DSGP Round 1: NOLA

How much of New Orleans is below sea level?  If DSGP round 1 in Behrman Park is any indication, I'd say the answer is "everything except the fire ant colonies." They promised that There Would Be Mud, and there was:

Little did we know what was to come...no, scratch that...we knew...

The course was a mostly flat, winding course that would have been fast and grassy had any single blade of grass been able to survive longer than five minutes of 'cross tire slipping and sliding.  It went out, the wide start/finish straight giving traction for two inches down each side, narrowing to some marginally higher ground, a one-eighty that put you right back in the slop, Belgian gates in six inches of water around to the canal (faster but harder to run, every time), where an ever-softening gentle slope led racers ever-farther to the left in search of a solid line; back along the canal, up a runup the consistency of a forty-foot-long cow-patty, over the canal, along a long sloping verge to the head fo the canal, and twisting back to the start-finish through the ant hills and a sand pit that seemed marginally easier to ride than the mud...

It was a typically creative DSGP course with the mud negating the usual fast sections.  I wondered if fat bikes were going to show up and shred, but apparently not...I think it's a plus that, pushed by a combination of CX peer pressure (the best kind!) and course design, the league has largely graduated to dedicated CX bikes without needing rule restrictions...it's a good thing to remain open to riders who haven't yet jumped in and bought a CX bike, but it's also a good thing to not become a fat-tire short-track full-suspension league (there's a reason the officials at UCI races put calipers around everyone's tires!).  As much as my handling skills suck, I'll go on record supporting skills over suspension any day.

But back to the races:  as they told us on the start line of the 1/2/3, the cat 5 race had remained the fastest average times on the day, with every race getting progressively slower.  I believed it.  I had struggled to a second place behind Kupp in the 40+, where the slop made it a threshold effort just to stay upright.  That was too much, and I would pay for it in the 1/2/3 race.  A fast start saw Zach Thomas bolt out, chased by Ben Allen and Kupp, and although I redlined it in pursuit and stayed close for a bit, I was out of podium contention in no more than two minutes.  The power demands were relentless, and the first race had taken a lot out of my legs.  I opted for squaring off corners through most of the twisties, rather than risking the trenches, and I'm not sure if that was a good strategy or not.  On top of that, nervous or tired feet gave me consistent clip-in issues, and I ended up pedaling unclipped for maybe a third of the race (which difficulties would persist for the season, whenever I get a lumpy or rushed remount...I may have to go back to SPD pedals, but I'm a little concerned about mud buildup).  Toward the end, a consistently steady Stewie Pat caught me and went on to take fourth, leaving me to suffer it in for fifth, my first drop race in the series.

I'm pretty sure that's not a smile.

Afterward, as the temperature fell, Wes and crew did instant podiums and we all scuttled off to do snow angels in the standing water over in the middle of the park, trying to get the mud off our bikes and ourselves, out of our shoes, kits, earholes, butt cracks...Scott and I ended up filling gallon jugs with hot water from the stadium bathrooms, taking open-air showers and peeling kit gradually as unspeakable amounts of mud continued to emerge from everywhere mud could hide.

Five hours later, I'm home, to spend the next week cleaning and doing inventory on bike parts that need replacing--that one race came close to freezing up a bottom bracket bearing and chewing up a chain.  CX isn't the worst, but it's not super cheap either. 

Next up, Round 2 in Monroe, which would prove my theory that a two day race with reversed course will favor me one day, but not the other.  And my other theory that crashes are a great source of calcium.

Machines of Loving Grace: DSGP Round 2, Monroe

Sometime in the first lap of Delta States Grand Prix round 2, after my third startling and near-catastrophic crash in no more than two minutes, I began to understand in new ways some of the lessons of cyclocross.  CX giveth, and CX taketh away.

Saturday's course, along the banks of the Ouchita River, against the backdrop of a capsized boat on the far shore, featured an out-and-back along the river, four trips across the width of two diabolically repurposed volleyball sandpits, a fair amount of scrabbly sandy dirt, some pavement riding, and a couple of short steep jump-ups over a geologically inexplicable mound at one end of the park.  All in beautiful cool fall sunshine, as if to make up for DSGP round 1 in the swampy fire ant soup of New Orleans's Behrmann Park.

Floating in fourth in Sunday's race.
Pictures by Robert Lee (thanks!)

Capsizing in the distance (and in the foreground)

In that first lap on Saturday's race in Monroe, I was:  on my bike, off my bike, under my bike, standing on the back wheel, and at a few choice moments completely lost in space relative to the bike.  It was a comedy of errors, a slapstick episode nearing sublime proportions.

Gapped off the back of the small field, I fought back around a few other riders and after a few laps of massive efforts, rejoined the chase group.  I perhaps got lucky that Scott Kuppersmith had set a blistering pace off the front, and while the rest of the field was chasing in earnest, Scott's early jump may have also forced the pace behind to lower a bit as racers had to settle their heart rates, find their speed limits, and race each other smart or risk getting attacked.  That allowed me to regain contact, and once I ran out my initial crash quota, I only ate a few more dirt sandwiches and slammed my bike into the volleyball poles only a few more times.  It was far from a clean run, as Wes's commentary helpfully reminded me each time past the registration tables.  With fresh legs, and running on a potent concoction of crash adrenaline, desperation, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I managed to recover some, and in the last third of the race, surge past the chasers to establish myself in a safe second position, which I held to the end of the race.  Go figure. 

Second in Saturday's race, fourth in Sunday's, and sitting third in the season series.

In Sunday's 1/2/3 race, the course was reversed, and I had a similar, but far less catastrophic, first lap.  After a few bobbles, I made a big surge on the road section, charged up the hill, and led through a lap and a half or so.  Quickly, though, Scott and Ben Allen came around me, and my legs not recovering quite as well as I hoped, I had to settle for fourth position on the road.  Over the course of the race, I paid--either for my early efforts, my old age, or both, gradually falling off a smooth and fast Zach Thomas's wheel, and then, when a fresh, calm, and workmanlike Stewart Patrick steadily brought all the watts back up to the chase, dropping the rest of us chasers to take second, leaving me in fourth behind Zach.  I was a little deflated, and frankly wondered if a few more crashes would have helped me keep the intensity up.  But on a more serious note, clearly a first-lap massive attack will cost me big when the chasers gradually ratchet up the pace later in the race.  It seems like a lesson that should be obvious to a roadie, but I spend a lot of time thinking about how racing 'cross is not like racing road--you *do* need a fast start, you *can* just ride people off your wheel gradually, and chasers behind cannot work together nearly as effectively as they can on the road.

More than that, this weekend taught me some fairly clear lessons about the differences between cross and everything else I do on the bike all year long.  On the road, on the time trial bike, I'm sweating tiny adjustments, working on squeezing out marginal gains as much as any forty-year old MAMIL amateur racer can do.  On the road I'm always trying to fine-tune my suffering for the maximum output, all governed by a power meter, carefully measuring incrementally changing average speed, average heart rate, and normed and average watts.  Counting a gradually accumulating pile of kilojoules.

All watched over by machines of loving grace.   But rather than being freed from our labors by the cybernetic ecology Richard Brautigan's poem imagines, I'm hooked up to the machine, laboring under its benevolent dictatorship as it draws out my physical, emotional, spiritual potential--my very humanity--in units of energy expended and work performed.  It is, all the same, all very civilized, the suffering all very purifying.

But cyclocross admits nothing of the roadie's façade of human exceptionalism or exceptional humanity (doping aside, of course).  There's no velvet on the iron fist.  Cyclocross is frankly, baldly, and viciously red in tooth and claw, a desperate race for survival via suicide, an effort to redline your heart rate and destroy your equipment as quickly as possible, suffering harder and uglier than the rider behind you.  And the supple all-terrain beauty of a winning ride is just an illusion produced by nothing other than winning itself.  That is to say, the faster I get, the more I realize I need to practice, and the rougher it will be when I next eat dirt.

If I started thinking that cyclocross was the diametrical opposite of road riding, it's also entirely possible that 'cross is simply the savagery of road cycling laid bare, stripped of its thin veneer of civilization.  In Cyclocross, Bike Rides You, but instead of hooking you up to digital technology and lovingly coaxing the watts out of your legs, cyclocross beats them out of you, spraying them wastefully across the turf in an hour-long analog old-fashioned full-contact steel-cage death-match.  There's no power meter on my 'cross bike, and if there were, it wouldn't matter.  All I have to chart is the wavering red line, graphing my cardiac distress, and that's not good for much except for some compensatory TSS points as the stiffness and bruising drains gradually out of my legs and I get ready to do it again next week...

Next Week:  DSGP Round 3 in Natchez!

BAMACROSS DIRT CRIT

I'll get back to this past season's road racing momentarily, but for now I want to jot down my thoughts about cross, since I'm elbows-deep in it at the moment...

I'm just going to throw it out there:  there's nothing better for me, a roadie, than a cross race that is not really a cross race.

Cue BAMACROSS Dirt Crit 2015.

Bamacross, if you don't know, is a great series, full of cool people, and with exactly the kind of fun you'd expect from fall racing.  This year, I've moved on from the old to the new, giving the old Cyfac a chance to bring someone new into the sport, and moved on to a Trek Crockett 7, experimenting with CX1 and a tubeless setup.

I usually try to make CX a low-cost endeavor, in past seasons racing just a few times and spending something like $100 on nonperishable equipment:  2 new tires, say, or new bar tape.  This year, with unloading a bunch of old garage bling and selling the Cyfac, I moved into a new Trek with minimal wallet pain.  Set up ably and quickly by Marx and Bensdorf's sponsoring shop (Peddler in Memphis), the Trek was not the high-end carbon-frame disc-brake CX stallion on tubies that some people are riding, but then I'm not the rider that some people are.  And with SRAM 1x and tubeless tires, I figured I was paring a few ounces off the rig compared to the Cyfac.

So with a new bike and some fitness from road season, I hauled over to Brookside to tear up some gravel and grass with Alabama's finest.  Since I really wanted the fitness and adaptation, I went in for three races, the 35+, the 3/4, and the cat 3 race run with the 1/2s.  It was a lot, and kinda warm out there, and so I was glad when they combined the singlespeed with the elite race and took that one off my plate for me.

In the 35+, I got my typical slow hole shot, but there was maybe 2-300 yards before drifting into an open right hand curve, and I had time to punch it again when I saw Omar going hard.  In the dirt crit, the most technical parts were slightly slidey gravel where the difference between the best line and the worst line was maybe 10%--you had to ease off the gas just a little if you picked the worse line.  Well, Omar didn't, and I hung onto his wheel for a lap or so, trying to hold his line with desperation leg throws while gradually redlining.  He popped over the hill on the backside, held pace to take the first lap hole shot, and then gradually pulled away from me.  I was happy at that point to let the speed do down a bit and not crash myself with two more races.

Grinding up the hill on the back side--pic by Sara Walker

Have to give credit where it's due :-) pic by Andrew Garza

In the 3 race, we got a fairly fast start, and the lead three or four guys all took turns attacking early.  I am always game to toast myself early, and after the ditch dipsy-doo on the back side, I knew the trail turned up for a bit, and I hammered a gap open that I held through the backside grass and the steep little kicker.  I took the hole shot and kept on the gas, gradually opening a substantial lead that I held to the end.  This was not an easy effort, since on this course, it seemed possible for chasers to cooperate, and I would have to keep going hard through the lesstechnical sections in order to stay away.

Chicken Dinner!  Pic by Molly Beth Shaffer

In the third race, after a lunch break, I jumped into the combined 1/2 and 3 race.  I felt okay, but as events would prove, "okay" only goes so far in the third hour of racing.  This was fast but also strategic, and super fun--the Infinity guys had enough strong riders that they could repeatedly push a rider up the road and let someone else chase or risk a real gap opening.  I was trying to pay attention to who else was a cat 3, but I was also a little too eager to close a gap or jump ahead.  I was hoping that by being ggressive, I could join a 1/2 rider (hopefully in a blue and black kit!) who would work with me and keep me ahead of the other 3s.  It got a bit rough, and I wasn't descending the big hill as fast as some guys, and in the end, I popped hard after one too many surges up the hill.  Riding the last 15 minutes at a more reasonable (cooked!) pace, I was passed by another cat 3, and ended up alone for 3rd on the 3 podium and something like 8th overall in the A race.  It was a tough way to end, but I definitely put some fitness (or at least suffering) in my legs, I hope.

The 1/2 race with the 3s: another cool race shot from Sara Walker.

At some point, yep, this was how it felt.  Pic by Molly Beth Shaffer.

And if you weren't sure how cool CX is, I'll just leave this here for your consideration:

The future of the sport is safe!

Resumption of Web-Based Hostilities

Because offseason means never having to say I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for an eighteen month layoff from blogging.  You didn't notice anyway, I'm sure.  But I'm restarting it; here goes.

Since the funnest cycling season is upon us, it's definitely time to give a little rundown of the past couple racing seasons and kick off some recreational writing that may or may not will definitely include humblebragging my meager but happy-making road results, celebrating the continued growth of cyclocross and collegiate racing in Mississippi, and occasional musings about the wider world of cycling that prolly will seem less profound as soon as I say them.  All in the service of avoiding writing actual academic paragraphs, of course.

I'll start with some of my cycling highlights of the last year and a half; the 2013 Springtime of No Results turned into a summer of good cat 3 LAMBRA results: 

2nd overall in the Tour of Louisiana, in a late breakaway with Andrew Hammond:

Indian Cycling Gettin Paid!

A second in the cat 3s at Rocky Mount, the LAMBRA championships:

I will probably never outsprint Sam, and I certainly won't ever match his tank game.

And a third in the LAMBRA 1/2/3 Time Trial, with a time in the low 54s:

Lots of strength and experience in this frame...then there's me.

And I raced a sort-of cross season, with some great races in Memphis, Birmingham, and down in Natchez:

Outdoors Inc.'s long-running CX race on mud island, complete with scenic backdrop and future teammates.

Natchez, 35+ win.  Sloppy and very fun day.  Slipping and heckling.

 If I had to sum up that year...on the road, I finally felt like I was good to move up out of cat 3 (with consecutive 6th, 3rd, and 2nd in the championships, a TT podium, and an open podium in a stage race, I didn't feel like I was being impatient).  In cross, I started over at the bottom, and while I had plenty of roadie power, the smallest dab of mud may easily send me into the weeds, and I got to enjoy working on my weaknesses a little and trying to prove to myself I was ready to move up.  Most importantly, the DSGP crew was tons of fun and totally resuscitated my offseason enjoyment of cycling, which never really goes away, but does ebb from time to time.

And finally, I'm just going to leave this here, without further commentary:

Matt Gandy, ladies and gentlemen.

This Offseason Brought to You by Polar Vortices and BTC Sweet Potato Fried Pies

I wrote this at the end of last winter, and filed it away.  As I return to writing about riding and racing, on the cusp of a new season, recovering a little after a hard training cycle, I'm reminded of the way that cycling just...cycles.  Imagine that.  Ups and downs, ebbs and flows, over and over again, unavoidably...no matter how much you want to keep on the gas, charging hard through infinite intervals, life intervenes, the seasons change, winter storms come and go, base miles accumulate and peaks approach and recede.

It's been a particularly long winter, in the sense of lots of hours on the bike over the winter break, and also because, despite some teasing hints that spring might be coming, winter insists and persists, refusing to actually give way to good riding weather. 

There are days in the Pennnsylvania winter, the season for setting out on interminable Sunday rides meandering through the region's exquisite exurban sprawl, the William Carlos Williams mongrelized landscape of revived mill towns, Quaker villages, and undead stripmall middle America (no one to drive the car!), days when I must adopt a compulsion that I do not genuinely feel to fill up legs with hours.  Time on the bike.

And sometimes those rides earn rewards, and you get to stop for coffee and baked goods, warming solidly frozen hands for just a few minutes before getting back to the purposeful business of wandering aimlessly, numbly cranking away, banking away kilojoules against some future moment of bile-flavored racing glory. 

That bakery stop is clutch, a moment of relief in the long process of storing up pale suffering in the cold against the longing for hot whirling dry hells to come.  An oven-warm loaf under the jersey, a sop for countless perineal insults.  I vaguely expect the halfhearted winter pedalstrokes to reincarnate in a standing, gasping, thrashing, crashing charge, the divine racerly revelation spreading across the washed out spring sky as the wheel in front of you pulls slowly away...

That bakery, two left turns after the long hilly section with black ice in the shade, that bakery at the end of winter, the down payment on summer carbohydrates and caffeine, disappears like a mirage by May.  I've never seen it in good weather.

In the south, however, winter is not such a masochistic dysfunctional love affair; January days in Oxford do not mentally weigh the grams of resentment they carry up every hill, dragging you down with calorie counting and early bedtimes and milligrams per milliliter of adrenal malfunction.

January in Oxford is easygoing; it has never frozen my water bottles inside my insulated vest, never hissed ugly names at me behind my back, never sat down at the top of the hill in a hot salty temper. 

But every once in a while, even so, you come upon winter's last bakery, and if you have put in the miles, if you have mindlessly watched the road long enough, you might have earned a sweet potato fried pie at the B.T.C. Old-Fashioned Grocery in Water Valley...the Unofficial Sponsor of North Mississippi Base Miles...

And honestly, I'm not sure yet where that fried pie sits in the eternal Boethean cycle of cycling.  I'll swallow the pie, never mind the banana turning brown and soft in my jersey pocket.  Time to refill bottles and zip up jerseys, back to the endless wandering, this time in the fifty-five degree sunshine of the Mississippi winter.

I'll take the bakery where I can find it, and winter will be gone soon enough.

TSoNFR

The Springtime of No Results, that's what I'm already calling it in my head, and hoping that doesn't turn into the Summer of No Results, and worse, the Season of No Results.

I have a backlog of whingey race reports all written up, waiting to add a few pics--to visually enhance my lack of results, or possibly to screen them behind another round of oh-so-exciting midrace pics of me already in full grimace, before the big boys have even begun to play.

Rouge.  Two Battenkill races, the second on full tilt after dehydrating myself in the first.  Sunny King.  Tiger Lane.  Foothills.  The LAMBRA 2-Man TT.  I might be forgetting one or two...but that's all right--they were completely forgettable.  I'll post those reports up, because I always learn something from a race, but in the meantime, I just want to dwell a bit on the lack of results.  After a stellar winter--maybe too stellar--I saw inexplicably shabby form, infected road rash, and fitness shredded by travel and 99 different new and exciting kinds of work stress.  By late April, it was hard to find the time or motivation to ride a bike.  I wanted to want it, but then I wanted my job and to take my puppy for a walk, too.

Pup-pup!!! (Not shown:  small collection of chewed-up bike parts.  I mean destroyed.  Carbon.  Aluminum.  Hell, even hardened steel.  Rubber or plastic doesn't stand a chance.)

So I'll whine about all that soon enough, but for now, it's worth saying that I've just put together a solid five days of training, one of the first since the early-season plan ended (got to get that fixed soon--I have tended to self-coach, but that might not be working for me right now), and my legs are beginning to come back to life.

I think I have to give credit to two rides:



It doesn't look like much, but driving up from sea level, jumping out of the car, kitting up, and suffering up the local long climb, up Flagstaff's Snowbowl Road...that was actual fun.  My tongue was just hanging out halfway up, feeling about like a prickly pear, and I couldn't believe how fast and far my power numbers fell.  Or how I couldn't raise my heart rate.  Just no oxygen there, I guess.  And how much I disbelieved Jay when he called out that I had two more miles of climbing left.  Two?!?!  But I did make it.  And then there was the downhill...

Not my proudest effort.  But maybe what you get when you try to ride at altitude after a day's drive.

Rocky Mountain High.

And then a couple days later, this one:


"There are no achievements on this ride":  love it.  That's one reason, I guess, not to take Strava too seriously (along with the downhill KOMs).  This was, if nothing else, a ride of achievements for me.  And it certainly takes the scenery prize on a beautiful day in central Cali.  After watching the ending of stage five of the Tour of California, I was caffeinated and energized enough to jump on the bike for a couple hours before dusk.

Just in time for a group jersey photo-op

Local riders (from a San Luis Obispo advocacy group, I think) generously watered and directed me to a good local loop up and over See Canyon.  Once out of town, it put me on a long, steady, rolling climb, followed by two short stingers with a stretch of gravel for good measure...  I didn't quite push as hard as I might, but I remember thinking, now this feels right again...locked in, low-low gearing, just grinding away at a nice steady pace.  Occasionally standing, but not getting too crazy.

At the top, the view (or more accurately, the 50mph wind, the small herd of cows, and the two cars parked in the middle of the road) just about knocked me off the bike.

Not the best-composed shot, but you get an idea of the amazing light quality up there...

Photobombing my own scenic view.

And after a long gradual descent from SLO back toward Avila, I found myself on the finish of the day's tour stage, about where Jens broke away from the lead group for the win...it was an easy choice to turn right and pedal hard into Avila Beach, turning the three corners and tiptoeing past the post-stage breakdown crews to sprint past a bemused-looking woman in an official blue polo shirt.  I won, no doubt.

So now, listening to the Pacific wash the beach, digesting some sushi, and stiffening a little from the ride, I'm not very tempted to whine about the season of no results--I think I have some better things to contemplate...and just in time.

Fear and Loathing in Monroe

Race season officially opened for 2013, with a trip down to Monroe, Louisiana (Cajun Gawd's country) for the Vantage Health Plan/Team Colvin 20K ITT and Criterium.

Am I race-ready?  Not really.  Am I going to do it?  You bet.  Am I going to do it after riding Jackson's local tough guy Saturday ride?  Umm..sure.  Am I going to regret that choice?  Probably.  But was it worth it?

You bet!  How could I possibly miss the chance to ride vigorously around in circles, after riding vigorously out and back, on a Sunday morning?  Plus I would get to race with and cheer for my new teammates on Absolute Racing.

So the weekend started with Davis, Ryan, and I making a nice Friday jaunt down to Jackson, stopping over to visit Davis's dad, and getting up early to ride a nice vigorous 75 from one of Ridgeland's local shops, The Bike Crossing.  Besides having a beautiful shop floor, a great range of road and tri bikes, and a crackerjack staff, Bike Crossing also sponsors Davis's new team, a bunch of up-n-comer go-getters, the future of Jackson's racing scene.  They are riding hard, goofing around, and getting faster every day.  ...Oh to be 22 again.  Actually, I would have been an awful racer as a 22-year-old, so never mind; being old and crusty has its benefits.  Anyway, that ride turned into an awful/delightful sufferfest, trying to hang onto the strong riders' wheels while coughing up chunks of lung.  At ride's end, Davis showed that he was completely willing to sacrifice race results for local glory, charging hard into the wind to cross the final sprint point first.  I'm pretty sure that was his most important season goal.

After a night generously hosted by Davis's mom, we packed up and split westward for the land of gators, gumbo, and a guaranteed hurtin', arriving a couple hours later in Monroe, Louisiana to find our teammates ready to go, a checkered flag announcing the start of the time trial.  I picked up my number, noted my start time, and got to warming up.  I was in no kind of mood--I was pretty sure I had fried my legs that week, especially the day before, and I was disorganized for the races.  It always takes one or two races to get my routine back in order.

Cycling Yardsale.

Clamping in a set of borrowed wheels (a beautiful set of deep-dish Mercury TT wheels--thanks, Tim!!--which were deepest I've ever run...more on that anon), I trucked myself over the levee to the start.  I was already at the disadvantage of using a road bike with clip-ons, plus I thought I was going to be late for my start, and that didn't help my mood any.  At least I had my aero helmet...wait...I remembered my helmet, right??  Gahhhh....

At the start, I settled into a nice rhythm--my heart rate monitor was not picking up my signal (so either it or I was offiicially dead for 28 minutes), but I knew ballpark where I should be.  I cranked.  I had a tailwind going out, and the course was pancake flat, only one or two easy angles, and just a little stretch of rough pavement.  I was moving, and I could tell it--I hit the turnaround in 13 minutes even.  It felt naughty.  And turning back into that (now) headwind, I was immediately punished for my bad behavior.  I skittered sideways, I bucked the wind, I lost my cool, and I lost two minutes on the return trip.  Gusts would occasionally kick my back disc wheel around, but by the end, I was a bit more comfortable with just letting the back of my bike wander all over the road, as long as I wasn't near any other riders.  Crashing?!? There's no crashing in TT'ing!!  I think my Garmin's distance reading was off, and I didn't realize I was as close as I was to the finish line, so after only a short surge I pulled through, coughed up one last chunk of lung, and cooled down.  I guessed I had done okay.  After we were all packed up, and as we were heading over to get lunch, they posted results:

Scanning up the row from some logical place in the middle, where I belonged, I couldn't find my name.  What...did I forget to pin my number on?  Was I DQ'd?  Did I somehow manage to screw up the only kind of race one has (more or less) control over?!?  Wait...what?  Second?  Overall?!?  If this was the Race of Truth, I felt like a liar.  As awesome as it might be to be closer to Frank Moak in a TT, I felt like I stole something.  Not many chances to sneak out of a LAMBRA TT in second overall.  And my only goal for the race (admittedly, with no good basis for my expectation) was to hit 28 flat.  Got it, and got a podium.  That, I thought, is a durn nice morning's work.  Made possible, of course, by Tim's wheels.  Third through sixth were so close just a little drag would have knocked me way down.

The crit, now, that was another (1/2/3) matter.  I've done my share of cat 3 crits, and I don't even like them.  Combined 1/2/3 races...Ugh.  So I wouldn't say that I was all fat and sassy (farthest thing from it), but I did enjoy the rare moment of having my name called out second at the start line.  That's okay--the cat 1s and 2s in the field were having none of it.  The pace started high, and even with a good warmup, Scott was making it hard for me to do anything but sit in.  When the early kicking started, I was a little out of position, and I couldn't jump until after two quick corners, and the attackers had gained a cool hundred meters.  Crap.  I came around, chased them down, and sat in just long enough to get ready to do it again.  I realized quickly that if anyone in an Absolute jersey were going to stand on the podium, it would be Scott, and I needed to keep him from doing too much work chasing.

Just so we're all clear...being on the front does NOT mean I'm doing awesome.

So I made it my business, and put my head down and closed gaps whenever I could.  It made everything simple and fun:  don't worry about hurting, don't worry about results, just close the gaps.  I did a far from perfect job, but I was pleased with myself for grabbing a serious wheel or two when they took quick flyers, and after Moak took a turn off the front, I pulled for a full three minutes chasing him down.  I'm not saying I pulled him back, but I guessed someone was going to have to do it, and it wasn't going to be Scott.

After that last pull, I almost got dropped, and watched as Scott led four riders into the race-winning break.  My work done, I sat up, popped the parachute, and was joined by Woz.  At that point, we were only concerned with making sure Scott felt secure in the break, and since Herring Gas had a rider in the break as well (the sprinterly gent who eventually won the race), this was not too tall an order.  There was a little surging after that, and we let one other strong HG rider get away, but we didn't think he could bridge up at that point, or I guess it would have been head down again and grind away to see if we could bring him back.

The end results:  Scott on the podium, Woz and I survived to the group finish. All in all, it was a good leg-opener, a nice TT result, and (not sure I'll get to say this too many times in my life) and an awesome post-race dinner at O'Charley's...

Congrats to the other Absolute racers, including the handsome and charming Wozniak, who took 2nd with a strong effort in the cat 3 TT.  Thanks to Monroe's local cycling community and the USAC officials who all spent a good part of their Sunday out in the chilly morning and windy afternoon...without those folks, we cyclists would have much less fun on these early spring weekends...

Roller Derby

It's been a long time since my last ride on the rollers, and tonight's endurance ride seemed like a perfect opportunity to get back on the instrument of mental torture that is The Kreitler.

Don't get me wrong; I love to suffer, maybe more than most--I paid for those Sufferfest videos that everyone pretends to like on FCBK, and even went so far as to watch one (it was only an hour long.  I'm not really sure that's enough suffering for me)--but I find the rollers inflict pain of an entirely different order.  If you're an avid cyclist, or just hoping to see an awkward faceplant into the nearest coffeetable, then you might have seen that one legged roller-riding dude online.

 

It's important to note that he is absolutely unlike me.  As a relative newby to the rollers, I lack the experience, the fine motor skills, the confidence, and the righteous rock'n'roll mullet of this fellow.  I had a good run of beginner's luck learning to ride them, but no way I'm going no-hands, much less one-legged no-hands.  Nevertheless, we all know the rollers are good for balance and handling, and really helpful in retraining your legs to pedal circles again after a few weeks with, say 50% of my riding time indoors (yeah, our winters are that harsh).

So, having scheduled my wintersession course and procrastinated on prep until the only riding time is after dark on a rainy Wednesday, I set out for the busiest 30 minutes of my week, which goes something like this:

Clip in, desperately clutching the doorframe with right hand, hold brake with left. Crank a few times.  Exhale, settle onto saddle; relax.  Crank.  Watts need to come up, cadence only at 80.  That's not riding.  Ed Show on TV--can't really watch, not if I want to remain rubber side down.  Cadence coming up; time to upshift.  Better.  Cadence coming up into the range.  Getting a little warm.  Crap--didn't turn the fan on.  Dismount, fan on, remount.  Drink.  Restart:  everything comes to a grinding halt.  What?!?  Takes me a minute before I realize the t-shirt that was sitting on my handlebars got sucked into the front fork.  Dumb.  Restart.  Get that heart rate up.  Let's go.  Settle in again.  Good.  Can't keep looking at the wattage, but I can listen to the tone.  I imagine it's high C.  C-sharp is 15 more watts.  Try to keep the tone steady, pedal circles, keep the pressure steady.  Slide hands out to end of the hoods, slide forward and settle lower over the top tube.  I can feel the back end weave gently.  Whoa!  A little twitch to the right and I lean back to the left, trying not to overcorrect.  I did that once and ended up chipping the paint off a chainstay.  Toes up, flex ankle, toes down and around.  Circles.  Look ahead, not down--watch roller frame in lower peripheral vision; look a little farther ahead.  There's a Utah lady schoolteacher on TV wearing a jumper and talking about packing heat in the classroom.  Teachers actually wear jumpers?  Of course all teachers wear jumpers.  She doesn't think her middleschoolers' parents ever need to know there's a Glock under that jumper.  Focus.  Circles, circles.  Relax arms.  Legs underworked yet strangely sore.  Ankles.  Exhale.  I've been pedaling for...how long?!?  8 minutes?!?

I did get a half hour on the rollers before I latched back into the fluid trainer to finish my ride.  I guess there is one thing about the rollers--they definitely make you feel more alive.  If you survive.

My Empire of Dirt

You could have it all, my empire of dirt... I will let you down, I will make you hurt.

The Short:  I prefer the Johnny Cash cover of "Hurt," mostly because he sounds about like I felt after a lap or two of JourneyCross, in Cordova, TN, for a 4th in CX 4.  Like he really did rule an empire of dirt, like he really was just tired of the pain.

The Long:  we knew it would be rain or shine...there was an extra reminding us that "shine" was only one of the two options.  But this was the last scheduled 'cross race (at least locally) and so Davis and I were off to race it, hell or high water.  Both of which we got.  We arrived early, and it was indeed a bit chilly and rainy.  A quick preride confirmed too that the course, while beautifully designed and thoroughly prepared by Memphis's finest local cross addicts, would be challenging--at best. 

The Course

Starting with a straight shot down the parking lot, the track took to the grass, winding up into the first barriers (non-bunnyhoppable, the race organizers helpfully pointed out); it bounced up and down before turning to a long straight service drive, dipped left into a boggy section of long grass.  It then went into the woods for a couple hundred yards of singletrack, came out, bounced up and over a hairpin, through a ditch, and then through another long-grass section.  It then passed through a final set of hairpins and one more barrier before turning up along the church and into the lot for the finish.  The whole lap on easy warmup took 6 or 7 minutes, which might have been my fastest time of the day, since it soon got pretty soft and torn up (just like my legs).

Stagin' in the Rain... (pics pilfered from teh interwebz)

Once the B race got started a couple fast juniors took off; as per my habit, I stayed up near the front, letting someone else set the pace and pick the lines, but holding my own.  Until the ditch on the backside, when I dropped my front wheel into the muck and boffed the dismount, ending up sitting on the ground watching places 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 move right on past me.  A little discouraged, I took my time getting up, slogged through another lap, and seriously considered stepping off the bike when I dropped my front wheel into the ditch on lap 2, executing a perfect faceplant endo.  Luckily, the wrist took it well, but that had about taken the steam out of my race. 

On the switchbacks, I could see some of the leaders--they weren't that far ahead--and I could see Davis floating along on 30+ pounds of aluminum and fat tires, sucking the race leaders' wheels.  I suffered, and not athletically, feeling the cold, the rain, the mud, the lack of handling skills.  I focus on the pain, the only thing that's real.  I ran more than some racers, but it cost me a lot to get off the bike--I might have been better off slipping, tipping, and dabbing through some of those sections.  On the next-to-last lap, I discovered the right side of the trail and a very wide left turn into the back switchbacks let me carry much more speed and stay on the bike a lot longer through that section.  Surprising myself, I began to pass a few riders (sometimes running while they pedaled) and close down some of the big gaps that had opened up.  Some of the other 4s, while usually very strong, didn't look like they were enjoying the mud any more than I was.  Some dude was having a little fun with us, holding out a handful of small bills one lap, but I was too deep in the pain cave to realize what it was until too late.  In the end, I stayed on the gas for the last lap and tried to pull it in strong.  40 minutes never felt so long...nevermind--it was only 37.  Crap.

"Racing"

Davis, however, had done much better, using the nasty conditions to his advantage and riding to a win in CX4 (3rd in the B race, right behind some excellent juniors).  He actually seemed to enjoy the whole thing, which kind of mystified me.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner.

Afterwards, we wandered around until we found an unsupervised hose and "cleaned" our bikes and selves off a little before collecting Davis's trophy, jumping in the car, and grabbing some evil corporate delicious strbx for the way home. 

The lessons learned?  All that fancy equipment don't matter if you can't stay on it.  I'm glad I have a 'cross bike, and about as glad that it's not my only bike.  I'm still not sure I've ever actually warmed up for a CX race.  A lot of doing well in those conditions is mental:  accepting or even believing that you enjoy mud-sleet.  I don't know how I would have to train in order to surge and recover properly in a race that short.  And finally, I don't care--my first spring training plan is about to start.  This was good for a little fitness, but...bring on road season!

CX Redux: Mid-South CX Championship

The short:  3rd place CX4, a little more 'cross practice, and some free schwag.

The long: 

In a previous lifetime, I knew Outdoors, Inc. in Memphis as a retail haven for people with my borderline antisocial-slash-petrophile tendencies, and a good place to buy replacement quickdraws, wool socks, and fuel cannisters for my stove.  But after giving up on rock climbing in the delta and trading in crash pads for...well, padless crashing, I guess...I have come to appreciate OI's role in the cycling community as well. 

OI has now sponsored 26 editions of one of the best-attended, funnest cross races in the mid-south.  In some ways, that's might be big-fish-small-pond, but 26 years of anything, much less jumping barriers and redlining into the Mississippi floodplain wind, is pretty impressive.  That means they were doing cyclocross before it was trendy, before you could get a fine Belgian ale in every Philadelphia pub, long before Louisville ever imagined they'd be hosting the world championships...back when mountain bikers had no choice but to become roadies in November, Memphis was there doing the 'cross thing.

I was pleased to have a cross race within an hour and a half drive, and with no hesitation I recruited Davis and Clay to help share the ride, and we booked it up to Mud Island on race day.  It was cool, overcast, and a little blustery, but just about right for racing.  A quick preride confirmed the course would be fast and fun, with no really technical sections to annoy roadies with no handling skills.  From the start/finish, it bounced up and down an embankment a few times, making an offcamber turn or two into a wattage-sapping grassy level, a short run-up some stairs, up and down the bank a few more times, over a fast triple barrier, and down the long start-finish straight into the wind.  And then do it all again. 

After seeing off some kids races, the B race got going.  Remembering my first race, when a number of fast riders just took off early and never came back, I planned to hammer a bit harder at the beginning, especially since I wasn't worried about taking singletrack on the 'cross bike.  I stayed up front, leading for a while--not working too hard, but setting an honest pace, and the usual suspects started to pass and pull away. 

I'm not sure I had any business leading these guys, but they rectified the situation soon enough.

That was fine, although it became evident that I might have been tired, or may have pushed too hard early, because there were a few more people than I really wanted in front of me as the race went on.  It was windy enough that we were frequently sighting trailing and leading riders, which helped me stay motivated and on the gas.  Late in the race, I thought I felt a slow leak, and since there weren't many riders around, I contemplated just trying to get to the finish on inflated rubber.  One or two more riders passed me, and I calculated that I was probably fourth in CX4.  It turned out I had just underinflated the rear tire and failed to really feel it until my late-race mentality set in, and it also turned out that at least one of the 4s, racing well in front of me, was actually racing masters.  So I pulled in best I could to find out later that I had actually made top 3 in the 4s.  I'll take it. 

Davis on the triple barrier

Davis and Clay had both turned in strong performances on mountain bikes, Clay on the singlespeed Chupacabra picking up places on the little uphills.  Frikkin' skinny climber.  But Clay did produce the big win of the day by using his insider knowledge to point us to Huey's in midtown, where we enjoyed the now sunny and warm afternoon.  A cool brew, a massive burger, and some gargantuan onion rings later, we were back on the road to OxVegas.

Data Mining

I'm not the most diligent miner of my own data, but since a supersecret conglomerate of Sprint-Blackwater-Nike-PepsiCo, consulting with Dick Cheney, is already doing so in the bowels of the information Mordor, I figured I'd see what my numbers could tell me.  

Mostly, not much:

That looks about like my cycling routines over the last month or so:  big peaks when I steal away a day or two of riding, and lulls where I'm doing more working than pedaling.  But every once in a while, something interesting shows up:

I flatter myself to think that this might be one of the few blogs that would turn up results on the google searches for:

1) "hill repeats for battenkill"
2) "Joe Martin Stage Race power profile," and
3) "wheel recommendation for rouge roubaix."

So, intrepid (and geographically confused) googler, the answers are:

1)  A lot (my favorites were 9-12 x 90 seconds seated, sprint at the end)
2)  Tougher than you think for the first stage, and easier than you think for the rest, until the final sprint of the crit; and
3)  I've really enjoyed my HED Ardennes--light, but alloy for increased durability in crappy-surface races, wide rims are nominally aero with 23mm tires, and they are quite comfortable accepting my favorite crap-surface racing tires, Vittoria Pave 25s.  Although I did see a lot of carbon deep-dish wheels there, which (if they can carry you through the rough stuff) must be nice on the long miles between dirt sections, especially in a break.

Now, back to killing some leftover turkey and dreaming about the race-season trifecta of Rouge Roubaix, Battenkill, and Joe Martin.  After working off some of these holiday pounds.

Baby's First 'Cross Race

The short:  Crossroads Clash:  2nd CX4, 4th in the "B" Race, dignified DNF in the "A" race

Race season is dead--long love race season!  Just like the French medieval royal succession, race season has a special way of perpetuating itself, resurrecting itself in the very act of dying.  Maybe it's a testament to cyclists' constant need to prove themselves, maybe it's something more fun. 

I heart staging.  It's always the best part of the race.  Awesome pics pilfered
from 901's facebook page.

This time around, it definitely feels like the fun version--it's cyclocross season in the mid-south, the cold-brewed antidote to roadie self-importance and FTP-induced ennui.  As far as I'm concerned, and I remain an unreconstructed roadie, this is cycling at its best.  Bikes on grass, cowbells, barriers, long socks, unnecessary skinsuits, most of us proudly reduced to miniscule cranksets, aluminum frames and SPD pedals. 

It's a resurrection of another sort, too--of our better younger selves, riding knobby tires back to our ten-year-old cycling origins, swerving in feral packs through the neighborhood, jumping curbs, power-braking, wiping out, cranking until our legs and lungs burn, and doing it all again.  Vive le sport.

I still heart staging. 

On another of the mid-south's long string of remarkable, cloudless fall days, I headed up to 901 Racing's Crossroads Clash for my first 'cross race.  At ten pm the night before, I had swapped the pedals off my mountain bike (still decorated with year-old Wolf River Trail mud, I shamefacedly admit), did a few running dismounts in the grassy corner lot (screw remounts!  No time!) and packed up my race back once again.

On the day of, I managed to caffeinate on the way up, squeeze into the B race (women and children first?!?).  The course, rigged up at Memphis's own Shelby Farms, started 600m short of the start/finish, following a brilliant, fun, winding uphill grass sequence to the final barrier, then into a short singletrack section, emerging onto a grass section with a triple barrier, and after a 1.5-minute TT on the grass, dove into some more singletrack.  After an uphill barrier, the course circled back through the windy uphill section to the final barrier.  

Start/finish barrier, non-instagrammed

Giddyup!

After a quick neutral lap, we were off. It was everything I thought it would be, and more.  The phrase "dirt crit" crossed my mind as the pack went into the trees for the second time.  The pace was high--I was hitting my redline repeatedly.  This is good for me, I thought.

I was near enough to the front, and coming out of the singletrack, I goofed going over the logs, slowing up the riders behind me.  I'll have to work on that.  On the grass again, I managed to surge past two or three riders, and a quick check confirmed I was near the front--there was one single-speed racer, one woman, and one other CX 4 in front of me.  I was consistently slow through the second singletrack section--or other people were consistently able to catch up, perhaps--but I managed to hold my own and open up gaps on the grass, most laps.

Start-finish barrier.

By the second or third time through, I was hitting the triple barrier on the back side of the course smoothly--in stride, kicking the back wheel of the bike up, and holding my speed.  It took a while, figuring out which foot wanted to come out of the pedal first, which side I had to come off, which foot to begin running on.  A few times, especially the uphill barriers, I got caught with my right foot down, unclipping my left, and still trying to get off the left side of the bike...try it.  It's a no-go.  Once, in the heat of otherwise racey efforts, I had to grab the brakes as I nosed the front wheel into the barrier.  That can't be right.  For a whole lap, my fancy mtb shoes with the cable lock came undone (luckily, not broken), but the right wrist has regained enough flexibility to handle such mid-race on-bike fine motor skills.  Luckily, I got it all mostly figured out, or at least well enough to not lose position as the race proceeded. 

About a third of the course was (mostly) easy singletrack

I found myself in second in my race with a few laps to go, and after some strategic recovery riding on the final lap, managed to hold off another rider for 2nd in the class, 4th rider in the B race.  Like a big boy.

I surged up the final twisting grass sequence, holding position, and thankfully didn't have to spring full-bore at the final barrier.  I don't know if I could have figured out my unclipping and running in a full-on sprint. 

I think I might need a slightly longer stem.

After a quick recovery, I was slated to get into the A race.  My legs were still pretty blasted, and I was lobbying to skip the neutral lap, but--unbeknownst to me--that meant the whole thing was go from the gun.  Crap!  I found myself all the way at the back of the back.  Had we started this fast in the B race?!?  Probably.  Are my legs that cracked?  Indeed.  Some dude went down, disappearing in a cloud of dust, at the bottom of the first hill, and I slid out on my left side.  That was disheartening, although no bad effects beside some grass in my lever.  I just didn't have any legs, though, couldn't catch up, and just felt unsteady the whole time, so at the next-to-last barrier on the first lap, I just nosed off the course and went to collect my half cup of beer and $50 before adding in a few minutes of riding in the park. 

Great job, Matt West and crew!  It was a good day.  If I'd listened to the right people, I might have known--every day at the cross races is a good day.  Vive le 'cross!

The log barriers coming out of the woods.

Stick a Fork in It...

...2012 Racing season is over.

The Short:  3rd place, LA/MS district cat 3 road race championship.

The Long:  Don't call it a comeback, because I did get back on the bike in a "racelike effort" in a "timed event" in July...

Ryan's Lesson in Aerodynamics

...but I did come back to bucolic Natchez, Mississippi, for my (now) annual pilgrimage to the Louisiana/Mississississississippi Racing Association Championships.  I was looking to wrap up the wrist in an ace bandage, get on the bike one last time, test the legs after a little layoff, and stick a fork in 2012 road racing season.

Davis and the Race Wagon

The cat 3 LAMBRA race is 72 miles on a 5-mile circuit in a state park, 14 laps starting at the low point, going up along a dam on the edge of a pleasant swallow- and redneck-infested lake, turning net uphill for the next 2 miles through a series of 30-second kickers with short downhills.  The back half of the course, with a few rollers, twists through a bunch of fast and sometimes sketchy park-road curves for a net downhill into the start-finish.  The uphills are not long enough to drop people, and the downhill half encourages chasers to catch back on.  There have been breaks before, but not many in the cat 3 race.  Add to that a small field--16 (3 more than last year!)--and it looked like it would be, as usual, a race of attrition.  Add in Blair Krogh, who has done nothing but win this year (from breaks, in sprints, on a cross bike, on trails, in crits, in TTs), and I assumed that the race would be all about staying with the strong guy as long as possible. 

The race was mellow for the first hour--that was very similar to the 2011 edition.  There were a few little giddyups, but the course and the small field don't encourage attacks early.  Everyone covers everything, because there are no teams to chase--if the strong rider got a long leash, that might be it.  The field would break up trying to chase him down.

At the one-hour mark, though (and my power files confirmed it) the energy level went way up, and two or three of the strong guys kicked and punched each other until just six of us remained.  This was good news for me, since in 2011, we had the whole field together until the very last lap--this time around, the field had shredded by the halfway mark.  Power data confirmed it was a bit more surgey and strenuous than 2011.  The pace then moderated a bit, but I found myself cramping.  I was drinking copiously, electrolytes and gatorade, and it wasn't even that hot.  (It might have something to do with the big hole in my June and July training.  I don't know.)  But I diligently shirked my pulls, despite the New Orleans kid yelling at me, and let the strong guys do what they do as I sucked wheel.  Soon after, a stronger rider flatted and had to wait for the wheel truck--he never came back.  Lead group down to 5, I was almost guaranteed a better placing than my 2011 6th place.  The next lap, we dropped the 2010 winner, who looked like he had been training for the track exclusively...huge haunches but he got put in difficulty on the hills.  I was 4th or better, and doing all I could to moderate my effort for the oncoming slaughter. 

The turn onto the dam; I was scrupulously obeying the speed limit, of course.

With 5 laps to go, Krogh rolled forward above the feed zone--not attacked--and I let him, stupidly.  The New Orleans kid jumped across, and was left with the gap and the other rider.  I weighed my options.  I could jump across (they had a 100m gap) and fight my increasingly serious cramps and the two strongest riders for podium spots.  I didn't feel good.  I was mindful that my longest ride since early May was just over 3 hours long.  Just as the two strong guys pulled away, the 4th place rider, John, who was leading in the LAMBRA season points competition but quickly dying, made me an offer I couldn't refuse:  work with him to keep him in 4th place points, and I could have 3rd.  I took the deal.

Riding it out.

As anticompetitive or wussy as it was, it was the right thing for me--at least twice a lap over the next 4 laps, my legs would lock up, sometimes near-catastrophically (like, can't even keep the pedals turning, everything was so locked up).  The New Orleans kid had worked too hard, and Krogh dropped him like a bad habit within a lap and soloed in for the win.  I would have been dropped even more quickly, with the cramping.  Having John share water and pace me whenever the cramps attacked was nice, and on the long net downhill I was able to spin up to a high tempo pace, better than he could manage.  So we finished together, John waved me ahead for third, and we put a bit more time into the chasers, keeping his series points safe. It was by far the most cramping I've ever experienced.  I'm not sure if it was the heat (moderate), some pre-race hydration mistake (possibly), not drinking enough early (unlikely), or maybe just inadequate endurance (most likely?) but I'm deeply uninterested in ever cramping like that again. 

(Blog alert:  electrolyte post coming up!)

The "podium":  at least it was in the shade.

I was lucky to take 3rd, and lucky that the hard mid-race efforts were early, and split the small field so completely that I could maintain my position.  At any rate, it was a good weekend:  I made a comeback of sorts, got on the podium of two states at once, added 4 points to my upgrade total (to sit 2 points shy of my upgrade all winter), confirmed the wrist's racing fitness, and left myself a little to improve upon in 2013.

Davis in Ole Miss colors

Davis, in his first cat 4 race, drank less, worked harder, and still managed to hang on for the field sprint, which soon-to-be cat 3 Adam Morris took in a strong sprint.  It was a more climactic finish than the 3 race, for sure.