He's down. Kick him!

I always have used my first couple races of the season to get my butt kicked. This one was especially tough as I really haven't been riding the way I should be right now. The work thing has me going in 6 different directions currently so I at least have an excuse. The start was more than a bit mixed up as the promoter certainly wasn't expecting the number of riders that were there. The 123s and 40+ riders were up near 60 and for the roads we were on, that was pretty much about the max. Unfortunately at the start, it seemed they changed their minds and wanted to give us a staggered start. And staggered it was. No one, apparently knew about this staggered start so the field was split immediately with some of the 40+ers going and the rest staying. I'd started and then held back. When the rest followed then, I thought, 'oh well, we are racing with the 123s'. Nothing in the world screws up a race quite like a couple mile sprint to regain a pack right from the gun. Especially when at the end of it, there was a long dragging hill to climb. The pack broke into 3 and my fat butt wound up in that 3rd part. After chasing for a lap and keeping close to the next group who was chasing the front group hard, realization hit in that it was that wonderful 'Thanks for coming, folks' time. So, now it was a fast training ride. We were in a group of 6 now and with the exception of 2 who didn't know how to push on the pedals when going thru to the front we were working steady. The 2nd time up the climb, one rider foolishly took off. I just thought, 'DumbA**, we'll see you back in a while'. (We did and he still didn't understand what I was talking about) I did have to think twice about that though when I found out the riders I was with had absolutely no understanding of how to in an echelon. How many years had these guys been riding? It's not as if it's rocket science, but everytime I pulled off the front, the others kept pulling closer to the side of the road opposite of the wind. Now we had a string of riders who were lined up in a cross wind, one behind the other. This was cycling 101 for God's sake. Apparently, they missed that class or blew off the required reading. The short story of it was that it was a smack in the back of the head to let me know just how much I am not ready for the road season. Gotta get on that bike more and make sure I don't lose the front pack next time. Oh well, next week will be here soon enough. Time to insert another quarter and try again.

THUD!

I'm not sure if that quite captures my experience in my first crit this year. I started out slow and it wasn't even little by little, I died out completely and quickly. I've got great fitness this year but damn, not one bit of speed. The repeated punches out of the corners killed me stone dead in 10 minutes. I guess that is one of the problems with trying to cover the different disciplines in this sport as I've done in the last couple years. While my single speed mountain biking is really going well at the moment, my road is suffering. I guess I really need to go back and start my uphill intervals and low gear sprint training for the year. Now that it is getting warmer as well as lighter, this will be easier. I still can't believe how much of a slow-twitcher I've become over the past couple years. I'm not entirely comfortable with it since I used to be a pretty reliable crit rider even when I was out of shape. I did drown out the bad memory of the race on saturday with a good long fun (fairly tough at some points) mountain bike ride. After riding out and with Gunnar, Betsy and Mark Glass, with did a bit more than 3 hours on the trail. Then on the ride home, we did some sprints on the rail trail. I did all five while they took turns trying to work me over. I was undergeared to them (32x20 vs their 32x19 - makes quite a difference really). I still won 2 of the 5 and I also did them all. I'll put that trophy up there with my Black Bear derby win from last year. That'll get me a small coffee at some truck stop somewhere. Afterwards, we road a bit more on the trail, but then had to go up this nasty climbing trail. A good portion of it we had to walk the bikes up the trail steps. It looked like a 150+ foot gain in a short distance and then we still had the final climbs up to the house after that. I stayed with them til the final little pitch before the roadway. Then I fell apart.

just before proving you can do an endo on a 29er.

Git off them there brakes dammit! (pics from Race the Trace WVMBA '07)

Over the last several years, I've made falling apart a total art form over the years too. In a bigger race, if this is done right, it can be quite profitable. I had been to one stage race where I was the last rider on the road on the hilly road stage. Every time I caught someone, they'd quit. I guess they figured if I'd caught them, they were really out of it. It was raining and cold. The body was totally locking up and I was even having trouble breathing I was hurting so much. When I finally got in and crossed the line, I completely collapsed. I had to be helped off the bike. I was a total mess. Lying on the ground, drooling, I did look pretty pathetic. But, in my sorry looking state, I did arouse a lot of sympathy and my helmet quickly turned into a fruit basket and I was being given energy gels and bars, cokes, gatorade and water. Plus, the lady who was helping me gave me a good massage on the legs and back to help stop them from shaking so much. If I'd been in any shape to drink any beer that night, I don't think I would have had to pay. The riders who'd bailed and were in the truck behind me couldn't believe I finished and said drinks were on them that night. I guess that experience showed that if you can't do something well, at least be colorful about it.

Fitness at hand?

Yesterday was the regular Sunday Morgantown mountain bike ride. It is seemingly getting easier. I think the pace was a definitely slower than the week before, but I wasn't even stretched any. My biggest problem is I need to take up the tension on the chain. I had to pop it back on about 6 times. That was pretty much the only reason I dropped back any. I did dump it once and was the stopping point for a bit of a stackup on a wicked decent. I had a couple riders toppled into me but amazingly, we all kept upright. Halfway down, we got the call to stop since Betsy took a nasty spill at the bottom. She apparently buggered herself up some since she bailed on the ride shortly thereafter. Hopefully she's ok. Reportedly she was, but she rode straight home but had one of the other girls let us know that she was fine and not to worry. I'm guessing she'll be feeling it tomorrow. Gunnar will probably be in a bit late to work after riding her into work and their kids are probably all worried. On a couple of the road rides I did this past week, I'd done ok on some climbs and was able to stay in the saddle for them and even kept the pace up. I really do have to get a new chain. I've been riding the one on this bike for a bit longer than I like to. It's time to make the yearly order for the 5 or 6 chains I'll go thru this year. I also really do need to get a 25 or 26 for my smallest cog. Even though I'm making it up the climbs, I'm just feeling that it's a bit early for trying to do the He-man thing and muscling it up. I haven't really started doing any specialized workouts. I've found that starting those too early makes the season really long and it usually takes my first ass kicking to get me to start thinking about what I have to do to get competitive. I'm really aiming to repeat the WV 40+ series title I had gotten last year. I'd won 3 of the 5 individual events as well as the overall at the Mountaineer stage race. This year, they're even supposed to have leaders jerseys which will be cool. A bit of a budget crunch on their part stopped that for last year, but I can deal with something like that to help get a good series started where I don't have to drive for hours to get to the race. I guess I'm getting lazy in my old age. It's that or I'm saving the driving batteries for cross season. One of the other big goals for this year will be my defense of the prestigious Black Bear Derby. I gave Gunnar, F**kerman, and Mike Yozell a kicking in that race. I aim to rub it in as much as possible. Beyond that, the WVMBA series starts up soon. I did ok in my category last year and considering I really didn't have a clue as to what I was doing on a mountain bike, it was a good overall result. I'll probably have done around 14 mountain bike races this year so it'll be a lifetime high in that category. I've been finding it much more fun compared to the Wednesday night crits in Pittsburgh. Since we've had the oval, far too many people think they are A category riders because they can sit in the pack and get pulled along. Plus, with the team thing there, it's gotten more like high school with all of the little cliques that have formed up in the last few years. Rather than just having a fun race, it's become FAR to serious with some of the teams acting like they are pros. I know pro riders that aren't as uptight as these guys are. I guess you get all types though. Myself, I like to race hard, but having fun and being safe about it ranks just a wee bit higher than the 'where is the team and our riders ranked?' that seems to prevail in our formerly friendly ACA club in Pittsburgh lately.

%$@%^&!!! Weather

For the third week in a row, my race has been canceled due to the weather. Here's a perfect time to roll off into a good old man rant:

When I was a young racer, dammit we never canceled races due to weather. Unless there was 6 inches of snow and ice on the road, it was game on! I remember winning a race because my bike was the only one left that could change gears. It was that bad out. And we didn't have any of this sissy gore-tex-thinsulate wondro material clothing either. It was good ol' wool socks, silk undershirts, plastic bags in the shoes and if it was really nasty, a chamois chest protector. Do they still make those? No, of course not. They were cheap, easily made and they lasted a good long time. I still wear wool gloves out on the road. Your hands still stay warm even if the glove start getting wet. This past week, I decided to try to embrace technology and I used a pair of neoprene socks the other day. It was around 30 degrees and yeeeessshh, my damn feet froze. This is moving forward? Hell, I'll just go back to my wool socks and plastic bags if this is what the tech clothing world does for you. I pine for the old days when little things like a blizzard didn't stop us from having a race. It just made it more of an epic day and one more classic thing to brag about to the young riders when we'd be out on a training ride. It'd be like 'Oh, you think today is bad. I remember doing a race when things were so bad out....' and 'and just when we crested the climb, you'd think we'd get a chance to rest? Heck, no, we had to climb the other side of that mountain too. We only had 10 gears to do it with too. You punks are spoiled rotten.'

Vorwärts und aufwärts

Onward and upward. I always liked this phrase. It ranks right up there with 'Uben macht den meister'- 'practice makes the master'. It certainly applies to my current position in life. The California project is a go and we will hoping to be starting actual work on it with the next week or two. I and my partners are totally stoked. We just need to be able to get all the T's crossed and I's dotted. I think we are being giving a great amount of trust here and we are fully intending to make sure the customer gets a super return on it. We might not become rich on it, but the magnitude of the work and the environment that we'll be in will certainly be a big change to what I normally deal with in the mundane world of computer consulting. I'll also be racking up the frequent flyer miles this year. In a week or so, I'll be flying out to Portland, Oregon where today it was nice, sunny and 60 degrees out. One of my partners there was laughing at me as I told him I was driving through blizzard like conditions today before a phone conference we had today. He rode in to work with just bikeshorts and a jersey. Punk! I'll be leaving a bike out there just to make life simpler. Anyone with any Campy Chorus or Record stuff from the past couple years who wants to dump it off, get in touch. I need to get my new frame built up.

One thing that was a bummer, was for a second week in a row, my race got canceled. I've been itching to test myself against the 1s and 2s in ohio to see how I fair. The last race I did a few weeks ago, I felt like I was clubbing a baby seal since I got in late for the 123s to go off and had to go in a lower category at these races than I usually do. I've been on that border line area of being a good 3, but not quite there to feel comfortable to upgrade to a 2. It does give me alot of flexibility for racing though. I can race the 3s if I feel like living dangerously, the 123s if I'm feeling really good, and then the masters races which often lets me double up on the day. Being 40+ now even gives me the choice of 4 different races on many occasions so I can pick and choose. On a few occasions, I've even done a third race, but usually that race would wind up being the bridge too far for me. Something about doing 80 miles of criterium racing, I guess. I've also been looking at the calendar for mountain biking this year and it will be a busy one. It looks like I'll have 13 or 14 mountain bike races this year, up from 10 this year. Add that to 50+ road events and the 18-20 cross races I've been doing the last few years and it makes for quite a season.

BBBBBRRRRRRRR

Damn, it's cold out. I really hate it when it takes me as long to get ready to ride the bike as it does for me to warm up on the ride. I'm missing California already. Well, kinda sorta...

Well, it's a start

I have to start getting myself going earlier in the day. I got to the race just as the race I wanted to go in left. Afterwards, several of the riders saw me after the race and were saying they were glad I wasn't there after remembering my last few Westlake races last year. I was up helping pull the pack apart with the A&F and Texas Roadhouse guys there. Saturday, I had to be content to race down a category which wound up amounting to me just riding hard and pulling the field around to a large extent. I came across the line first, but didn't have myself listed nor take money. It's just not cool to do that and I know guys who've done it. The guy who finished second is a younger racer and just learning the game. I was quick to compliment him on the move he made at the end. The finish came thru a sketchy turn with not only potholes, but alot of crap which didn't get cleared off by anyone connected to the race. He said he noticed it after the first lap and didn't want any part of it for the finish. It was a good move to be off the front as others were a bit nervous about going thru the turn and I rolled past him at the end. He jumped out of the saddle and was doing a serious bike wag trying to stay out there. A bigger gear might've kept him there. For a second year rider, he seems to be learning quicker than most. I like helping the younger riders learn the game better. When I get the chance in the summer, I like going down to the Tuesday night races in Pittsburgh and marshaling the beginner and womens races. There are alot of new riders there and sometimes, just a quick tip on how to ride in the pack or using the gearing makes alot of difference. It's the type of thing I wish I had when I was starting out. I've seen many riders just quit the sport because after getting shelled out week after week they just figure it's too tough and they will never make it. It's a good feeling when you see their faces when they've not only finished the race, but also felt like they were part of it. To me, this is what the sport should be about.

Yesterday, I continued on the training with the Mo'town mountain bike ride. It got pretty warm out and we did a bit more than 3 hours. I'm feeling stronger and made it up the climbs much better and was going quicker on the trails and decents. I'm still a bit nervous on the real steep dropoffs with the rocks and logs all over the trail. I proved last year that you can do an endo on a 29er. After a broken bone in the hand from that, it's not a feat I'm inclined to repeat.

Past the riding, I really feel the need to buy a lottery ticket. In the past week, I had a very successful West Coast trip for work, came back to commitments for 3 servers, a couple workstations, 4 notebook computers and a handful of other equipment, plus the labor to get all of it set up. This with the web work we've gotten in the past month, plus my normal contracts and things are going quite spiffy. I've managed to come up aces at every turn, though I'm a bit nervous about how good things seem to be going. I'm currently flashing on my mantra - Fly straight, don't BS, keep the ball rolling. OOOMMMMMMMMM, OOOMMMMMMMMM. repeat as needed.