway. As I was pulling Michael along one of my teammates radioed me "dude, don't kill yourself, let Michael pull through." We started trading pulls and by the time we got to the highway I couldn't see the pack anymore. On the highway section it was wide enough for the follow car to come up beside us and give gaps. At first we were sitting at 30 seconds up for quite a while, but by turn two the gap was a minute to the peloton and 30 seconds to a chase group of six. Throughout I was also getting updates from my buddy Andrew who was radioing me from the chase group telling me the same information. He and Wes were covering the chase group so there were only actually four riders chasing while Andrew and Wes sat on. I don't really know how good a sprinter Michael is so I resolved to myself to try and drop him just before the 1k to go marker. We came up on the spot that I thought was just around the corner from 1K to go and I gunned it up one of the small rollers just as he pulled off. I got a gap and managed to keep opening that gap up. Unfortunately I had misjudged our location on the course, I was closer to two miles from the finish than I was to 1000 meters...oops. It was a painful last couple miles, but I just kept pushing and finally after what seemed waaaaaay too long saw the 1000 meter mark. One nice aspect of that last couple miles was my friend Martha Walsh was driving the lead car and waving her arm out the window. Of course I couldn't tell if she was saying "come on you're almost there" or "hurry up dumb-ass, they're right behind you!" Probably both.

I kept gunning it until 200 meters to go and then just rolled in with a big stupid grin on my face. Good times, my first win as a cat 2. It was a great set of results for my team as we also took 4th and 7th place Granted it's in a training race that doesn't count for points or prizes or much of anything really...despite that, it felt really good. Really REAllY good.

That last effort on Saturday definitely took it's toll as my legs were cramping up pretty good on the ride home. I had cooled down after the race and gave them a 30 minute easy spin when I got home but still, that evening and the next morning they felt mighty gooey. Sunday was another gorgeous but chilly day which increases my nervousness about the bad weather to come. I'm telling you, it's never this nice consistently, we will get the weather smack down visited upon us soon.

Sunday was an 84 mile road race in Sequim. Last year my first race as a cat three was here and I was in a ~70 mile breakaway to win. Thus year I was in an 80 mile breakaway (for 79 of those I had to pee really badly) The break started with 6 or 7 guys in it including Wes Pierce from my team who had placed 7th on Saturday at Mason Lake. I was still in the main group as they were starting to pull away. A group of five started to bridge up to the leaders when a sixth jumped up to get in on the party. I hopped on his wheel and he pulled me up to the chase group that had kind of stalled out. My ride tucked into the chase pack as it was stalling out but I kept my momentum and jumped the extra 50 meters or so up to the leaders. This brought the total to eight two Broadmark riders (Anton Jackson, and Mike Hone), Myself and Wes, and four other guys that I don't really know. We worked for a lap pushing the pace pretty well at around 30 mph at first when we were opening up the gap, and then eventually settling down a bit once the gap had opened up. A bit into the second lap three riders including Ian Tubbs and Johnny Sundt bridged up to us. Ian won this race last year in a long breakaway with Johnny Sundt and looked to be hoping to repeat. We were all working and pulling through except for Johnny which I didn't understand in the least. The entire time he was there he didn't pull through once, and then suddenly I looked back and he wasn't there anymore. Last year he was a domestic pro with Jittery Joe's and is a strong rider. I don't know why he dropped off, but he did.

I digress. Long story short, the break eventually shrunk to just five riders by the last lap, Ian Tubs and Anton Jackson from Broadmark, Andrew from the Valley, and another guy I don't know. In the last 400 meters Anton and Ian attacked and counter attacked very well putting me on the defensive. Defense may win championships, but it doesn't win bike races. I was simply outnumbered, and Anton and Ian are talented racers that worked me over to take 1st and 2nd place leaving me in 3rd. All told though I'm happy with the weekend and it's good miles in on the legs.

A last couple of notes/amusing anecdotes.

Martha (the person that was waving me on from the lead car) has for whatever reason made it her goal to set me up with a cycling chick-a-dee, and to promote that cause after the race on Saturday she slipped me a note with the names and WSBA (Washington State Bicycle Association) racing numbers of all the women born between '78 and '82. This of course cracks me up, but I must say after she compiled the list, cross referenced it for and eliminated riders who listed the same address as male WSBA members (unavailable), and eliminated anyone in Eastern Washington (I don't wanna ride my bike over the Cascades right now) it was a really short list. I'm thinking I may need to cast my line in other waters, but many thanks to Martha for the thought and effort.

This year the WSBA (Washington State Bicycle Association) is tracking all USCF races in Washington and assigning a point system to them. So far I'm in first place for the state. Bear in mind that there is no award for this, monetary, honorary or otherwise, and it is almost certainly a temporary situation. Between that and Mason Lake I guess I could claim to be the reigning champion of things that don't matter.

Or perhaps the Undisputed Champion of Nothing...I like that.

Next week is the third and final race in the Mason Lake series (if I get a top six finish I clench the series), and a new twist on a road race from last year out in Ravensdale. Until then

-Jamie (Undisputed Champion of Nothing) Stangeland

2006-03-08T12:23:00.000-08:00

It's racing season again. For you that means I subject you to overly verbose descriptions of a bunch of idiots that can't seem to figure out that they would get where they are going a lot quicker and with a lot less pain if they stood still ...such are the sad tragedies of racing in circles.

For me it means spending more time looking forward to the next race than learning from the last, a predictable feeling of ugggg (medical term for this guy on the left) in my Monday legs, and the bladder of a pregnant octogenarian. I'm sure that you didn't need to know that, but seriously, WTF? My only thoughts are that I am a both copious and salty sweater (that's a person that produces a lot of sweat and leaves behind deposits of salt on my body and clothes when I race--not to be confused with an oversized, and over seasoned winter garment). Sorry bad humor. Back to my line of thought--after ditching all that salt I think it might be some kind of osmosis gone wild until my body equalizes thus making me run to the bathroom every 15 minutes. If anyone has an educated explanation that would be appreciated. Nonsensical opinions will be accepted too.

The racing this weekend started with the first in the Mason Lake series which had uncharacteristically nice weather. This doesn't really come as any surprise because the weather gods in the Northwest like to taunt us with some nice days before bringing the clouds in for another six to eight weeks. Dirty Bastards (note that the capitalization is not a typo; around here Dirty Bastards is the proper name for the springtime weather gods).

The course is a lightly rolling 12 mile loop around Mason Lake. There are no appreciable climbs, but after months of not racing and 6 laps, the dinky little rollers that do exist start to wear you down. Actually, to be fair, they started to wear me down after about four laps, but we'll get to that. The race started with a fairly mild first lap that had some people testing the field with some attacks, but nothing that stuck or got more than a 20 second lead. Sometime in lap two a move started to go off the front with two riders (Ian Tubbs, and Chad Nikolz) that are really strong. I saw it start to go and was able to hop onto Chad's wheel. There were roughly 13 of us initially and while it lacked organization at first we started working well together. Well, most of us did. There were two riders from The Valley team that were just sitting on the back. I couldn't understand why, and a bunch of riders in the break were discussing it with The Valley guys. I don't know if the peer pressure worked or if the Valley guys changed their minds, but once we built up a two minute gap one of them (Derik Archibald) started working with us fairly consistently, but the other (Rob Campbell) never did much for the break. At some point early on when we were still going strong, we lost a couple riders. One from the Garage (Michael Murden) and another guy I never saw. Most of the race really wasn't very interesting, just rotating through and building up the gap. There was one point maybe five laps in where we were convinced that we were pissing away our lead, but when we got the time check from the follow car we were sitting five minutes up. So much for pissing away our lead. After four laps I was starting to feel kind of tired. Not in danger of getting dropped, but the rollers--slight as they were, started to burn more than a little. Fortunately once we got to the last lap I got an adrenaline boost. Adrenaline is one hell of a drug. Suddenly I didn't feel tired at all, I had a big ol' smile on my face and everything was peachy keen.

In the last lap attacks started coming consistently, but since there were two teams in the break that had two people (Valley and Broadmark), and one team that had three people (Recycled Cycles), I didn't really have to chase any of them down. I just waited for one of the teams that wasn't represented in the attack to chase it down and hopped on their wheel. Now if an attack had gone off with a member from each of those three I would have been worried, and would have had to chase. Fortunately for me, that didn't happen. As we were approaching the finish Ian Tubbs put in an attack that didn't last long. Everyone knows that Ian can lay down a very aggressive pace if he gets a decent gap, so we all jumped on him immediately. Ian Tubbs, Derik Archibald, and Ian Mckissick provided the leadout from around 1000 meters to go. I got on Ian Mcissick's wheel and he started to die at about 250 to go and was really toast by 225 when I started to come around him. I had Chad and Rob on my wheel and knew that if I really started my sprint that far out I would just be giving them the perfect leadout. With that in mind I came around Ian relatively slowly and both Rob and Chad came around me at full speed 20 meters later. I ducked in behind them as best I could, and tried to come around them in the last hundred meters. Rob started to celebrate a little early (hands in the air) but then saw me coming up behind him and got his hands back down on the bars to put in a few extra strokes and hold me off. I managed to just barely beat Chad to the line for second (I heard someone say there were ~65 racers total, but I don't know how accurate that is).

My mistake in that sprint was getting on Ian's wheel instead of Rob's. Ian had been off the front of the group for half of the final lap and was pretty fatigued, Rob on the other hand had sat for most of the day and is one heck of a sprinter. Oh well, second is my best finish in a 1-2 race so far and I am not disappointed. Just eager to do better (statistically, not likely to happen this coming weekend, but I'll try). That being said Mason Lake is just a training race and you are racing for nothing but experience and pride. No prizes, no points, nada. Well that isn't entirely true. In my carpool shotgun for the return trip went to the top finisher in the car. I cherished that ride home in shotgun.

Sunday was the Ice Breaker Time Trial.

I sucked.

A lot.

9th place

Every time that I think I have myself figured out, I'm wrong. I thought that I was a good time trialist and couldn't put together a sprint to save my life. Then I go and put together a decent (albeit far from great) sprint and a terrible TT. I'm done trying to figure myself out.

2006-03-01T14:12:00.000-08:00

It's T-minus three days until my first race of the year and I'm excited. It's been a while since my last race report. I raced more after the last report but I was burned out on writing reports, so I stopped. I finished up last season with some pretty good results, but a win as a cat 2 rider has eluded me so far. In addition to being winless I also failed to achieve the cat 1 upgrade I was trying for. I had results that would have been sufficient, but they were either in races that were divided into pro/1 and 2/3 events (you need to race against cat 1's to get your cat 1 upgrade), or in races where we didn't quite meet the field limit (you need 60 riders in the race for it to count). That shouldn't be the case this year.
I don't mean to sound like I am disappointed with my last season, I'm plenty happy with it--it's just good to have goals. In the off season I started working with a coach. Last year my training plan consisted of my commute. I would bike to work and bike home which was great for my base miles (I live a pretty long way from work, ~21 miles each way), but it didn't do a lot for specific training. One disappointment was that at the end of last season I did the Gear Push time trial which is the same distance (10 miles) on the same course as the Ice Breaker TT that I did at the beginning of the season. Despite upgrading twice and making substantial improvements to my racing ability in the months between the two TT's my time at the second one was identical to the first down to the second. The fear of being stagnant is part of what drove me to work with a coach and start some specific training. I feel like I'm faster now than I was last year but I really don't know until I start racing. Hopefully it will pay off, we'll find out soon enough.
Note: Despite a total lack of humor in this, my first entry, I will try to work it back in future entries. Cut me some slack, I've been working 12 hours a day (not counting commute) and I'm tired.

2005-06-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

Race Report #12

Number of crashes in my race………………………......……. A lot
Number of seconds before the first crash………………… 15-20
Number of flat tires last week……………………………......... 4
Number of broken spokes last week…………….....………… 1
Number of buckled rims…………………….……….........…….. 1
Number of new holes in my flesh………………….......……… 5
Number of times laws of physics were broken…..……….. 1

It was a bit of a crumby week as far as cycling was concerned. As noted above I had four flat tires a broken spoke and a buckled rim. Normally that many flats would indicate that I had done a few bad patch jobs, or hadn’t found the splinter of glass that was causing the punctures. This time the four flats and the broken spoke occurred on four different wheels. I am starting to suspect that my bikes have unionized and are going on strike.

Whatever

There was one race this weekend and one day of nice weather. The two did not coincide. Saturday it rained most of the day over most of Seattle, but when I arrived in Ballard at the site of the race (shortly after getting flat tire number 3 for the week) the course was mostly dry and while the sky was overcast nothing was coming down. Following the advice of nearly everyone I spoke to, I waited until the last minute to register for the race. I’ve been told that there are only two races in the area that shouldn’t be done in the rain, Ballard is one of them. The reason being that while it isn’t a terribly technical course, just a standard four corner crit two blocks long by one block wide, there are a few sections of brick that are super slick when wet. The deadline for registering was fifteen minutes before the race.

Five minutes before the race it began to rain and I could swear the clouds were laughing at us. The race started and sure enough, first corner first lap two riders in front of me there was a crash. My team captain was one rider in front of me and he went down, cursing the whole way. I managed to avoid that crash and caught back onto the retreating pack. Next time I wasn’t so lucky. We were maybe twenty minutes into the race and an attack went off the front. I followed but he went into the corner a little too hot and down he went. It was either hit him and then crash or just crash and skip hitting him, I went with the latter, grabbed the bike and headed for the wheel pit. Overall not too bad a wreck; road rash on my left hand, shoulder, hip, thigh and ankle. Unfortunately for those of us in the crash they placed us back in the pack rather than with the breakaway which is where we had been. The remainder of the race is largely a blur. I was nervous about going through the corners with any real speed so I got gapped coming out of every corner and had to chase back on over the flats. Nearing the end of the race I noticed that I was the only guy on my team left in the race (six others started) and that the rest of the field had suffered a similar attrition. Finally we were down to five laps to go meaning that the wheel pit was closed and the free lap rule was no longer in effect. With three and three quarters laps to go I was going around turn two when suddenly my rear tire was sliding out from underneath me and I heard metal grinding on concrete. I don’t know how a flatted in the first place, but even more mysterious I can’t possibly comprehend how I didn’t fall. I think that the race gods showed mercy on me suspended the laws of physics and allowed me to walk my bike to the finish line to watch the sprint. The guy behind me wasn’t so lucky. He saw me start to slide, locked up his breaks, and went down with a thunk sliding off the road and over some train tracks.

Despite the fact that I wasn’t able to finish for obvious reasons, I don’t feel too bad about the race. I was far from comfortable with the race but I felt a little more so than I did at the last rainy crit I was in.

On a side note I heard a funny story from one of my teammates at a BBQ last night. He was talking with a couple of the top riders from two of the other local teams and they wanted to know where I came from. The cycling world is pretty small when it comes down to it and they were wondering how I could just appear like they seem to think that I have, so they Googled me. All that turned up was some collegiate C and B race results and some rowing results. Neither of which really is an explanation for being just nine points shy of becoming a cat one racer after so short a time. The point of the story is that I am apparently gaining a bit of notoriety in the local cycling circle. It does the ego good to know that I’m getting noticed, even if it is for being a freak-show.

2005-06-06T15:16:00.000-07:00

Race Report # 11

Number of races .................................................. 1
Number of bikes used in said race .................... 2
Number of squirrels that got severely messed up trying to run through the pack ..... 1
Number of teammates that got severely messed up in crashes .......................... 1

In last week’s race report I said that I would be racing at Volunteer Park in Seattle on June 12th. That was a big fat lie. Volunteer Park was this Sunday and it was a blast, well it was a blast for me. Great course nice weather and lots of team support. It was another matter altogether for the squirrel and teammate mentioned above.

It was a criterium, but the course only had two real corners, and only one of them was sharp. From the start line we rode south and circle around a large brick water tower that resembles a castle turret. After circling around the tower three quarters of the way we made a sharp left turn into the downhill which curved around the bottom of a reservoir and then curved back uphill to the second corner which set us up for the 200 meter roughly straight false flat to the finish.

I managed to line up on the front of the pack which is still a rarity for me, but it’s nice to not feel like you’re down before you start. The first few laps were nothing terribly special. I was expecting it to be like other criteriums where I have to hang on for dear life for the first five laps, but it just wasn’t like that. At least I don’t think that it was, it could also be that my body was just better rested. Last weekend I had friends in town and I had four consecutive days where I didn’t ride the bike. I was active and moving around, hiking, sea kayaking, and eating. Lots of eating, but my butt never touched the saddle. I’m pretty sure that I haven’t been off the bike for that long since before I started working at Boeing in October. When I finally did get back on on Wednesday I felt substantially stronger than I have in quite a while. I suppose that it’s possible the race actually did start out the same way it always does and I just felt stronger.

After the first five or so laps I decided to spice things up a bit so I attacked. I got away solo and managed to build a 20 second lead over four or five laps when my chain started making this horrible noise and jumping gears every couple of pedal revolutions. I would find out later that I had somehow managed to twist my chain by bending two separate sets of links—no idea how that happened. I would guess that this resulted in a 10-15 percent reduction in my power output and it definitely ruined my rhythm. We hadn’t had a prime yet so I decided that I would try and stay off the front until we got a prime lap just so that I could have something to take home with me before being forced to abandon. Shortly thereafter they rang the bell for a prime lap and I took that but shortly after two riders had bridged up to me. One of them I didn’t recognize, but the other was Kenny Williams who has won just about every crit he’s ever been in. Off the top of my head I can’t think of a criterium that he’s been in this year that he hasn’t won. He’s just that fast.

The rider I didn’t recognize dropped off pretty quickly because he couldn’t hang, and it was just me and Kenny. Had my bike been working I am confident that he and I could have walked away from the field. He almost certainly would have taken the sprint (barring divine intervention in the form of a flat tire, loose dog, or lightning bolt from above), but I would have had a very convincing second place wrapped up. The chain issue proved to be too much for me and I started dropping off the back, but by that point we had better than a thirty second lead. The next few laps were probably my stupidest of the race. If you are experiencing a mechanical problem in a criterium you are supposed to be able to stop in the pit get it fixed and start back with no penalty. I didn’t want to try this because I’ve had bad luck at being granted free laps in the past and I knew that the problem was with my chain which isn’t something that is easy to fix on the fly. What I finally did far later than I should have was yell at my teammates who were watching the race to tell them that my chain was f****d and that I needed a different bike, one with Speedplay pedals. One lap later they said they had one for me but it was just as the pack was catching me and I was on the wrong side of the course. I had to wait for the entire pack to go by before running across the street to the correct side of the course getting off of my bike and climbing onto the new one.

By the time I got on the new bike I was 150-200 meters off the back of the pack. In general it doesn’t take long to go 200 meters on a bike, but when those 200 meters are riding away from you at the speed of the Pro-1-2 peloton it gets a lot harder and takes a lot longer. It also doesn’t help when the bike that you’re on isn’t yours and the seat is an inch and a half too low. I don’t mean to sound like I’m bragging, but for most (95%) of the riders out there, their races would have been over right there. It took me five very painful laps (remember that before I was off the back by myself, I had been off the front by myself), but I managed to catch back on. I spent a few minutes trying to recover but it didn’t last long before one of my teammates pulled up next to me and said that we had to get to the front in order to try and chase Kenny down.

By then Kenny had a lead of just under a minute. We tried to organize a chase but between Kenny’s teammates who were blocking and the general unwillingness to chase, it just didn’t happen. At one point when it almost started getting organized a squirrel ran into the peloton and tried to run through some guy’s wheel. The spokes caught him and sent him flying around the peloton like a pinball. I felt bad for the little guy, but decided it was better to pay attention to the racing to avoid the same fate. Time wore on and I must have recovered a little bit because I found myself attacking off the front again, solo again, with five laps to go. I got a 10 second gap when a chase group of four riders started closing on me. They caught me but not before I got the last prime of the race with three laps to go. We had no chance at catching Kenny who had almost lapped the field by then, but the four of us were guaranteed no worse than 5th place if we stayed away from the pack. After so much time off either the front or the back of the pack I didn’t think that my legs had much of a sprint left in them so I attacked near the bottom of the hill heading into the uphill section. This gave me a good gap on two of my opponents but the third was able to hang on and pass me at the top of the hill where he was able to take the sprint because, as I suspected, my legs didn’t have a sprint left in them.

In the end I finished third and took two primes, which I was happy with especially given the circumstances of the race.

The bad news is that in the next race, the men’s masters C/D race, my friend Suz Weldon got taken out. Suz is the pro women’s racer that I’ve mentioned in some other race reports and she was racing in her second event of the day. She’s been really good to me, lending me aero wheels for time trials and just giving me general support so it was really sad to hear that she had crashed hard. She now has a “fractured rib, multiple fractures of her clavicle, and a pneumothorax.” I’m no doctor but that sounds like a busted chest, a really busted collar bone, and a bunch of air inside the chest and outside the lung (bad). The doctors put a chest tube in for drainage but her lung was 40% collapsed at the time and that’s all the news that I’ve got so far. She will be fine but damn that sucks.

Not to sound callous by moving on too quickly but my next race is the 11th in Ballard starting at 8:00 pm. It’s a twilight crit which are really cool races to watch, email me if you want to know more (location etc.).

See you all

2005-05-31T15:14:00.000-07:00

Race Report # 10

Number of pro teams at the race last weekend 2
Number of pro riders 13
# of women who lost teeth and had to get their jaw wired shut after crashing
Cloud she was on after a whole lot of Percocet ™

Last weekend was the Enumclaw Stage Race, a local favorite because it is the only stage race in the region that is less than three hours from Seattle. As is the routine it started with the time trial Saturday morning/early afternoon followed by the criterium later in the day, and the road race on Sunday. This particular race was missing some of the local big names, but we had the entire Symmetrics team to make up for it. Symmetrics is Canada’s top pro team and has a lot of talent. This same team competed against top level European teams at the Tour de Georgia last month.

The TT was a 10km loop (6.2 miles) that is mostly flat starting with ~2 mile straight away, followed by a sharp right turn into another 2 miles of winding farm roads with one small 30 foot climb that then led into a 1.5 mile straightaway before the final left turn 400 meters before the finish line. Once again my friend Suz (the women’s pro rider for Subway) was kind enough to lend me her aero trispoke front wheel, so once again I was without any way to determine how fast I was going other than how blurry the ground in front of me looked. My 30 second man was a Symmetrics rider who was pretty impressive looking with his tricked out TT bike complete with a set of Zipp (top of the line very expensive) aero wheels. He made a good carrot to chase over the first two miles and I found myself slowly closing on him. By the time he made the right turn onto the winding portion of the race I had cut his lead to 15 seconds, but could no longer see him as 15 seconds was plenty of time to get around the next bend and out of site. I caught site of him just before the small 30ft climb—a 30 foot climb doesn’t sound like much but after pushing yourself at or above your lactate threshold for seven minutes it feels like a mountain. I stumbled up and over the hill trying to balance my need to conserve momentum with my fear of pushing myself too far into the red with more than a third of the course left. At the top of the climb he was within striking distance and I passed him shortly after managing to wheeze out a “LEFT” as I started my pass in order to get him to yield the inside of the bend that we were approaching. On the last leg of the race the wind picked up a bit and I found a new carrot to chase. My minute man hadn’t started the race, so this was my minute thirty man. Catching the rider who started a minute and thirty seconds in front of you on a course that is only a hair over six miles long is no simple task so I started to really bury myself in the effort (I also wanted to demoralize the pro-rider that I had just passed). I caught the minute thirty man just before the left turn signaling four hundred meters to go and sprinted out the remainder of the course. Later in the day at the criterium course I found out that my time was good enough for fifth place; I was bested by one local rider and three of the Symmetrics riders, one of which is the current Canadian TT champion (Svein Tuft) and another (Eric Wohlberg) won the eight consecutive Canadian TT championships before that and is a three time Olympian. Considering that resume I suppose that I can accept losing to them (this time).

When I was checking out the TT times at the crit course there were a couple of racers from a local team called “Valley Athletics” who were looking at the results and saying

“We need to steal this James Strangeland guy before some other team does.”
I said “You mean James Stangeland?”
“You know him?”
“Pleasure to meet you.”

It was pretty funny to see the looks on their faces at that point. About an hour later I got my first official offer to join another team. I politely declined, it was fun to get an offer but I don’t want to leave my team, even if we aren’t quite as strong as some of the other local teams.

The criterium is a figure eight course that would be fun if it stayed dry, but it never seems to do that and as such has a bad history with our team. Last year there was a bad crash in every single race and all but two of those crashes involved someone from our team. The worst involved a teammate who landed hard fracturing his chin resulting in it being wired shut for six weeks (that’s a whole lot of ensure that you have to drink). This year the weather started out dry and then started to rain midway through the races steadily getting heavier through the day until the final (my) race. Nobody on my team crashed, but once the rains came one woman pulled a repeat of what my teammate did last year. The crash combined with my discomfort with crits in general plus the increase in rain made me a very unhappy racer. I started near the front, but was tentative about bombing through the wet corners at high speed (I didn’t have a computer, but the cops who were acting as traffic control clocked us going 32 mph through the corners, that’s fast given that the corners should be the slowest portion of the race). I quickly dropped to the back of the pack and sat there for the entire race. Symmetrics was on the front controlling the race very effectively and I knew that I wouldn’t be in contention for the time bonuses (top three places) so I sat on the back and finished with the pack thus receiving the same time. At the finish I had so much dirt on my face that it looked like I was growing a beard. I didn’t care I just threw my hands in the air after crossing the line in 44th place yelling “I didn’t crash!!!” Then I crashed.

Just kidding.

The road race was a 15.5 mile loop that we went around five and a half times including a two mile climb that we went up six times. Symmetrics went into the race with first second and third place firmly in their grasp. They just went to the front and set the pace. A few breaks would go off of the front, but the Symmetrics would pace them a few hundred meters back and let them wear themselves out. In general this made it really easy for me on the flats because I could just sit on the back of the pack and rest assured that while there would be some attempts at break aways I didn’t need to concern myself with them because it was handled. One exception was a portion of the flats where we had some severe cross winds, I can’t hazard a quantitative guess as to how strong they were, but I will say that they were fierce. In those portions of the race Symmetrics would form an echelon, giving themselves shelter from the team but providing little to no draft for anyone behind them. Then they would hammer, this split the pack a couple of times, but most of them caught back on, of course if they didn’t I probably wouldn’t have noticed. The hill portion was more of the tough and less of the easy. It’s safe to say that there is no such thing as taking it easy up a climb in a race, especially when you have a pro team driving the pace. The final climb up the hill was a doozy and nearing the top I was caught behind a small group of riders that was getting gapped by the leading group of ~15 riders. At the top of the climb the route takes a left and there are two miles of ridge riding flats before the finish line. I wanted to catch back on before the flats because I wasn’t confident that I would be able to do so once the pack started hammering for the finish line. With a big last push and a whole lot of lactic acid four other riders and I managed to catch on just as they were cresting the climb and making the left turn onto the ridge. The last couple of miles consisted of lots of jockeying for position and at one point I was ¼” from being shoved off the side of the road and into a ditch. Just after the 1 km to go sign a Broadmark (local team) rider made a break for it. I jumped and got on his wheel ignoring the nagging voice in the back of my head that said this wasn’t quite right. As would be expected he blew up shortly with at least 500 meters to go in the race. This left me in the lead position long before I would have liked to be. The smart move would have been to sit up and wait for someone else to jump, but substantial lack of experience, a generous dosage of exhaustion, and a touch of hypoxia ganged up on my brain and apparently rendered me incapable of logical thought because as soon as the rider in front of me blew up I jumped providing the perfect leadout for everyone behind me. Ooops. I managed to hang on for ninth place in the sprint but if I had acted with a little more intelligence I could have done much better.

End result 5th place GC finish and $175 check for my troubles.

No racing this coming weekend, I’ll be back in the mix June 5th at Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill. So if you’re in Seattle and you want to watch, it’s a great venue for spectators.

2005-05-23T15:08:00.000-07:00

Race Report # 9

So I’m a little tardy in my race reporting, I’ve been busy yadda yadda yadda, who cares.

Two weeks ago by the numbers
# of races...........................................................................3
# of which I kicked butt in..................................................1
# of which my but was kicked in.........................................2
# of race weekends that have been tougher.........................0
# of opponents caught being a chucklehead cheater.............1

The races this weekend were part of the Wenatchee Omnium, it started with the time trial Saturday morning followed by the crit that evening and then the road race on Sunday.

The time trial was 9.4 miles out and back course of gently rolling road on the outskirts of Wenatchee with 30 second intervals between the riders. I had been looking forward to this event since finding out that my 30 second man was a rider named Ian McKissick. Ian is the only other racer in the Pro-1-2 field that started the season as a cat 4 rider. He is strong as an ox, friendly, fun, and an all around great guy so of course I want to beat him badly. It also doesn’t hurt the competitive spirit that in pretty much every meeting that we’ve had he’s come out on top (grrrrr). While I was warming up about 20 minutes before my TT Suz Weldon (a woman who used to be on our team until she went pro—now rides for Subway) came up to me and offered to lend me her aero wheels. This is no little thing as they represent well over $1000 in equipment. I eagerly accepted the loan of her front trispoke wheel, but couldn’t take her rear disk wheel because it wasn’t compatible with my bike. This caused one minor issue in that her wheel didn’t have a magnet for my bike computer to read so I wasn’t going to have any idea how fast I was going, a mild annoyance at worst.

I caught Ian before the turnaround halfway point and caught one more rider after that. In the end I placed 5th out of 44 starters, not bad considering the fact that 1st place is a rider that got 4th in the nation last year, 3rd place was a pro a couple of years ago and 6th place is a professional cyclist now.

The criterium was a twilight crit that didn’t start until 8:10 that evening. I had never done one of these and it was very cool to start just before sunset, race into the dusk have the street and flood lights come on and then continue racing into the dark. The race started off fast and stayed that way. It was a four corner crit two blocks long and one short block wide. The two short blocks were small hills with flat stretches for the long segments. After corner one we would bomb down the hill bringing us into corner two at a blistering pace over uneven ground, cracked pavement, and manhole covers. It was a good thing that it was dry because we definitely would have had some crashes there had it been wet. Even with the good weather I still lost traction with my rear wheel a few times going around corner two but managed to stay rubber side down in all instances. Corner three took us around a large orange plastic traffic barrel and into the uphill. The uphill was short but if you had some extra juice in your legs it provided a good opportunity to move up in the pack before turn four and the final block and a half to the start finish line. Once the sun had set and the flood lights were turned on the race took on an entirely different feel. Monster cycling shadows chased you in and out of corners and over the flats giving you a slightly discombobulated feeling, but it was very cool. Also exciting was the fact that this was the best attended race thus far this season with spectators on every corner and along the length of every street. About halfway through the race (60 minutes total) I decided to go for one of the primes, sprinting up the hill and over the next block and a half to the start finish line. Unfortunately Russell Stevenson (current Washington State Champion and former pro) decided to go for the same prime and nosed me out by half a wheel. The effort left me pretty darn gassed and when the pack caught back up to us a lap later I quickly dropped to the back and had to struggle to hang on. The next ten to fifteen laps were wretched because just after I was reabsorbed into the pack an attack went off the front driving the pace and giving me no chance to recover. With three laps to go that attack had a twelve second lead on the pack, a lead that was erased in the last three laps. I still hadn’t really recovered, and it was all I could do to keep pace, but I managed to hang on for a 15th place finish. Not a good finish by any means, but it was better than a lot of good riders, and over half the field didn’t even make it to the finish, so I’m not too disappointed. Another cool little tidbit is the race director/announcer/ regional USCF (United States Cycling Federation) representative used the PA system to point out my quick upgrades from cat 4 to cat 2 and said I was a strong rider with all the tools to become one of the top racers in the region. Or so I’m told; between the blood pumping through my head and swallowing mouthfuls of bile, I didn’t hear a word of it.

The road race was just hard. It was a 13 mile easy flat lead up to a loop that was not easy, it was 12 miles of climbing followed by about the same distance decent. We had to do the loop twice. To make a long climb short I got flicked off of the lead pack about 9 miles into the climb and just couldn’t quite catch back on. I finished the rest of the race more or less solo and placed 20th. One loser on a team that shall remain nameless did the first lap went and rode circles in the parking lot then hopped in the second group heading towards the finish line. I would be pissed, but the guy is obviously an idiot that is just cheating himself out of training and toughness, and I will have fun every time I beat him for the rest of the season.

In the G.C. I ended up 14th overall thanks to my good TT, but I was too far back in both the crit and the road race to earn any points.

The race report for last weekend (once again this one was for two weeks ago) is coming soon, and I did pretty well (yay!).

2005-05-16T15:03:00.000-07:00

Race Report # 8

Weeks since last race report……………………………….…....2Races since last race report………………………………..…….1Number of crashes in last race……………………………..….…1Square inches of skin currently missing from right leg………~15The weekend before last was the State Juniors and masters championships, that's riders either 18 and under or 30 and over, I'm smack dab in the middle, so no racing for me that weekend. I didn't get to race but I did get to go for a great training ride with two ofmy teammates who also fall in the same age nether region that I do. We drove up to the North Cascades Highway aka highway 20 hopped on the bikes and went riding. It's pretty fantastic up there and it was fun to get to go up some mountains again. I haven't done that since I biked through the Pyrenees. That and I kicked butt despite being 20 and 30 pounds heavier than my two teammates. This weekend was the Elma/Vance Creek course that I raced on earlier in the season as a Cat 3. It’s a 13 mile loop with a long series of small flat farm roads heading in one direction then a turn, a 1000+ meter climb (linear, not vertical) with some rollers at the top, then a big descent that takes you back down to the flat farm roads.
Just before our race began it started to rain, not hard but enough to be annoying and get the roads nice and slick. It stopped 15 minutes before the start of the race, but once the race began we rode a couple miles into it when up ahead there was a curtain of rain hanging over the road. We went from dry, nice, happy riding to torrential pebble sized raindrops downpour and the worst part was it was just sitting there while we were riding into it of our own volition. Idiots, all of us. That happened just before the climb and continued through rollers on the top and into the descent back down the other side. I was a little nervous going into the descent because the last time I had done it we were cracking 50 mph, but it had been dry. I really had no desire to go down that fast given the fact that my glasses were completely fogged up and I could barely see a thing. Fortunately that seemed to be the consensus because we made the descent at a relatively tame 40 mph.
We got to the bottom of the hill and I breathed a little sigh of relief—while my pants were soaked, it was not I who wet them. Then just like that we were out of the rain. The roads were still wet which became an extra special treat upon turning onto the farm roads. The farm roads were covered with what in polite company might be referred to as dirt. Since I’m writing this report and not someone from said polite company I’ll call it what it was, shit; excrement, fecal matter, poo, manure, crap, all very stinky, all very slick, and all flying at my face off of the tire in front of me. I’m actually somewhat surprised that I haven’t suffered from some kind of Giardia or dysentery. Lucky me.
The next several laps were all pretty much like that. The rain would hop around to different parts of the course keeping the whole thing nice and wet but giving us false hope that it had stopped every time we left the curtain. The 5th time up the hill (out of 7) I was up near the front because the pack felt pretty twitchy and I was expecting a break to go. The last 1-2 race that I saw finish this course had been very spread out and I was both eager to be on the good end of that spread and to see how my fitness actually compares. I was sitting second position in the pack when the man in front started to push it. I stayed on his wheel as we cranked all the way up, and came close to blowing up at the top. I had been waiting for the attack I was expecting to come around me when I looked behind me and realized we were the attack. We had left the pack about fifty meters back, unfortunately neither of us really had much juice left just then and the two of us by ourselves weren’t going to make it stick. I grabbed a Gu (basically a packet of sugary paste that your body can absorb quickly) and started to eat it at exactly the wrong time because as soon as I got it in my mouth the pack caught up to us and started sending counter attacks. This left me in the unenviable position of sprinting after people with a mouth full of paste, a little silver packet sticking out of my mouth, and a mantra of stupid-STUPID STUPID running through my head. Little attacks kept going up until the downhill where a group of seven or so were off the front. I took the descent pretty easy as it was still quite wet and I was still quite nervous about it. At the bottom we caught the break and myself and two others formed a counter attack. We had a small but distinct lead, five seconds or so, but it was growing and one of the two riders I was with I know to be a very strong racer from a very strong team that would help to muck things up in the pack so that he (we) could get away. In short I was thinking that this might stick.
We turned onto the farm roads flat section and I was pulling us through the first 90 degree right when I noticed that I was horizontal and no part of myself or my bike was touching the ground. This didn’t last long because gravity is a total jerk like that, and I was soon sliding across the poo-covered chip sealed pavement. For those of you who don’t know what chip seal is, it’s a type of road surface consisting of gravel (in this case very sharp pointy gravel) glued to the road with tar. Kind of has a very rough sandpaper, or cheese grater effect on the legs. After the shredding of my thigh was kind enough to bring me to a stop I picked up the bike, jumped back on (being careful not to look too closely at my leg) and caught back onto the back end of the pack. One minute later I notice my rear tire is flat, I don’t know if it was from the crash or if the crash was from it but I pulled over and signaled for a wheel change. Sadly in the crash I had bent a piece of my bike known as the derailer hanger making it very difficult to get the new wheel on. It took about three minutes and the pack was completely out of site. My race was pretty much over because there was no chance of me catching back onto the pack with only a lap and a half to go unless the officials neutralized them, which is very unlikely. I finished the lap I was on and waited at the finish line to see who won.
Lesson for the race: don’t crash, it sucks.
That being said, I’m fine, it actually hurts more to walk than it does to ride so I will be racing this weekend and hopefully will produce better results for my next report.

2005-05-02T15:01:00.000-07:00

Race Report # 7

Tour de Walla Walla by the numbers

# of miles driven (each way) from Seattle to Walla Walla……………………280
# of months ago that I pre-registered for this race……………………………...2
# of times I had to email the race director to change my category (upgrade)…..2
# of acts of God during road race………………………………………………1
# of teammates who sought shelter in liquor store during said act of God…….5
# of bottles of Jaegermeister consumed while there…………………………....1
# of crashes in the criteriums (that I am aware of)……………………………..5
# of riders who went into seizures after crashing………………………………1
# of times the ambulance came to the crit before deciding to just stay..……….4
# of riders permanently injured ………………………………………………..0

So I had been looking forward to this race for quite some time, from all accounts an excellent race. The schedule called for a 5 mile time trial Saturday morning followed by a 93 mile road race Saturday afternoon and a crit on Sunday. This was a stage race (albeit a very short one) meaning that in addition to awards for the top finishers in each race, there is the GC (General Classification) which is the cumulative time for all of the events.

The time trial was a short, but deceptively difficult course. There were a few small rolling hills and a very strange wind pattern that tended to swirl around and act as either a headwind or crosswind depending on course location and time of day. There isn’t much to report about time trials; the guy in front of you goes off , you roll up to the start line, they hold you at the start line, 30 seconds after the guy before you, you are off. There are different approaches to time trialling, some like to pretend they are the only ones on the road and make it a very solitary event pushing their bodies as hard as they think it can take, others use an analytical approach involving power and heartrate monitors. As for myself, I just pretend that the guy who started in front of me stole my wallet and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let him get away with it. What happens when I catch him you ask—well I could try to run him off the road and get my wallet back, but I generally just pretend that the next guy has it. In this fashion I managed to catch both my 30 second and minute men (the riders who started 30 seconds and one minute ahead of me), and I was closing on my 1:30 man, but he crossed the finish line about 15 seconds before me. My goal was to get in the top ten. I knew that it was an aggressive goal, I also thought that it was a reachable one. When the results were posted I was 11th out of 82. It left me with a mixture of feelings, excitement that I am in the neighborhood of where I want to be, but disappointment that I haven’t made it there yet.

Time trials are all about maintaining the highest possible power output while reducing the amount of drag you receive from wind resistance. The first part of that (power) is training and to a certain extent genetics, no quick fix available there. The second part, (reducing wind resistance) is mostly equipment, and a little bit of technique. I’m part way there, I have a pretty sweet time trial bike and a skin suit (as tight as you think that bike clothes are to start with, these are tighter), what I lack and the ten people who placed above me all have is aero wheels, aero helmet, and maybe even time spent in a wind tunnel fine tuning their position to get the least possible drag. Conventional wisdom says that a top notch set of aero wheels can yield as much as 40 seconds over 10 miles. This course was 5 miles which would chop that down to 20 seconds. Just to be conservative I’ll say it would only be worth 10 seconds. If I had been 10 seconds faster I would have made the top ten easily, and I think it would have been good enough for me to get into the top five. I’m not complaining here, I’m excited. This means that I’m already competitive in the power department, and I know that I’ve got plenty of room for improvement in both training and equipment.

After the time trial it was ‘hang out in the parking lot until the road race starts’ time. A few hours later 1:30 rolls around and we started the road race. Eastern Washington is quite beautiful in that stark rolling hills of yellows and green as far as the eye can see sort of way. With so few trees and buildings to break up the landscape it just seems larger than life. Of course I don’t have much time to take it in because I’m staring at the spandex clad bootie in front of me making sure that I don’t run into it. The race starts off easy enough with some small rolling hills and one or two riders attacking to test the waters, but nothing that stays away for more than a few minutes. As we were riding up one of the slight inclines one rider in front of me starts gesturing for everyone on the right side of the road behind him to move left while his teammate beside him starts pushing him up the hill. In my experience such a gesture has indicated a car, pothole, or other obstacle approaching on the side of the road indicated. I was already on the left side of the road but was momentarily confused when I noticed that the rider signaling for everyone to move over wasn’t moving over himself. It all became clear a second later when a steady stream of liquid and a very contented groaning started emanating from the rider in question. I recall a tear coming to my eye and thinking
“Wow…I’ve made it to the big time, people are peeing off their bikes…wait, that was a tear in my eye, right?”
Just kidding about the tear thing. Back to the road race. A few small to midsize climbs later we were heading through the town of Waitsburg. My teammates had told me to move to the front going through this town because the big climb of the course was just after, so that is what I tried to do. I managed to get into the top twenty five or so when we made a right turn onto what I correctly assumed to be “the climb.”

The day wasn’t particularly hot for eastern Washington, but it had been warm and largely sunny all day long. After making the turn we were slammed with a wall of wind and the temperature dropped by five or ten degrees instantly. More imposing than that though was the top of the climb. It was black. How a giant thunderhead like that sneaks up on you I may never fully understand, but none-the-less, there it was. At this point the effort has picked up on the climb and I’m thing to myself that this could really be getting interesting when lighting strikes start going off on either side of the hill we’re climbing. The effect was a very strange one, almost a sense of vertigo as it felt like we were ascending into the abyss…contradictions aside it was very cool. Halfway up the hill (~2 miles total) I had moved up to the top 15 or so and was working hard, but feeling comfortable and ready to pick up the pace if the need called for it. I was focusing on the front of the race but I found out later that on that climb we were shedding riders off the back of the pack at a steady rate leaving them to suffer up the hill in the wind by themselves. Half a mile from the crest of the hill the skies opened up dumping pea sized rain onto us that developed into hail as we approached the crest of the climb. The lightning flashes had picked up and the crashing of thunder could be felt in the cavity of your chest. At the top of the climb was the feed zone which is typically a chaotic mess of racers trying to grab bottles on the go, with the addition of hail and an electrical storm it was pretty much pandemonium. I finished off one of my bottles threw it into the feed zone and started the descent with the feeling that this was going to be a truly epic ride. Half a mile later the lead car pulled us over declaring the race cancelled due to the lightning.

I won’t say that they made the wrong decision or that I don’t understand it, but I was disappointed. The day seemed tailor made for me to do well. The climb was long and grueling and just steep enough (5%) to be cause trouble without penalizing my size too much. The head wind made it very difficult for the really light true climbers to get away off the front and it would have been impossible for them to stay away once the descent started. The weather was bad but I firmly believe that it was worse for everyone else. After commuting on bike to work all winter long in the Pacific Northwest there is very little weather that can phase me.

The race was officially cancelled so I figured that I would ride back to the start line, but they wouldn’t let us do that and sent us back to the top of the hill (probably the worst place to send us in a thunderstorm) so that we could catch rides from the feed zone back to the start line.

My teammates on the cat 4/5 squad were in the race behind us that had been stopped in the town at the bottom of the hill. Most teams sought shelter in the fire station, but my team (Whines of Washington, soon to be nicknamed Winos of Washington) found shelter in a liquor store, and one of them was carrying cash (unusual for a race) so they bought a bottle of Jaeger and went to town. It’s the first time that I’ve really regretted upgrading.

Sunday brought the crit which represented the final stage. Seeing as how there were no road race results I remained in 11th place overall. Crits very nearly always end in a pack finish unless there is some sort of hill on the course in order to break up the tempo. This course was six corners and dead flat. My race was the last one of the day and by the time I showed up and put my bike on the trainer to warm up there had already been three big crashes with three people sent to the hospital, not a good omen. After the women’s pro-1-2-3 race was over it was time for the men’s pro-1-2. I took my bike off the trainer and headed towards the start line when I noticed that the tire I had pumped up just over an hour ago was 80% flat. I didn’t have time to do anything but pump up the tire and get to the start line where I was already in the very back. Not a good thing as this is a course that gets very strung out and is notoriously difficult to move up on. Despite being in the back I manage to start better than most of the field and get to the midpoint of the pack before the first corner. The first few laps are brutal averaging well over 30 mph, but I maintain my position and settle into a rhythm of sorts. About 10 minutes into the hour long race there is a big crash that takes out five riders, I get hit but don’t go down though it’s enough to mess up my front derailer. My chain is now grinding incessantly against my derailer. I’m not sure if this qualifies as a malfunction that qualifies one for a pit stop, but the referees have neutralized the race so I figure that I can pull over for a lap and have the mechanic take a look at it. I do and he does, but he can’t do anything and I’m back in the race with the chain problem a slow leak in my rear tire and (unbeknownst to me at the time) a rear wheel that has been knocked out of true and is rubbing on the breakpad every revolution. The race progresses with me growing more and more anxious about the wheel below me but there is nothing I can do short of dropping out of the race which I am unwilling to do. I move forward and backward in the pack from lap to lap but the general trend is forward. Coming across the start/finish line I hear that there are eight laps to go and no more pit stops will be allowed. I haven’t crashed yet and I’m feeling relatively strong so I figure I should try and get myself to the front to see if I can place. Over the next four laps I work myself up to the top ten riders—both a very good place to be with four laps to go and a far easier thing said than done. With two and a half laps to go I feel my rear tire starting to slide underneath me on the turns and looking down I can see that it is soft. If I want to try and place I’m going to have to take the corners sharper and faster than I have all race, and it just doesn’t sound like a good idea on such a sketchy tire. All I need to do to guarantee an 11th place finish is finish the race so I sit up, start taking the corners easy and finish the race in the pack with a bike that needs some TLC, but remains, like my body, in one piece.

I’m bummed that my equipment crapped out on me to a certain extent, but once again I’m excited that the power looks like it is there to start getting some top ten finishes and the technique is progressing though it definitely still needs work. I don’t think that I will be racing next weekend, but I should be the following.

-James

P.S. Special thanks go out to Debi and Jim (the 69th and 70th members of the distribution list) for hosting my teammate and I over the weekend. You ROCK!

2005-04-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

RACE REPORT #6

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last race report, partly due to being busy, partly due to non-stellar results, but mostly due to the fact that I’m a huge procrastinator.

Last two weeks by the numbers
# of races I competed in…………………………………………………..3
# of races I missed………………………………………………………..1
# of worst finishes to date…………………………………………….…..2
Confidence I have in my crit riding ability………………………….....…..<0
Age of rider who got 4th at place Elma Road Race………………….…..15
# of upgrades to cat 2 rider………………………………………………1
# of weeks that took since start of season when I was a cat 4 rider…...…..5
# of riders in the history of my team who have done it faster………….......0

Two weekends ago on Saturday was the Elma Road Race. After the Elma Flats road race that I did early in the season my friend Nate and I rode the full course backwards. The hills involved must have grown in the fertile ground of my memory/imagination because I got there expecting a wall that I’d have to heroically struggle up in order to stick with the skinny climber types but all I got was a hill smaller than the one I live on. No complaints from me in that regard. The loop was 15 miles that we went around 4.5 times (the ½ is because we started just before the climb and finished at the top). It was very windy, fortunately the climb sheltered us from the wind going up and after coming down the course turned so that we had a tailwind on the backstretch. Turning to head back towards the climb left you facing a wall of wind that would generally slow the pack to a crawl as no one wanted to be up front pulling into those conditions, but it wasn’t a very long stretch.

The first two laps didn’t have too much action, a few attacks from idiots like myself, but nothing that stuck. Descending down the backside of the hill I liked to attack if only for the facts that going faster is fun, and going faster (~50mph) when you are less than a foot from the rider next to you is not fun. After the third time down I managed to get a pretty good lead but at the bottom there was a nasty head wind for a mile or so and they reeled me back in pretty quickly. When they caught me a counter attack went right away with 15 or so riders in it. In that group were riders from just about every team but mine meaning that either I better get in on the action something quick or we were going to have to chase the break down ourselves. The next two laps saw us working together pretty well as a break until we got near the bottom of the climb. Everyone wanted to win so pretty much everyone stopped pulling through. There were a few of us that kept rotating through but it was getting ridiculous and I wasn’t about to pull everyone to the finish line so we slowed way down. With three miles to go the pack which had been out of sight for the last lap was about 400 meters back and closing fast. We got to the base of the hill and started to climb with 1000 meters to go. I was concerned about getting caught so I went to the front and started tempoing up the hill. This shed a few people of the back immediately but several stuck on and with 200 meters to go two of them had enough gas to come around me and sprint to the finish, leaving me with third. The most impressive part of that finish in my mind was that the rider behind me, the one who took 4th place, is a 10th grader in high school.

Sunday was a criterium (crit), and I don’t like crits. I’m tempted to say that I don’t like crits and just leave it at that, but I won’t. They are generally short technical courses with lots of sharp turns. Basically they are races meant for the city that can be run by closing off one or more square blocks and then using that as the course. In this case it was one triangular block with the long side flat, the medium side a slight uphill and short side a slightly less slight downhill that formed a half mile course. Going from the downhill portion we would be going 30 plus mph which isn’t all that fast in and of itself, but doing that around a 120 degree turn gets a bit sketchy. Especially when you saw a rider getting hauled off in an ambulance from one of the races before yours (don’t worry though, those of you who know me well know that I’m invincible). The race was 50 minutes plus two laps, that is they start the clock at 50 minutes and when it gets to zero they say two more laps and you’re done. In the middle of the race will be primes (pronounced preems) where the first person to cross the start finish line gets a prize. Prizes ranged from cash, to bike gear, to a case of beer (some would argue that falls under the category of bike gear).

These races are shorter than road races but they are exhausting because from the word go it’s a cycle of sprint for all you’re worth to the turn, apply brakes/coast through the turn, sprint for all you’re worth again…

It gets pretty tiresome pretty fast and I consider it my weakest event as far as cycling races are concerned. No play by play on this one I’ll only say that less than a third of the riders who started the race finished it and I ended up in ninth place, my first finish outside the top five…sniff-sniff.

After the Elma Road race I had enough points to upgrade but I was going to wait until after the Tour de Walla Walla stage race next weekend. Then I found out that the cat 3 field for the race I wanted to do last Saturday was full but there was still room in the pro-1-2 field. Never one to miss an opportunity to screw myself I upgraded and then failed to find a ride to the race…oh well.

Sunday was another crit but this time I’m playing with the big boys. By big boys I mean at least a couple of local pro riders (not like Lance pro but still, they are people who get paid to ride their bike…they’re good) a whole lot of people who have been doing this a lot longer and training a lot smarter than me, several retired pros and this one guy (Kenny Williams) who dominates the local race scene pretty effectively and holds at least one current cycling world record…something to do with the 3000 meter pursuit. It’s a track event—you know, racing on the velodrome (not the palindrome mom). I made a couple of newbie mistakes like pulling the entire pack along behind me while chasing down a breakaway all by myself at the very beginning…This left me feeling like I was going to have to resort to my plan B.

Note: Plan B has two steps;
Step 1: Vomit
Step 2: Drop out of race

Fortunately I managed to avoid plan B, caught a bit of a second wind and managed to finish in the top third of the pack, but outside the top ten. I’m convinced that the best way to learn is by making idiotic mistakes once and getting your bootie handed to you. I’m well on my way.

Next Week, Tour de Walla Walla (yes I’m saying that with a straight face), my first stage race.

2005-04-11T14:54:00.000-07:00

RACE REPORT #5

Last week by the numbers
# of regional cycling authorities who want to do an “up and coming” story on me…1
# of people having drunken karaoke contest in my house night before race………...9
# of flat tires in Saturday’s race……………………………………………………...2
# of shoes forgotten in teammates car after race……………………………………..2

So last week a teammate of mine emailed me asking if he could give my contact info to someone from Northwest Race Report who wanted to do an “Up and Coming Racer” story on me. I told him I didn’t know what it was, but sure, I’d do it. Me being me, I then inquired if this meant I would get any free stuff. Sufficed to say I have neither received free stuff nor done the interview yet, but it’s nice to know that people are noticing me.

Friday my roommate/landlord (Eric) had a bunch of friends over for a drunken karaoke contest. I tried my best to ignore it but I definitely recall being subjected to the butchering of good songs, worse than that, the butchering of bad songs, and worst of all attempts at singing Michael Jackson. In general I would say that I definitely prefer anything by Jackson to Eric’s rendition of Careless Whisper by George Michael, but given current events being forced to think about Mr. Jackson while I’m alone, in my bed, in the dark makes me want to curl into the fetal position and hide in the corner …allegedly.

Saturday morning I wake up a little less than freshy-fresh, but excited and ready to race none-the-less. My teammates picked me up and it was off to the races. During the warm up I was getting pretty excited, in no small part due to my new toy. I had purchased a special wheel called a “power tap” which records and displays your speed, cadence, power, and heart rate as you ride. I had commuted with it a couple of times, but this was to be my first race outing with power. The course was in the “spring classic” style which is a polite cycling term for a race that beats the living crap out of both you and your bike. These races traditionally take place this time of year in Europe with lots of cobblestones and muck. Here in the US we don’t really have cobblestones, at least not on the West Coast. What we do have is logging access roads. The course for this race was a six mile rolling net ascent to the four mile essentially flat loop which was ~2.1 miles unsurfaced dirt road and ~1.9 mile paved road that we navigated ten times before returning down the six miles we started to the start finish line.

At the beginning I was under the mistaken impression that it was a neutral rollout (speed controlled by the pace car). I quickly realized my error when attacks started flying off the front of the pack going up the hills. Four miles into the race the hills picked up a bit three of us got away from the pack quickly dropping down to two as we hit a rather steep set of small climbs. We reached the loop and started the first lap on the rough stuff. Earlier I referred to this road as a logging road, in retrospect that might be a tad generous. River bed bottom would be closer to the truth and not entirely dry river bed bottom would be just about spot on accurate. It consisted of two large ruts with a rocky rise in between them. Crossing from one rut to the other was possible though sketchy at best; a maneuver performed with great reluctance by most and absolute refusal by the rest. No logging road is complete without a plethora of pot holes and this logging road had it all. They were big and small, wet and dry. At one corner there was a puddle that spanned the entire road ~15 feet across and I’m not sure how deep because I went around it every time. Of course so did everyone else so after ten laps the area around either side of the pond…errrr…puddle was pretty torn up mucky and none to easy to navigate, but back to the race.

So we had just hit the logging road 150 meters ahead of the pack when the other rider with me started to drop off. I was feeling pretty good so I kept at it but less than a mile down the road I hit a big rock and flatted my rear tire. Due to the course this race had no wheel cars following but it did have two wheel pits located at different points on the dirt road portion. Unfortunately the officials had said that it was wheels in wheels out meaning that if you brought spare wheels with you to the race and you flatted then you could take the extra wheels that you brought with you. I hadn’t brought any so I walked to the wheel pit and watched the peloton roll by thinking that my race was over. Then while I was sitting there one of the wheel pit guys said “Hey you wanna get back in the race?” My response was an enthusiastic “Hell YES!” They slapped a wheel on my bike and I started chasing down the pack which had a half mile or more lead on me at this point. Three and a half laps later I finally caught them, it took long enough, but I was motoring and it was nice to be able to do what so many others who had fallen off of the back couldn’t do. I did a couple of laps with the pack which was down to less than twenty riders due to flats and other forms of attrition. Unfortunately for the rest of us one team, Broadmark cycling, had five of the remaining riders and they started launching attacks every couple of minutes, knowing that eventually the pack would tire of chasing them down and one would be able to get away. I chased a few of them but as soon as I caught them they would slow down and wait for the pack to catch us only to have one of their teammates attack. After chasing down the fourth or fifth attack I let the next one get away until it was 100 meters or so out front at which point I attacked and bridged up to him. Having worked to put a sufficiently large gap between himself and the pack the rider didn’t want to sit up and slow down when I caught him, so we started working together. Over a couple more laps we continued to open up the gap but I ended up dropping him on one of the rough sections.

On the hills it’s no good to carry around extra weight, but being a larger rider sure seems to help over the rocky stuff, until you hit the rocks dead on and get a flat tire—which is exactly what happened. I was a few hundred meters ahead of the Broadmark rider who was chasing me who was in turn a few hundred meters ahead of the pack when I got the flat. I jumped off my bike and started running it to the wheel pit, the Broadmark rider passing me while I was running, and yelling for a new Campy 10 speed wheel only to see the pit crew shrug their shoulders palms to the sky saying no more Campy 10 speeds…I said fine, Shimano 10 speed. Thankfully they still had some of those left. If you ask the companies these are supposed to be incompatible components, but I had no issues that I noticed. I hopped back on the bike with my third rear wheel of the race ahead of the pack but a good little ways behind the lead rider. I closed in on him over the next couple of minutes and he must have come to the conclusion that he wasn’t going to get away from be because he sat up and waited for me to catch him and we started working together again. At the same time two riders had broken away from the pack and were bridging up to the two of us. Two miles later it was one lap to go and the two bridging riders had caught us. We did one last trip over the rough section and came to the paved section that represented eight miles to home. The four of us in the front started a rotating paceline but it quickly became obvious that two of the riders were really gassed and I couldn’t quite gauge the strength of the third. I didn’t want to pull the two tired guys to the finish line but I was nervous about attacking because it was guaranteed that as soon as the pack got back onto the pavement with only eight miles to the finish they would be driving the pace up pretty quickly. Then again I had spent the majority of the race by myself so why stop? I attacked, dropped the two tired riders immediately and the third after about a quarter mile. Time trialing to the finish I passed the men’s 1/2 pack and one of the breakaways in front of them. I actually ended up finishing eighth in the higher category race that started five minutes before mine. That was nice, plus I won ninety bucks and a pound of Big Ring Blend coffee (?!?).

I didn't race Sunday because I left my shoes in my teammate's car when he dropped me off. I'm dum like that.

More next week

2005-04-04T14:51:00.000-07:00

RACE REPORT #4

So this weeks race report is a little late, been busy at work and all that. This report should be a little bit shorter (insert collective sigh of relief here) because I only raced on Saturday. Sunday was the first day I haven’t ridden my bike in well over a month. It was fantastic, the morning was brunch with the roommates, the evening was dinner with the family, and chocolate eggs were consumed throughout the day.

LAST WEEK BY THE NUMBERS

Number of crashes in Saturday Race……………………1
Percentage of those that I was in………………………100
Quarts of water dumped out of my frame after race…..~1.5
# of former NBA players who I beat in my race………..1

So the race on Saturday was quite the wet one. It was dumping rain start to finish, the teammate that gave me a ride was desperately hoping that I wouldn’t show up at his house that morning, unfortunately for him I did and he was nice enough to still give me a ride to the course even though he had no intention of racing. The course was an eleven mile loop in Snohomish Washington that we went around 6 times. This was the first race of the season that had any substantial hills to it. They were more power climbing hills (short and steep) rather than a true climber’s course (long and grueling). Nonetheless it was a bit of a shock to the system after all the flat stuff that I’ve been doing.

We did a 3 mile neutral roll that was just enough to pre-soak the gloves and booties and confirm that your braking was 50% of normal. The race started at the bottom of the climb and was mellow the first time up. A couple of guys dangled in front of the pack the rest of the lap and a couple of more swapped positions. After the second time up the climb a break formed off the front. Several miles later I bridged up along with a two guys from other teams. It took us about 5 minutes but we made it up to the break. Lap and a half down and 4.5 to go.We had about eight guys and everybody was working hard and pulling through for most of the next lap. A few of the eight were looking pretty gassed from the effort when we tempoed up the hill the third time up and a few guys started to redline but made it over. We were working hard but half the guys were really strong and the other weak. This made the pace really uneven at times but it was always pretty fast. We never got any time checks early on but we were up on the group 5 minutes plus. The fourth time up the hill we had shed three riders and were down to five when I found myself in the unhappy position of getting caught in my big gear with my shifters not responding. I’m not sure if it was a ‘the third time’s the charm’ kind of situation or if it was a result of the expletives that I started hurling at my derailer but the thing did eventually shift gears. By this point three of the group had built up a little gap and I had lost a lot of momentum. I was feeling a good deal less than energetic—no doubt a direct result of lots of dancing and alcohol the night before combined with not-so-much sleep (a pre-race routine that I have since decided to eliminate). I had no real hope of trying to catch the three off the front which left me and one remaining rider trying to get to the finish before the peloton.

Shortly down the road we caught one of those three riders because he had flatted and we started working together to get to the finish, but we were all exhausted and I found myself taking the lion’s share of the pulling efforts. Going around one of the corners with about eight miles to go (52 down) I hit a patch of wet gravel that hadn’t been completely swept off the road and was sent sliding across the pavement with no delay. The guy behind me had no chance to react and ended up crashing onto my rear wheel and myself. The chase car driver jumped out and helped us get back up and we started off but as soon as I tried shifting gears my bike totally locked up and I couldn’t move. The driver once again jumped out to help asking what was wrong, but all I could manage to get out was a rather pathetic “mechanical…” as in mechanical malfunction. He of course gave me a “Well no shit moron” kind of look and then proceeded to straighten my brake levers/shifters (both bent inwards by about 30 degrees), gave my rear derailer a tug, switched out my rear wheel for one that he was carrying and told me that I still had about a minute on the field while sending me on my way. The two riders that I had been with were of course well out of sight by now and for the remaining eight miles I was just trying to get to the finish before I got caught. Coming around the last corner I could see the (uphill) finish ahead of me but I could also see the pack about the same distance behind me. Completely cooked I limped my way to the finish line about twenty seconds ahead of the field sprint which was good enough for 5th place.

To wrap up, the crash caused very little damage to myself or, more importantly, to the bike. I have a couple scratches on my elbow and knee to accompany the lovely raspberry that I got on my hip, and my bike wasn’t too much the worse for wear. I trued up the rear wheel when I got home, which is also when I heard the sloshing of water in my frame and dumped it out. I took the seat post out of the seat tube and there was water in there all of the way to the top of my 61cm frame. That’s a lot of extra water to be carrying up those hills.

Speaking of hips and crashing, my teammate that broke his hip last week is back at home after his surgery and starting his recovery. He looks well and even made an appearance at a teammate’s birthday party. Once the surgeon got in there he decided that he could get away with just pinning the joint back together rather than putting in a prosthetic which is excellent news.

A couple of last side notes. After the "James Strangelove" incident with the race results the week before last my entire team has taken to referring to me as 'The Doctor' and the NBA player referred to at the beginning of the report is former Seattle Supersonic Detlef Schrempf (sp?). Apparently he is a local cat 3 racer, and one of my teammates said he was at the race...pretty cool.

I promised this race report would be shorter and it’s starting to look like I lied.

Next week: My first criterium and spring classic style races (plus I’ll tell you what those are).

2005-03-28T14:49:00.000-08:00

RACE REPORT #3

To the new folks I added to the list; This is a weekly waste of both my time and yours detailing the results of the weekends (bicycle) racing. Enjoy, delete, whatever.

This week’s race report brings both good and terrible results. It’s inevitable that racing involves crashing, and every year there are one or two truly nasty crashes…but first;

The official second edition of “Last week BY THE NUMBERS ”

Number of upgrades applied for and accepted…..……………1
Amount of prize money won……………………………….$75
Amount of money spent (YTD) on race entry fees……..….$123
Amount spent on cycling in general…………....…I plead the 5th
Number of teammates getting new titanium hip………...………1

Well I’ll start with the bad news, you read that last item correctly, right now as I type this my teammate Guy Browne is undergoing surgery to have a partial hip replacement. In the Saturday Mason Lake #3 race the field sprint was even more chaotic than normal because our race was passing the Masters A/B (fast guys over 30 as opposed to Masters C/D which is slow(er) guys over 30) field that started ahead of us right at the finish line on the final lap. I wasn’t there to see it but apparently the confusion resulted in some riders crashing into Guy and he went down hard causing a dislocated finger and broken hip. On the bright (well--slightly less dark) side he is expected to be back on the bike in five weeks. He won’t be racing in five weeks, but he can start his way back. It’s really a bummer because he’s a fun, friendly, strong guy…err…Guy.

The crash was largely due to bad officiating. The two fields should never have been within half a mile of each other at the finish. Normally the lead car would neutralize one of the fields so that the other could either get away or pass the slower depending on the case. Part of the problem was that the lead car was already ahead of the Masters A/B field which is where three other riders and I were. Eight of us had broken away early in lap two of four (48 miles total). Nearing the end of the final lap it was down to four of us in the breakaway, two riders I didn’t know and Phil; the rider that I broke away with last week at Mason Lake #2. In the dippity-doos (not actually a cycling term, but seems as good as anything to describe small rolling hills) before the finish we shed one of the final four when the pace started coming up. About two or three miles to the finish the other rider that I didn’t know dropped off with a flat tire. I felt really bad for him, he had been working for 30+ miles in this break away and only had a few left to go when through no fault of his own he was taken out of the race. As we approached the finish Phil and I both started letting up not wanting to pull the other into the sprint, which is exactly what I did and why I lost last week. We pulled into the sprint zone (200 meters to go) roughly even with me about half a length down but rolling relatively slow ~20mph. I started to pull even and Phil gunned it with 150 to go. This time I was on the ball and took off with him I was ahead by half a length with 100 to go and with about 50 meters to go I heard him yelling “nice sprint” and I finished about two lengths in front. It felt good. That all went away a few minutes later when the field sprint came in and I found out about Guy. I never actually saw him because he crashed at the finish line a little under a mile up the road from the parking lot where I was cooling down. He was in bad shape though. It had rained hard the entire race he (and everyone else) was exhausted from the effort, he was going into shock and lying on the cold wet pavement was making him shake uncontrollably. While I don’t doubt that hypothermia was getting ready to set in the team had driven a car down there and thrown a half dozen jackets on him until the ambulance arrived. The good news is he is as OK as can reasonably be expected and is in good spirits. We have a really supportive team; he has received at least a dozen visitors and tons of emails.

That’s all I’m going to say on Guy, I’m sure that my mother is already convinced that an 18 wheeler will land on my head if I even look at my bicycle again.

Sunday I used the seven points earned on Saturday combined with the 15 that I already had and upgraded to the cat 3 squad. The race was in Sequim (pronounced skwim for those of you not from the Northwest) and it was 72 miles over seven laps. Sequim is on the Olympic Peninsula in a flat but notoriously windy location, Sunday was certainly no exception. There was one portion of the course where the speed limit was 35 mph and I was having no problem breaking the speed limit. The first lap had a few people (myself included) testing the pack with some accelerations and little break away attempts, but nothing that stuck for long. Early in the second lap a group of five or six riders went off the front, but one of them was on my team so I sat on the front of the pack doing my best to block others from chasing the break down. Shortly thereafter one of my teammates yelled “James, why the %$&#* are you blocking?” which is when I noticed that my teammate along with several others had been dropped by the break. Seeing this I stepped on it and bridged up to them. Once I had bridged there were four of us working together fairly well for a few miles in which we managed to open up a gap of a few hundred meters. Then the two smaller riders in the group started crapping out and stopped pulling through. It’s more difficult for little riders in big winds, but they stopped pulling altogether which didn’t motivate me or the other big guy to keep pulling with them along for a free ride. All of us sat up and started riding easy when the other biggish rider took off. I let him get a ways out and then bridged up to join him leaving the two wheel suckers (cycling term for a person who will just draft off of you never taking their turn at the front) behind to get swallowed up by the pack. At this point we are only 15 miles or so into a 72 mile race, but what the heck, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The other rider (I never got his name) and I start taking thirty second pulls each and just as we are starting lap three the lead car pulls back and informs us that we have opened up a one minute fifteen second gap. We keep trucking and by the start of lap four we have opened up the gap to 2:05. This sounds real nice but we are still less than half way through the race. The next couple of laps were more of the same with one exciting little moment when I dropped my chain while climbing up one of the three small hills. My partner in crime was drafting at the time and was kind enough to give me a little push while I shifted the chain back on. After telling us that we had a 2:05 lead at the start of lap four we never heard from the lead car again so we were riding blind, only knowing that in these kinds of situations the breakaway tends to get slower as the race wears on while the peloton tends to speed up. Starting the final (seventh) lap I was willing the lead car to give us a gap report with all my might, but to no avail whatsoever. The start of the final lap also meant that we would be in the tailwind again which was a much welcome relief. After spending 50 miles off the front my legs were feeling it. Unfortunately the other guy’s legs were feeling it more. Towards the end of the sixth lap he had started taking shorter and shorter pulls, starting the final lap they were down to about 5 seconds which is just enough time for him to pull in front of me and pull off to the side which didn’t provide me with any rest. I stopped pulling off and just started pulling. Just after the start/finish line was the first hill of the loop. He dropped like a stone. I felt bad about it because we had been working hard and well together, but at the same time it’s every racer for himself, and he was blowing up big time. I put my head down and started time trialing like my life depended on it. I knew that I had to fly in the tailwind because the pack was sure to be moving faster than me once I got to the headwind. My legs were toast and they would definitely be ramping it up especially after swallowing up the last breakaway rider. With a little over three miles to go I looked back and I could see the flashing lights of the peloton’s lead car less than a mile behind me and I was still riding straight into the headwind. After that I just put my head down and went. I didn’t look back until the one kilometer to go sign when I looked back and I knew I had it. I pushed out the last thousand meters finishing a little under a minute in front of the field sprint. The officials in my lead and follow car stuck there heads out and said “that was awesome” at which point I told them Saturday I had been a cat 4 rider. They just stared at me. I felt like a total beast.

That being said it didn’t happen because I was stronger than the field. Breakaways only succeed when there is too much infighting and not enough cooperation in the pack to reel the break back in. I worked hard, but I got really lucky too. It also helped that I had six teammates in the pack breaking up the rhythm, and blocking to the best of their ability. It was a great race by all accounts.

To top it all off in the results I was listed as
1st place: James Strangelove

If only I had gotten my PhD…

-Strangelove

2005-03-08T14:45:00.000-08:00

RACE REPORT #2

First of all I added a few names to my distribution list, so welcome to my weekly race report/lunchtime diversion you new people. Another weekend has gone by and two more races under my belt. It was a good weekend for me with amazing weather, though it’s been a hectic few days since then. Before we get any further a recap…

The official first edition of “Last week BY THE NUMBERS ”

Number of inboxes clogged by yours truly………….46
Number of replies received………………………….17
Number of the above asking for money ……………..4
Number of the above that weren’t form letters………1
Number that actually got money……………………..1

My favorite reply had to be the one that asked if I was going to “start racing on the palindrome next”…for those of you that English is a second language, a palindrome is a word/phrase that reads the same both backwards and forwards i.e. “A man, a plan, a canal Panama!” A velodrome is the racing track with banked turns.

Now for the meat (or tofu for those of you averse to dead flesh) of the letter, the results. I left Seattle Friday night to spend the night at a teammate’s parent’s house closer to the race course. His mother gave us a ride down and she was super nice and really friendly, but not exactly what I’m accustomed to. Picture the following; hair dyed platinum blond, smokes about a pack a day, speaks in baby talk to her lap dog (shedding and in heat), and repeatedly offers her vegan son foods like chicken chow mein and meat lovers pizza. The house is classic rural American kitsch, chainsaw carvings of bears coming out of stumps and Indian chiefs, the gnarly stump coffee table indefinitely preserved in a ½” layer of glossy lacquer, and to top it all off the big ‘ol lazy-boy recliner firmly planted three feet in front of the television. I could go on but it would be a little mean, and at some point I’m supposed to give some race results.

Saturday Mason Lake #2, it was the exact same course as last week—three laps about 12 miles in length around the lake. The first mile or so is a neutral roll out (meaning the lead car sets the pace) at which point we hit the first turn and are off. I once again made the mistake of lining up in the middle of the pack, a mistake I realized as soon as we hit the first turn because as soon as the pace car accelerated the guy that won last week broke away and started soloing away from the pack. For those of you not in the know that is really gutsy and really tough, when you’re drafting in the pack/peloton it’s about 20%-30% less effort for the same speed and you can theoretically just keep rotating through the riders pulling at the front so that they share the load. While I was working my way towards the front I ran into (figuratively, not literally) a teammate of the guy who was off the front and found out that he is a former long distance runner that was good enough to go to trials, so he’s got an engine on him. Just before the end of the first lap I managed to get to the front and tried breaking away to catch this guy. Unlike last week he wasn’t even in sight at this point. When I started chasing he was a little over 40 seconds ahead of us (the race officials and observant spectators will count and let you know) and I closed the gap to about 25 seconds when I started blowing up. Just when I had resigned myself to slipping back into the pack another rider bridged from the peloton up to me and we started working together to stay away from the pack/try to catch the lead guy. We never did catch the lead guy, but we did manage to stay in front of the peloton, and even passed the theoretically faster race that started five minutes ahead of us. I made the mistake of assuming that they were a women’s race that we were lapping and announced “on your left ladies” at which point I realized they were the men’s race that had started ahead of us…I’m pretty sure that they all think I’m a dick, but such is life. We passed them just a kilometer or so before the finish line which had the potential to get hairy because neither myself nor Philippe (the other guy in the breakaway with me) particularly wanted to pull the other one to the finish line, but that’s exactly what I ended up doing allowing him to beat me in the sprint leaving me with third place for the second week in a row and the determination that I need to work on my sprinting tactics a little more. Still, third out of 50+ aint bad.

Sunday was a dead flat road race six times around a seven mile course with some nasty winds. A few of us tried getting some breakaways going but it was to windy to attempt it solo and while there were plenty of riders who were strong enough to hang on when we would try to break away they either weren’t strong enough or weren’t willing to pull through and take their turn at the front. After the first few laps I stopped trying and just hung out in the pack, but by that point my efforts along with my teammate Nate (the guy whose house I was staying at) had shrunk the peloton to about half its starting size. About halfway through the final lap the lead car slowed way down neutralizing the field because we were about to lap the women’s field right at the finish. We were held neutral (rolling slowly~15mph) for a little over a mile which made everyone very antsy and twitchy. With about two miles left they let us go again and with everyone rested and the finish line so close the pace went up quite a bit with some serious jockeying for position. I had good position out of the second to last turn with about 500 meters to go when a big solid kinda chunky guy (perfect for drafting off of) tried breaking away. I jumped on his wheel until 300 meters to go when I passed him and started sprinting for the line. This would normally be considered a very long sprint, but after Saturday I realized I don’t really have that short really high end speed that makes good sprinters with 50 meters to go, so for the Sunday race I resolved to try and get a jump on everyone a little early, enough that they couldn’t draft off of me and then just hold it until the finish line. So I passed chunky with 300 meters to go came around the last turn with 50 meters still until the 200 meter sign. To give you an idea of what’s normal the 200 meter sign signifies the spot where they open up the full width of the road to the field sprint and is generally considered far enough from the finish that the true sprints won’t be anywhere near starting. For that last bit I just buried myself in it and crossed the line in first with about 5+ lengths between me and the next rider. I was happy.

This approach probably won’t work so well once I upgrade for a couple of reasons, one it will be more difficult to get a good jump on the other riders, and two there might actually be teams setting up for the sprint with leadout men etc.

Before I finish, I’ve also been meaning to clarify the classification system for amateur racing. Categories are 1-5, 1 being high and 5 being low. The upgrade requirements are as listed below.

From 5 to 4:
Experience in 10 mass start races;

From 4 to 3:
Need 20 points in any 12-month period;
or experience in 25 qualifying races with a minimum of 10 top-10 finishes.
30 points in 12 months is an automatic upgrade

From 3 to 2:
Need 25 points in any 12-month period
60 points in 12 months is an automatic upgrade

From 2 to 1:
Need 30 points in any 12-month period
60 points in 12 months is an automatic upgrade

Points are awarded 1st through 6th place as follows 7-5-4-3-2-1
For the past two weeks I have two third place finishes and one first (the time trial that I kicked bootie in doesn’t count) so I have 4+4+7=15 points which means I need five more before I can upgrade. Maybe I can get them this weekend, I’ll let you know

2005-03-07T14:43:00.000-08:00

RACE REPORT #1

Friends, family, random people that I met in traveling and have in my address book;

First of all a quick update for those of you that I haven’t spoken to in a really long time. I’m back in Seattle got a job working at Boeing and generally having a good time. Back in late October I joined a cycling team (Wines of Washinton/Rauxa) and we just had our first race weekend which means this is the first of (hopefully) many successful race reports.

Actually it’s just a good way for me to waste my lunch break.

I know that many of you aren’t interested/have A.D.D. so the quick version is that on the Saturday road race I got 3rd out of 52 and on the Sunday time trial I got 1st out of 59. More details are below, but if you don’t care and never want to receive another race report just let me know (the more expletives that you cram into the title and body of the email, the faster that I will get you off of the list.)

Saturday was the first race in the Mason Lake series, a set of three races over three weekends. The course is a pretty flat 12 mile loop around (you guessed it) Mason Lake, last weekend the race was three laps, next weekend it will be three laps and then the final weekend it will be four laps. This weekend I started out farther back in the pack than I should have because it was incredibly difficult to move forward in the pack. It took me 18 miles to get from the middle of the pack up to the front. It wasn’t because the pace was terribly fast, but it was just so crowded on this little road and there weren’t any hills to spread things out and move people around. Early in the last lap before I got to the front a few riders broke away. Two of them were quickly swallowed by the peloton, but the third was stronger and stayed out. When I did get to the front I tried to bridge to the rider up the road. I was steadily gaining on him for about six or seven miles when the pack started turning up the screws and I started getting pretty tired so they reeled me back in. Unfortunately when they caught me they just stopped chasing even though the other guy was less than 40 meters up the road. Not long after we passed the 1000 meters to go sign things started getting really squirrelly, one guy two rows up from me freaked out when someone touched his shoulder and swerved across traffic clipping the front wheel of one of my teammates (right in front of me) sending him and at least 10 or 15 other people into the ground. I managed to swerve left and avoid going down. No one was chasing because they were all saving themselves for the sprint, so I decided to get up front and try to start something (I didn’t want him to get away if I couldn’t). Unfortunately while they were perfectly happy to let me pull them all towards the finish line no one else was willing to take a pull that late in the game. With about 200-250 meters left my teammate Guy made an early break for the sprint and I caught his wheel to tag along. I was pretty gassed from my solo breakaway attempt earlier in the race and it was a really long sprint with me expecting the whole time that someone was about to come around me, but they never did. So Guy took second, I took third, another teammate took 4th and another 6th. All in all, a very good showing from our team for the first race.

The time trial was substantially less exciting as it is an individual race against the clock instead of a big pack event, but then again I did quite a bit better which was cool. It was a ten mile course, five miles out, and five back. Other than when my rear tire slid out from underneath me at the turnaround it was uneventful. The cool part is that not only did I win, but I beat second place (a teammate, and my minute man) by 1:41 seconds. For those of you not familiar with time trials they are usually decided by seconds or fractions of seconds, 30 seconds is a thrashing and 1:41 is ridiculous especially over a course that short.

Hopefully I’ll upgrade fairly quickly, at least that’s the goal. Those of you that I haven't talked to in a while, drop me a line and say hi.

More next week