Oh my legs...

I did the French Broad River Road Race today out in Marshall, NC. It's a brutal course:

Going into this race my plan was to use the first climb to form a group of about 10 to 15 and stay away to the second climb, where I'd try to shell as many as possible.

Well things didn't exactly go as planned. Foothills, your course description is spot-on. A sadist could not have designed a more wicked race course than this one. The first 20 miles are brutal, and the pace stayed high. Basically, there is no way to come into the first major climb with fresh legs.

I started this climb near the back (big mistake), and had trouble finding my rhythm for the first couple of miles. I went into it way too hard, blew up pretty spectacularly and had to recover while finishing the climb. I topped the climb with a group of 4, which became about 10 by the time we hit the river. This section is fast and fun. Even working hard in a rotating paceline, we didn't make up any time on the leaders, but we were still moving at about 30 mph.

I was able to climb the second mountain a lot better based on my performance on the first one - I had a target heart rate that would keep me from blowing up, and was remembering how to really climb a mountain. I gained one place on this climb for a finish in 32nd in the Cat 4 field. So not great, but not terrible either considering I haven't ridden in the mountains since early spring.

The race pretty much went like I thought it would, I was just not in a position to do anything about it: the first climb forced a selection, about 15 to 20 riders in the lead group I would guess, which stayed together until the second climb when the race was decided.

I have to say the race was incredibly well run - plenty of corner marshalls, plenty of highly talented motos, and a fast and easy sign-in. The only sticking point: no wheel trucks. Fortunately I didn't need one, but you should have heard the groan when they announced that.

Many thanks to the town of Marshall for letting us take over for a day!

One final point.... the return trip from the finish line to Marshall is a major hoot. It's almost entirely downhill, and coming off the mountain I think I hit about 50 mph. Lots of fun, and a nice cool down from the race.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. Great race, great course.

Game Over

This weekend was the last race of the collegiate season: Conference Championships at Wake Forest University over in Winston Salem.

I was feeling very good going into the RR Saturday. We had a nice late start time, and my easy ride Friday had kept my legs feeling great. The race went well for the first two laps: the course was ludicrously flat and the group stayed bunched up, because no one was driving the pace and there were no geographically-mandated selection points. Our overall points leaders were content to sit in and let it end in a field sprint.

Up the first hill (which isn't really much of a hill) on lap 1 I got on the front and drilled the pace, hoping to spit a couple people off the back just from the acceleration, and string things out. I was moderately successful at doing this, but when I pulled off and signaled for second wheel to pull through, he didn't. Now not pulling through is a valid race tactic, but 5 miles into lap 1 it's just bad form not to - this early in the race no one is going to be close to blowing up, so it's just annoying. So I rolled my eyes, pulled for 30 more seconds, and repeated. Eventually they got the message.

The race was pretty uneventful. It was sketchy as hell because the course was flat and we were competing for 1.5 times the normal amount of points. There was a prime on the second lap, which I went waaaay too early for and ran out of gas about 100 feet short of the line and got passed by a bunch of Navy riders. Oh well, it felt good to have some open road for once to sprint on.

On lap 3, a rider from UMD (number 381 - Mathew Dantas, according to the race results) who had been all over the fucking road the entire race clipped the non-sketchy Duke rider's front wheel because he didn't know how to hold a line. I'm directly behind and to the right of Duke (we're all in the left line). Duke goes down amid a shower of profanity and I go down with him - no time to react at all and nowhere to go. We're doing about 25 mph as we come down, me slightly on top of him. Immediately I'm run over by about 5 or 6 additional riders. I'm curled up in a ball, trying to make a small target until the noise stops. When I stop feeling things fall on top of me, I uncurl and start to survey the damage. It was one hell of a pile of bodies and bikes.

The short version is that was the end of the race for me - my bike was FUBARed pretty good and I had some pretty spectacular road rash (and as I found out in the next few minutes, a severely sprained and possibly broken right wrist).

The full list of casualties:

• road rash on my right knee
• road rash on my right hip
• tire rash on my back x2
• bump on my head
• severely sprained wrist / possible hairline fracture
• bruised right calf
• torn up glove
• blood and grease on abraded team kit
• broken *left* pedal
• bent derailleur hangar - time for a new one
• possibly bent rear derailleur
• wheels moderately out of true
• scraped up saddle

So yeah, I don't recommend crashing - it gets expensive.

I plan to get my wrist x-rayed Monday, but in the meantime the pain is not bad, but it's swelled up pretty nicely.

I did not race the TTT, obviously. Half of the A teams (Wake, Navy, App) got lost and did the wrong course. Our A team won! Our b team posted a mean time and also did really well in the Crit Sunday morning. The dinner Saturday night was a blast, and I somehow slept through Hannah, Will, Nic, John, and Matt coming into the room at 2 am absolutely smashed and carrying on for an hour or so. Good times.

I am of course disappointed that I didn't finish the race, but I was feeling good and kept a good pack position through the whole race. I'm definitely becoming more skilled at this sport. I most likely be off the bike for a while for my wrist to heal, but I definitely want to do some racing this summer and keep getting faster. Next year, I want to be able to tear the B field up!

App State

An alternative title for this post was going to be "Slacking makes you Slow".

Didn't ride at all last week, rode my commuter to go food shopping Friday and just felt really weak - almost like I was riding with a flat tire.

Saturday was the RR - flat and windy, with a 3 mile climb in two parts, then a 1.5 mile descent or so, then flat again. I got blown out the back of the lead group with 300 meters to go before the summit of the climb on lap 1, which flat out should not have happened. I was close to getting back on on the descent, but couldn't get around two riders from Duke who clearly had never ridden down a mountain before: all over the road, taking unpredictable lines, etc. After that I was just done - I had no gas. The rider from GW who won VT's RR went by with a VT guy with him. I kept on for a few miles but eventually got blown off the back of that group too. That DEFINITELY should not have happened.

On the second lap a couple riders from VT and one from American caught up with me. I stuck with that group to the climb, when it splintered. Somehow I made it up the climb a second time and stayed away from the final chase group to secure 10th place.

As I rolled back by the finish line I pulled up next to Walker and Sam and the first thing Walker says to me is, "Dude, you look pale." I was feeling pretty terrible, so I skipped the TT later that day and went back to sleep in my car.

On Sunday I was determined to redeem myself in the Crit, but alas, it was not to be. The race was held in a shopping center parking lot laid out with lots and lots of cones. Almost dead flat with one techincal, really sharp and narrow chicane.

The pace stayed retardedly easy for most of the race - the riders in contention for overall points were content to just sit in and let it end in a field sprint. As a result the group stayed bunched up and people did a lot of stupid things (like cutting a corner and clipping a lightpost)

One lesson learned is the one time I got on the front and drilled the pace for a few minutes, the group got strung waaaay out, and it was clear some people were hurting. As soon as I pulled off the front, the pace slowed back down and the group bunched back up. BORRRRING! As predicted, the race ended in a massive field sprint. My positioning on the bell lap was horrible, so I didn't place.

In the future I plan to try to keep the pace higher in crits and throw in some accelerations to thin down the field.

So why did my performance suck so hard this weekend? Most indicators point to sleep deprivation - I got to bed early Monday and Tuesday nights and feel much better already. Also, not riding all week really hurt my top end aerobic power, which I am now trying to desparately fix before Wake Forest this weekend.

Tuesday night I managed to get out for anout 45 minutes as the sun set. I intended to do hill repeats on Centennial Parkway, but my abdominal muscles cramped up hard both times I tried it. Even so, I could tell I'm still less than 100%. Even without hill repeats, I managed to keep the effort level pretty high during the workout. I'm desparately hoping that a hard workout Wed, and then a moderate taper will bring back the edge I want to have this weekend. We shall see.

Va Tech Race Weekend

First of all mad respect to Virginia Tech Cycling for putting on an amazing weekend - beautiful courses that were professionally run, and amazing weather to boot!

Saturday was the road race and the team time trial run on a 15.2 mile loop out in the middle of freaking nowhere. Half of the course was in a valley, so it was dead freaking flat and had a 20-30 mph tailwind. The back half was up the side of a mountain (or so it felt): it started with a nasty 2-part climb for a couple of miles, then somewhat leveled off into a series of rolling climbs for the next 5 or so miles. Just before turning into the staging area it headed down again. Despite the climbs, the course was extremely fast. The roads were 1.5 lanes wide, no center line marking (means no center line rule - hooray!) with surprisingly smooth pavement. The scenery was just gorgeous, and there was nearly zero traffic.

The RR was fun, but extremely painful. We started out with about 33 riders. Like most of our races, we took it easy out of the gate, just tooling along at mid 20s with a tailwind. The pace slowly ratcheted up as we approached the base of the climb, which was essentially right after the first turn: a hard left that was more than 90 degrees; this took everyone by surprise.

The first time up the climb I was (stupidly) one of the riders setting the pace. I pegged my heart rate at 199 bpm for about a mile or so, just absolutely at my redline... eyes going crossed, breathing out of control, the works. At some point I looked down at my HRM and had the thought, "You know, I could have a heart attack if I keep this up. I really would rather not die out here. Maybe I should back off.... Nah" This was absolutely the most pain I've ever been in on a bike. The upside is we whittled the lead group down to about 15 riders, and no one managed to make an attack stick.

Me and a couple of other riders managed to somehow keep the effort high through the rolling hills, so no one tried to attack. As the road turned down again we were all just chilling trying to recover and mentally prepare to do that again on the second lap. Nothing much happened besides some insane speeds on the flat section - it's too hard to get away with a tailwind.

The second time up the climb(s) the whole group went a lot slower - my HR was in the high 180s instead of 190s, but no one broke away - the whole group was content to climb together. The climb seemed a lot shorter on the second lap, too.

As we crested the last hill a couple of the riders realized they had blown their chance at getting away on the uphill, and put the hammer down trying to compensate for that. Of course it failed, because the whole group came with them, now doing 30+ mph down these little mountain roads. Since we were about 5 miles out, people started jockeying for position and I started mentally preparing for a field sprint, which I had been hoping to avoid because it was going to be an extremely fast finish.

The finish was just ludicrous. The pace just kept coming up as we neared the end - my first taste of what a full-blown lead-out would be like in a peloton. I nearly collided with a rider from App State who was riding the wrong way on the course - at this point, about 1.5 miles out, we were spread across the whole road and doing about 35 mph. The finish, as predicted, was crazy. My positioning going into about 200 m or so was around 10th, which was a little too far back. I gained spots like crazy as the sprint wound up - I was passing people all the way to the line, and ended up in 6th.

A couple of lessons learned. One is I probably should have attacked on climb on lap 2, since I knew I had reserve power based on my heart rate. At the very least I would have spit a couple of riders off the back and whittled the lead group down further. At best, I would have taken a couple of guys with me and we would have stayed away for the finish.

The second lesson is I need to start my sprint sooner and work on my positioning. My impression is my sprint is generally stronger than most other riders', so I should start further out.

The TTT was painful. Since we didn't have 4 riders, we recruited Harris to ride with us, who is a D but should be racing C. The team was me, Thomas Bradshaw (a mountain bike rider), Harris, and Kai. The plan was for Kai to take hard pulls until we got to the climb, where he would drop off. However, he only managed one hard pull before he bonked/pulled his hamstrings and went OTB at some ridiculous speed. Harris had never ridden in a group before, so had no clue how to pull through or ride in a paceline. In fairness, it only took one instruction and he got the hang of it. We looked pretty pitiful during this event - we weren't drafting close enough, I was the only one with aero bars, and everyone's legs were completely fried after the RR earlier. One notable moment was cresting the last hill and we come upon a woman with a stroller in the middle of the road. We were doing about 30 mph at this point, and I'm in the front on my aero bars. I see her eyes go wide as dinner plates, just a complete look of surprise and fear come over her face as she scurried across the road. Somehow, we managed to get second overall! I'm pretty stoked about this, because the point awarded for a TTT are pretty hefty.

The crit was a lot easier than I anticipated. The course was around a mile long, with a short steep climb just before the finish, and a long downhill on the other side. The course was amazing - not really technical, with good wide corners with multiple good lines around them.

Since half of the C field hadn't done the TTT the day before, I was anticipating getting my ass kicked, but the race turned out to be really low-key. In retrospect it was kind of funny - no one wanted to be on the front because they didn't know how much they had left after yesterday, so at times the field would slow waaay down and just kind of toodle along at 12 mph for a bit. The only really hard sections were the preem laps and the finish. I would gain lots of positions on the downhill by popping out of line and soft-pedalling to the front. I did this nearly every lap, and no one else caught on, it was weird. But good, because I could get to where I needed to be with minimal energy expenditure. I got two second-place preems and somewhere between 4th and 7th overall.

This was definitely a good weekend for the C team - we put a lot of points on the board and I got some fantastic racing in. I'm definitely looking forward to our last 2 weekends.

So It's Been a While...

So it's been a while since I've posted. The wolfpack revenge went well - a solo breakaway on lap two gathered some horsepower and stayed away for the finish, and I managed 7th place.

Annapolis and the Naval Academy race was f*cking miserable - blowing 20-25, 35 degrees and overcast. Due to not sleeping well, not eating right, and riding on someone else's rear wheel with a worn cassette, (oh yeah, mine went flat 5 minutes before the start), I got OTB fairly quickly and stayed there. The TT, which I had been looking forward to, was canceled because of snow and ice. FREAKING SNOW AND ICE!

Spring Break felt more like winter break, what with all the snow on the ground. Didn't get enough riding in because of this, and by this point in the year I was completely and utterly sick of riding in the cold, and I resolved not to do it any more, regardless of what it did to my training. If I'm not having fun, what's the point?

William and Mary was a blast. The weather was simply amazing - near 70 degrees and very light wind, and our accomodations at the KOA were superb. The TT on Saturday went really well - I was in a good position mentally and physically, and put down a time that I know is very close to my best - 23.3 mph for 12.5 miles. Last year, I managed 20.5 mph for the same TT. That's a big improvement in power over one year.

The next day for the RR I was feeling really good, despite working hard the day before and putting nearly 45 miles in before the day was out. The plan was for Walker and Brian to try and get a break set up, and I would babysit the pack. For the first lap I felt like I was really on top of things - my positioning in the pack was good, I was riding cleanly and keeping an eye on the pack. Then we hit the big KOA climb, and I made the mistake of trying to shift to the small chainring on the first upswinging section. The chain dropped off completely when I was in the middle of the pack, and then jammed up. I managed to unclip without sending anyone down, which was good. Not so good was what the jam had done to my chain. It took me a solid 5 minutes to unjam it and get it back on the chainring. I got back on the bike and started to prepare to TT back to the main group, when I discovered one of the links was twisted about 45 degrees. This meant my race was over, for the second year in the row.

This race had a lot of casualities - another one of our riders got caught up in a crash that totalled his rear wheel and banged him up pretty good. There were 4 or 5 other riders who can in all bloodied up as well. Definitely not a clean race.

The latest happening is I finally bit the bullet and shaved my legs. Yeah, there goes my last pretense at being normal.

The next couple weeks I'll have off, as far as racing is concerned - a couple races got cancelled, and West Virginia is a 8 hour drive for a measly sub-30 mile race and a crit. No thanks.

Here We Go...

Tomorrow is the first race of the collegiate season: the NCSU Wolfpack Classic. I've been kind of tapering the whole week - here are the rides I did:

Last Saturday: OCS speedway race - about 20 miles at high intensity.
Sunday: pre-rode the road course - 36 miles at low intensity.
Monday: penny lochmere loop at TT pace. Posted my fastest solo 25 mile average speed: 20.4 mph.
Tuesday: penny-lochmere again at recovery pace. Very windy.
Wednesday: tried to do hill repeats but discovered my legs were not up to it - I had been riding fixed to campus Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday - it's like resistance/strength training.
Thursday: mountain biking class, recovery pace
Friday: hopefully nothing :-)

In other news, I discovered my back wheel is out of dish. This explains some handling idiosyncracies, and also why I constantly feel like my handlebars are crooked. I'm going to correct this later today, and hopefully I don't FUBAR my wheel the day before a race.

Tomorrow morning we have to get up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am to roll out at 5 am, to get there in time to set the race up. Ugh. And instead of mentally preparing for the race and resting, I'm going to be doing homework.

Speedway Race, take II

Today I did the OCS speedway race again.

As I said in my last post, I didn't ride much at all this week because the weather was so freaking awful - cold and blowing about 30 mph all the time. Just riding to class and back was miserable. So naturally by Wed. I was bouncing off the walls, as usual when I don't ride. I didn't get on the bike until Friday night, when I did about 40 minutes on the trainer. I felt pretty bad doing this - power was down, and I developed several stitches in my side. This worried me, because I never get stitches when I ride. So I stretched out really well afterwards and just hoped for the best.

Race day: got there and warmed up for an hour. Felt pretty good. Tried to put together a group that was willing to try and lap the field at the very beginning of the race. Got a couple people to sign on, but not the kind of horsepower I needed to make it work. They called us to the line before last week, so I wasn't fully warmed up. My mom came out to watch, which was nice.

Whistle blows, I hammer hard per the plan. We actually got about a 50 yard gap, thanks to Brian and Kai blocking, before they started closing, and that was that. I sat in and recovered for a while. I felt a stitch starting to develop; this took the edge off of my aerobic power all day, and I had to be a lot more conservative with how hard I went. Everyone was going a lot harder than last week because the weather was great - nearly 60 degrees.

The race was pretty uneventful until I locked handlebars with a UNC rider on the back stretch. I was shooting for a gap and didn't verbally warn him in time, and he moved over into me. We both said some choice expletives and sort of leaned hard into each other to keep ourselves upright. All around us the whole pack said a collective "Shit!" and scattered. My front wheel was hopping laterally and something was "pinging" the spokes as I fought the bars to keep the bike upright - this was pretty instinctive for me, so the rest of my brain was looking for a graceful way out. At one point I was 100% sure I was going to eat pavement because my front wheel hopped about 6 inches sideways. Walker said he was behind and to my left, and he was scared out his mind. Kai, who was further back, said my back wheel at one point lifted off the pavement about 6 inches, but I have no memory of this (but then again, I was a little preoccupied). Anyway, eventually we separarted and resumed racing.

Thinking back on it, I am surprised how little of an adrenaline rush there was - I was pretty calm throughout the whole thing. As soon as we got clear of each other I immediately went right back to racing - there was no pause to take a breath or steady my nerves, because they didn't need steadying.

I remember two distinct thoughts while fighting for dear life: one was, "I am sure as hell not going down and ruining my brand-new team kit!" The second was, "I don't want my mom to come watch me race and see me leave a bloody stain on this track!"

I still don't know how I got out of that in one piece. Every time I think of how close I came to seriously fucking myself up, I get giddy. What a great sport!

Towards the end, my positioning in the pack was terrible. I was way too far back with 5 to go. Even though I handled the accelerations fine, I couldn't get clear and get to the front in time. I finished 20th out of a 50 person field.

Speedway Races and other stuff

Well, I survived my first race of the season.

The short version is I did okay until the last couple laps, when I tried to bridge up to a break, blew up halfway there, then got swallowed by the field and spit out the back. I even won the first preem - a really nice Cannondale jersey! Judging by the price tag, I more than paid for my entry fee, which is a nice feeling.

Yeah I was gonna make a nice long write-up but screw it - that's too much work.

Sunday after the race Walker, Ryan (slow dude) and I did about 65 miles southeast of Raleigh that was extremely enjoyable.

I didn't ride much at all this week because the weather went to shit again.

Don't mind the date - I didn't get around to posting this until Feb. 6

LSD and MTB Races

Friday I got in about 36 miles, which felt really nice. I'm trying to start doing base miles in preparation for the road season (called LSD... so I'm not talking about the drug here). I averaged about 18.4 mph, which is a little fast for a zone 2 workout.

Saturday I got up at the ass-crack of dawn (6 am) and went to Pfeiffer University's mountain bike race in Uwharrie National Forest with the rest of the cycling team. Now I am not a mountain biker by any stretch of the imagination, and this was the only race I've done all season because of schoolwork.

The original plan was to do all three events: XC, TT, and short track. The XC race was 8 miles of mixed singletrack and fire roads that had been described to me as "flowy". Seeing as I don't do a lot of mountain bikeing and I was riding in road shoes and cleats, flowy is a good thing. A couple of teammates and I pre-rode the first mile or so before the race started as a warm up and to get a feel for the course.

When the race started I was in fourth position out of 10, but going around the first downed log I understeered and ran wide, which put me in (I thought) second to last. I assumed I was essentially going to be non-competitive in this race, so it didn't bother me.

The general flavor of the first half of the race was I would gain crazy time and positions on the uphills and smooth sections of singletrack and fire roads, due to my "roady power". The first half felt like about 60% singletrack and 40% fireroads, and the singeltrack was not very techinical.

On one of the later fire road sections I caught sight of a teammate David trailing a Pfeiffer guy ahead of me and hit the gas to catch them, thinking they were sitting something like 3rd and 4th position. I thought it was kinda odd that David would sit in on a guy when there were riders up the trail, but I didn't think about it too much and blasted past them. I didn't look back to confirm, but I felt them accelerate to hold my wheel, which I also thought was kinda odd given what positions I thought they occupied.

About a minute after passing them the road turned down and I kept the hammer down, determied to gain as much time as I could on those ahead of me. So here we are, barreling down a rough section of fire road at something like 25 mph, and I catch sight of a downed tree about 30 feet in front of me. I scream out, "Oh SHIT!! STOP STOP STOP!" and hit the brakes as hard as I can without locking up wheels. I come to a dead stop about 2 feet from the tree, the Pfeiffer guy (who David later said nearly rear-ended me), does an elegant little bunny hop over the tree and takes off, and David follows him. I manage to get one foot unclipped and stumble / drag the bike over the tree. That was the last time I saw either of them, because diretly after that we got back onto singletrack, which turned extremely technical (at least for me).

After this point things got quite hairy for me: the trail got rougher, with a lot of loose rocks and very steep uphill and downhill sections. My pace slowed to a crawl. I got passed by several people from the C field, and at some point just assumed I was DFL: dead fucking last. Operating on this assumption, I took things very easy, really just out enjoying myself and going as fast as I felt comfortable with. On one downhill I got passed by one of our A riders doing about 20 mph when I was doing something like 3; he went past me and looked like he was spending more time airborne than on the trail. I just kinda shook my head in amazement and kept chugging along.

The trail gradually got a little less rocky, cutting through some relatively young forest. It was here I crashed. It was at low speeds and similar to my other mtb crashes: some random little thing in the trail just kicks my front tire out from under me. I haven't wrecked on something I'm actually worried about beforehand yet.

I should mention that I really dislike crashing. I sat on the ground for a bit, then took my time fixing the chain, which had dropped in between the cassette and spokes. I got passed by another C here as I wiped the grease off my hands and got back on the bike.

At some point we got back on the fire roads for the last mile and a half or something, and this section was straight uphill. At one point on this section I pulled off the road and stopped to take a drink - I can't get a bottle off of my frame rolling because it's essentially wedged in place between the top and down tubes. After this I felt better. This section was pretty unremarkable except for the sheer amount of uphill that just kept going and going and going.... I was really feeling my 36 miles from the day before on this section.

And then the last 100 yards were singletrack again. Overall I finished 7th out of 10, with something like an hour and one minute. David took first when the Pfeiffer kid dropped his chain on the fire roads with a time of 47 minutes and change.

After the race he told me that him and the Pfeiffer kid were first and second when I passed them, which made their behavior make so much more sense!

In retrospect, I could have finished a couple of places better if I had known I was not non-competitive. But live and learn - mountain is not my sport, so I was happy to come out in one piece.

I learned after finishing that the time trial was going to be that same trail backwards.... Yikes! There were quite a few sections of downhill rock gardens that would have nearly impossible for me going the other way, and this combined with the trail as a whole and my level of skill encouraged me to back out, so I did. I also decided that staying overnight for one short event the next day wasn't worth it, so I came home a day early with David.

Overall I'm glad I went to one mountain race this season. I'm really, really bad on a mountain bike, and maybe with enough practice I can stop crawling along trails scared for my life.