Track Championships

 

The OBRA Track Championships happened last weekend, and I guess I'm just now recovered enough to write about the sole race I did last Friday. ;)

A warm sunny day saw a good number of trackies head out to the velodrome to participate in the first of three days of track events.  While Traci has been racing and training out their fairly frequently, I have yet to ride my track bike "in anger" this year.

We got to the track with plenty of time for a good warm up to chat with our friends who were also there.  I tried to pick the brain of a few of the more experienced riders on race strategy since I had never raced the event on slate for the evening.  The Kilo.. or sometimes known as the Kill-ometer from what I find out later.

Three and three quarters laps of pain from a dead stop.  Too long to rely on solely your anaerobic system and too short to get into a good aerobic grove.  There are a lot of theories on how to try and pace yourself but one piece of advice seems to be common.  Get up to speed as fast as you can.

I get some solid accelerations in and a number of laps at three quarter speed and a few laps at (hopefully) full speed.  Legs feel cruddy but I hope that its just pre-race nerves.

5:55 and racing is to start at 6.  The air temp drops by 5 degrees in a matter of minutes and the skies to the south look dark.  The first drops of rain hit my helmet as I'm on the front stretch and I see Luciano put the whistle to his mouth.  Two quick blasts and riders on track start making their way down to the apron.  Thirty seconds later a summer downpour hits the velodrome and racers and officials scurry under what little cover is available in the infield.  It rains off and on for the next 15 minutes, touching off discussions on rescheduling races.  My spirits, fairly low to start with, go in the toilet and I hope for a cancellation.

By 6:15 the rain has stopped and the sun comes back out.  The track is soaked but because of its concrete material it has retained a lot of heat and begins drying quickly.  Luciano breaks out a leaf blower and heads to turn 3 which is in the shade to dry out the sprinters lane.  Good news is that for the TT events, you only need the sprinters lane dry since everyone rides in it.  They expect the first riders to go off at 6:30.

Bob has graciously let me use his training track wheels to race on as they are far superior to the crap wheels on my crap bike.  He also has a 15t cog on his wheel which will put me in the proper ratio to race this event in.  As the women start their 500m TT event I get the wheels quickly swapped out and the chain at the right tension.  Pausing for a short while to watch Traci race.  She rides hard and strong and cuts a full 2 seconds off her PR.  She's happy with the results and barely misses 3rd place.

The men's Kilo starts with my division going first.  I'm slotted to roll out 6th and there are 13 people in my division.  I head to the warm up track to roll around a bit.  As the first rider finishes I head to the start area with the other riders.  The air is quiet and a bit humid after the rain.  Good conditions.  I hang my bike on the available stand and do a final bit of stretching.  Traci adjusts my insulin pump so its more secure and suddenly I'm on deck.  A final swig of water and a few deep breaths and its time to mount up.

Mike Murray has my bike set up while I get clipped in.  The rider ahead of me is churning away on his third lap.  I'll be rolling out in under 30 seconds.  I take deep breaths, trying to relax my body and not fight the holder behind me.  I vaguely hear Dean yelling "why are you riding those wheels!?"  I later find out he though I was Bob.

The rider head of me finishes and my heart rate kicks up.  I hear "Rider Ready.." and I realize I haven't paid attention to how many beeps there were on starting tone and make a guess at 5.  The first tone sound and I hear very softly behind me 4..3.. from Mike.

At 2 I take a deep breath. The final tone starts I surge hard out of the saddle with a large exhale, forcing the bike forward.  I power through the pedals trying to keep my weight balanced and line straight.  I hit the first corner and plant myself, noticing I haven't yet inhaled since the start.

The first lap is a blur.  I concentrate on riding good corners and keeping my leg speed as high as possible, always trying to accelerate.  I've opted for the "go out like hell and hang on" theory of Kilo riding, hoping that my history of successful long ranged sprints will serve me well.  Second lap down and I'm still running a quick time.

I hit the line to start my third lap and my breathing is starting to get labored.  My legs are still turning over be it not as fast as before.  I loose time in the corners due to sloppy lines and push hard exiting them to hopefully counter my lack of handling.

Last lap starts.  I'm sub one minute, but just barely.  Last lap times make or break most kilos.  Most riders in a division will have very similar lap times until the last lap where it all changes.  I hear the PA stating I'm on pace for the first sub 1:20 time of the night and it spurs me on.  Two corners left, my breathing is more like panting.  I fight the bike for more speed on the final stretch wanting to give it everything I had.  I hit the with a not so exaggerated gasp for air.  I'm fairly certain the legendary Alpenrose Gorilla was on my back for the last half lap.

1:20.05, and it was the hardest 1:20.05 I've ever spent on my bike.

I ran a 21 second final lap, after running 19s/20s/20s first three laps.  I hear the crowd cheering and the announcer stating it was the fastest time of the night so far.

I roll into the cool down track and it takes a good 5 minutes for my breathing and HR to come under control.  Traci brings water by and I quickly go through the entire bottle.

Another 5 minutes go by and my time is still holding.  There are 4 riders left and I finally get off my bike and head over to where my friends are in various stages of warm-ups.  It's congratulations all around for a fast first Kilo.  Bob also gives me crap for beating his PR on my first try.

With two riders remaining my time is holding, so the worst I can do is 3rd place.  The second to last rider runs faster splits for the first 3 laps but fades on the final stretch to clock in a 1:20.90.  The final rider turns a 1:22. 

Holy crap, I won a State Championship.

Candi surprises me with a medal and a hug, and Traci captures the moment with me wearing the medal and a cheezy grin.  Bob goes out a short bit later and rips the legs off of his field cutting a full 3 seconds off his PR in the process.  He thanks me for the added motivation.  I'm happy that my time would have been competitive in his field as well and know that with some added focus and a better bike I could hold my own there.  Two more State Champs for PV.  We celebrate with Beer and Cheeseburgers.

Happy Belated 4th :)

 

Apparently I forgot to post my update last week during my office move so this will be fairly scatterbrained (more so than normal!)

Raced the Salem Fairview Circuit Race two Sundays ago.  Hard course, good racing with the exception of the r-tard who full on hand-on-hip shoved another rider almost into my path on one of the climbs.  Unfortunately because it wasn't done to me, I couldn't retaliate. ;)

Had an awesome "oh shit" moment on the last lap where I attacked coming off the hill into the final 2 90degree corners to stretch the field out.  Leaned waaaay over, and felt the rear wheel start to chatter.  Kept it upright and hammered for about a minute gapping the field before I happily blew up and soft peddled in for 32nd :)

Raced my first Short Track Mnt Bike event the next day.  Was a hoot and I managed a 4th place finish in the Sandbagger Men's Cat 3 field.  Was the first time on dirt since I blew my knee out at Barton and was very happy with my fitness.

Training this past week went really well.  Had Friday off and hammered with the team that rode on a glorious morning.  Threw down a new season high max wattage which was just shy of my all-time max wattage.   The legs feel pretty good, but mentally, I just have no desire to race right now, especially out at PIR.  A lot of it probably has to do with the continued stupidity being witnessed in the 1/2/3 fields with riders being shouldered into walls and off course in the final laps.  The Mid-Summer Crit series starts up in a few weeks and its REALLY close to my house, but they split the Cat's so I'd be racing with the 1/2/3's again.  Bleh.

In other random news, I moved offices for the first time in 7.5 years last week.  I biked to work the first day in the new place and was displeased to see the lack of close bike parking.  I was happy to find out that most everyone in the building who rides just puts their bike in their office, so I'll end up doing that when I ride in next. 

Big plans for the next few days.  Hope they come to fruition!

Happy Birthday, Blog

 

Finally had a few minutes to sit down and update the good old blog, and realized it's birthday had come and gone.  As a present, I'll make sure to actually update a few times this month rather than once. :)

Where to start, well... my wife got a gorgeous new Track Bike that the weather gods have not allowed her to race on Friday yet.  Hopefully tomorrow will fix that.

PIR on Monday nights in the 1/2/3's have turned into a total clusterfuck of late and I have better things to do than be taken out by a sketchy-ass rider who isn't paying attention.  Yes, I'm talking to the guy who put my teammate into the fucking concrete wall on the last lap of the 6/22 race.  Thanks for not bothering to see if we were okay after!  Ass.   I DNF'd my last two races (one mechanical, the other the crash) so I figure its time to step back and relax and do something safer.  ShortTrack maybe? :p

Speaking of mechanicals, huge thank you goes out to Mark Duff from VeloForma who light a knight in tight spandex came to the rescue and assisted with the fix of my front derailleur hanger on the VeloVie.

We've been cleaning out our garage, and recently sold Traci's old road bike to a good friend of ours, its her first "big girl bike" (her words) and she's absolutely in love with it. 

We also recently parted ways with my 350z, which literally had been gathering dust over the past 2 years.  (1700miles put on the car since Oct 07.. 2400miles put on my new VeloVie since March 1st of this year.)  Ironically we owned the car for *exactly* 6 years, with the purchase and sale date being 6/20.  With the TT bike being demo'd by Burke (dude, you back from the islands yet?) The garage looks spacious even with the Mini in it.  Hmmmm we could possible fill it with...

A Tandem!  Well, at least a borrowed one.  Last Saturday Traci and I celebrated our 11th Wedding Anniversary.  I was on the tail end of a rest week and I wanted to ride with her, so I borrowed a tandem from our good friends Dean and Barb and we rode with the 21's on the Saturday ride.  I'm happy to report we are still married, and I have both my kidneys intact.

In non-biking related news, the 2009 edition of Bridgetown's "Stumptown Tart" will be released shortly.  Last year this beer (a Marionberry infused Belgian) was my favorite beer of the summer.  This year they went with a Yamhill sour cherry rather than Marionberries.   I look forward to seeing it in the market soon.  I'm also happy its just about the end of allergy season.  After previously posting this season wasn't to bad, Murphy drop-kicked my sinus multiple times over the past few weeks.

Stay tuned for some exciting news about the upcoming months!  I'll give you one hint.  Cross.

One and done...

 

For those in the cycling community, the TTT stands for "Team Time Trial", an event where a group of riders work as a team to through a set course as fast as possible.

For those in the cycling community who have actually done a TTT, I put forth that the definition should be known as "Team Torture Testing", where you push yourself as hard as you can without shelling your teammates, knowing that they will be doing the same to you in a matter of moments.

My team for this endeavor were Bigwood, King, and BRat.  Basically PV Fast Twitch.  Our goals were to finish together, ride smoothly as possible, and have the fastest final K of all teams (a joke).. and if possible have fun.

We had practiced a number of times as a group and got a good feel for each others riding style, and cornering abilities and are roughly the same strength so we felt we had a good chance of accomplishing what we set out for.

The day started at Longbottom's to load up the caravan, and relive stories of my attempt to kill the entire team on Saturday by spooking a cat that was sitting on the side of the road.  We hit the road with a single stop in Albany for traditional pre-race cheeseburgers from McDonalds (seriously, we got cheeseburgers.  It's sprinter food.)

We arrived at the Allergy Factory staging area got setup and started our warm ups a bit late.  Our start time was 1 minute behind the real PV TT team, so with 8 people watching the clock we managed to get to the start line in time.  My start was a humorous showing of "how not to clip into your pedal" which was unfortunately captured on film by Mary-Kay Babcock.

aaugh n00b!

After we got settled in, we started our motoring.  I was slotted in behind BRat, which really started to hurt by Lap 3 when he was making monsterish pulls.  Bob trailed behind me.  I felt good on Lap 1.. 2 things started to hurt.  3 I questioned my sanity. Lap 4 we were all getting tired and our bike handling started to suffer.

I was probably the weakest rider of the group, but I can ride corners very well, so tried to time my pulls so I could pilot the team through one of the many corners that broke up the course then peel off.  By the 4th lap, patterns started emerging in our riding styles.  I found myself at the front in specific locations on almost every lap.  Unfortunately that meant I got dumped off in the head wind coming back all the time!

We came in as a group, just a bit spaced a part.  My hamstrings pretty much seized up about 200m after the finish line and I was barely able to get back to the finish line let alone ride a cool down with the team.  My skin suit was crusted with salt.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon laughing with the other PV folks who were down there and trying not to cramp up in the increasing heat.  The journey home had us swing through Carl Jr's, which Bob swears is the official sprinter recovery food, and was punctuated with sneezes, groans of soreness and lots of laughter.

It was a sadistic sort of fun, and a good way to finish my career in the world of Time Trialing. (Yes.. I'm done with TT's.  Anyone want a bike?)

"What if?"

 

Its Monday evening.  Thirty minutes earlier we completed a 4 day, 6000 mile round trip from Portland to Seattle to Miami and back where we took part in the wonderful wedding of our best friend.

Stress of travel piled on top of the chaos of the weekend, lack of sleep, and not being able to catch up with our good friends regardless of the fact that we were sitting next to each other turned into a roller coast of emotions that finally got to me when I no longer had something to do.

I stood in the middle of our family room holding on to my wife, and there were tears streaming down my face.

I can't pinpoint the last time this happened.  It may have been when I crumpled to the ground in pain when I tore my left ACL in '03.  It might have been in '98 when an imbecile of a nurse dropped my just surgically repaired right leg off of the hospital bed.  Tears of frustration and sorrow are something I don't shed often, and I don't know why.

I tend not to get too introspective.  Could be because I'm content with what I have and where I am?   Maybe because I'm resistant to change?  It could be because I'm far more extroverted than introverted or normally think about how my actions impact others rather than myself.

Five years ago I had a pretty eye-opening conversation with Traci on our drive back from L.A. during the last leg of our sabbatical.  A couple of good question were asked and ideas were presented that for a number of reasons I didn't decide to pursue.  I've been asking "what if?" for a while.  I may have been given a second chance this weekend, and I won't let it pass this time.

TACGBODAS!

 

Cough. Sniffle. Sneeze.

No, you haven't contracted swine flu, it's allergy season!  So far I've been pretty lucky with allergies this year, although the major grass pollen season hasn't hit full bore just yet.  A lot of folks however are suffering from the increased tree pollen that is currently in the air.

Since I'm heading out of town for the next 5 days and won't be doing any riding, I figure now is a great time to entertain my 2 loyal readers with some re-posted content!  So back by no ones request, I re-present for your reading pleasure, TACGBODAS or "The Aggregate Cyclist's Guide to Being Outside During Allergy Season".

Busy weekend to start a busy week!

 

I got a rare chance to start my weekend early and took Friday off.  Normally with the development schedule my team has Friday mornings are packed with a bunch of meetings and the afternoons are often spent catching up on stuff that happened in the morning...

Friday I got the chance to sleep a bit later than normal, kit up and ride to breakfast over at Longbottoms.  I met up with the usual Friday morning group and got a good 2+ hour ride in that was a bit harder than I wanted to go, but still fun.   After a few errands, Traci and I headed over to Alpenrose for the first Fast Twitch Friday of 2009.  I'm a bit bummed that I wasn't ready for it as they were doing flying 200's, but I did get to cheer on my teammates Einar, Malcolm, and Bob along with capture Traci's first ever race at Alpenrose on video!

Saturday morning was picture perfect when we rolled out of the house for the club ride.  A HUGE crowd turned out for the loop south to Holly Hill which the team ended up climbing twice for grins.  I made sure to pace myself on the long climb since I know I'm never going to be a pure climber.  The patience paid off later on when I had plenty in the tank for the smaller sprinter climbs that I was able to hit hard.  Was a great day and a great route with an awesome group of folks.  I capped it off with some steak and beer's with our good friends.

Sunday we went to the zoo in the morning, then did a nice 2.5 hour recovery ride.  (Was funny that while at the zoo my legs and lower back really hurt from walking around on the concrete, but once I got on the bike I was fine.  Pretty fascinating how your body adapts to different things.)  Spent the rest of the afternoon and evening lounging at our friends house celebrating a birthday.  I was super tired most of the afternoon and only started waking up around 9pm.  Ah well!

Today I'll spend watching the weather reports and radar map.  Planing on jumping into the 1/2/3 masters race tonight while Traci does the women's development racing class.  The rest of the week is up in the air until Thursday when we leave for Seattle to fly to Miami for a wedding this coming weekend.  I'll be off the bike for probably 5 days, which is the longest period of no-riding since my surgery.  Fun times!