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!

Flat Tires and Laziness

So in the past two weeks I have developed no less than 4 flat tires. Yes, 4. Normally, I will see maybe one or two a YEAR. Luckily none have been while riding my bikes.

Flat 1 was a slow intermittent leak in the front tire on my commuter. I tracked it down to a faulty bond on the opposing side of the tube where the valve stem is. A large patch took care of it. Instead of immediately fixing this I pirated the front wheel off my race bike and just brought it into class with me everywhere - kind of a pain. Eventually I stole the front wheel from my fixie and put it on my commuter, since the fixie was not getting ridden due to me recovering from VT.

Flat 2 was a verrrry slow leak on my race bike front wheel. I noticed it AFTER finishing the VT RR. It was slow enough the wheel stayed rideable for a couple hours. I just threw this tube away since finding the leak would have been nearly impossible.

Flat 3 was the front tire of my fixed gear WHILE IT WAS ON MY COMMUTER. Pumping it up and the tube blows out around the valve stem. I kinda flipped out at this one, this is where it was getting ridiculous. I then stole my spare race front wheel and threw that on my commuter, and went back to the "bring the wheel into class" routine.

Today I went and bought a couple new tubes of a different brand and fixed all of the above flats.

After I did this and put my commuter front tire back on the bike, I noticed that the F*CKING REAR TIRE WAS FLAT!! I very nearly pitched the bike off our 3rd floor porch when I saw this.

I have a couple more tubes of the type that I think is giving me problems... I'm not sure what to do with them now. I don't trust them at all, obviously.

BEING LAZY

I have not ridden at all this week. It took me through Wednesday to really recover from VT, and then I just didn't really feel like riding. I did my mountain biking class today and rode back from that, so I got a few miles in. I rode the fixie to get the tubes, and I felt really good. Spun out on Gorman doing about 35+ mph approaching Wade Ave. That's the fastest I've ever been on that bike - normally I've got stuff in my pockets that prevents me from spinning up much above 120 rpm or so.

I should have ridden Wed and done hill repeats, but meh. It's only collegiate racing. I don't want to burn out or stop having fun. I'm going to focus on strategy this weekend. Like I said in my last post, I think I finally figured out how to win now.

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.

You've Got to Be Kidding Me...

While *trying* to re-dish my rear wheel this morning, I found this:


A hairline crack around one of the driveside spoke nipples. I just love finding this kind of shit the day before a race.

Long story short, I spent the better part of 7 hours today that I should have spent on homework running all over Raleigh and Cary finding a new set of wheels. I eventually ended up with a set of Mavic Aksium Race wheels. The downside: they're heavier than my cosmics by a noticeable amount.

Tell me again, why do I love bikes?

Thursday + Friday + Saturday

Thursday I didn't get a ride in, partly because of the pretty lousy weather we were having, and partly because there were some other demands on my time.

Recently I helped a cycling teammate track down a drivetrain noise that turned out to be his freehub - it was rusted up and needed to be lubed quite badly. He said he (gently) hosed his bike pretty frequently, which was probably the source of the water that had gotten in there.

Anyway, I decided to check my bike's freehub because I had recently given it a bath. So I spent a few hours Thursday tearing down both freehubs (mountain bike and road), lubing them up and re-assembling them.

For me, working on bikes is theraputic, it's relaxing, calming. I can almost hear the parts talking to me, telling me how they're doing, how they're feeling. Maybe I'm weird, but I find the more I work on bikes the more I can "hear" what they tell me when I'm riding them, and when I'm working on them. In some ways it's a very intimate language: no spoken words, it's all communicated in the play of the bearings, in the roughness (or lack of) of the surfaces as you re-grease them, in the action of the locknut as you run it down the threads. It gets me very tuned-in to what the bike is trying to tell me as I ride it: what noises come from what, what those noises mean for my safety, and the bike's performance. Like I said, maybe I'm weird, but I enjoy working on my bikes (and other peoples') immensely.

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Friday I got out for a very pleasant LSD ride from my parent's house (I'm visiting home for fall break).
Dist: 22.4
Avg: 18.1

It was a little overcast, but still warm enough to be fun, and I didn't mind the wind much since I wasn't pushing hard. There's not much to report, except that I felt really good.

When I went out to get one of our cars inspected (a story all of its own), I grabbed some new Ultegra chainrings from Performance Bike. My current set is getting a little worn, and when I replace the chain I'm going to need to put new ones on. Since 9 speed stuff isn't getting more plentiful, I went ahead and bit the bullet. My bike is slowly turning from a "full Dura-Ace" bike into a "Frankenstein" of different level components. Yeesh.

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Saturday was my traditional Paceline "B" group ride. I always look forward to this ride: it's a great group of people and the pace is perfect for me.

We got a little bit of a late start, and rolled out in chilly but comfortable temps. The ride was pretty uneventful for the first 5 miles - I was warming up a bit slower than usual (the ride leader warms up instantly and always hammers up the first "real" hill of the day). Climbing out from crossing Lake Townsend I shifted from my big chainring into my little one and was rewarded with the chain jamming up on me for about a half second before freeing itself. Since the pedals were not turning the bike dove right, fortunately there wasn't anyone there. I kinda shook my head and got back to the business of climbing, thinking nothing of it.

Somewhere in the next 7 miles or so I ended up in my big ring again, and went to downshift climbing another hill. I hit the lever, come off the gas for a half-stroke as is usual, and realize the bike hasn't shifted. Now there's a funny noise coming from the front derailer, but I can't really diagnose it because now I'm getting passed by riders and there's traffic back. So I mentally shrug, gear down in the back, and start for the front to tell Forrest (the ride leader) I have a mechanical I need to look at at the next intersection.

When we stop, I find the outboard half of the front derailer cage has been broken free and can now no longer push the chain over onto the small ring. I do a quick check to make sure it's not going to fall into the pedals or something dangerous, then remount and keep riding: there really wasn't a whole lot I could do.

The rest of the ride was pretty uneventful, except for one chain drop onto the cranks on a blistering nasty headwind stretch, and I rode on my big chainring the rest of the ride.

Back at the shop after the ride, I buy a new 105 derailer ($50) and head home after meeting an old (elementry school1) friend of mine. After taking off my D/A derailer I decide to have a go at fixing it with some JB Weld. The design of it allows the broken section to carry minimal load, (Sorry, no pictures), so I think I have a chance of making it work. Seeing as I'm going back to school tomorrow I will probably keep the 105 derailer just in case.

As for the ride stats:
Dist: 41.0
Avg: 19.6

For a B group, that's not too shabby.

Off Days

Haven't ridden at all Monday or Tuesday because my right shoe was getting repaired - I broke the middle strap in half tightening it one night.  The shop did a really nice job fixing the strap, but in retrospect I should have had them reinforce the top strap at the same time, because it will do the same thing in the near future.

In other news, Fall Break starts Thursday.  I will be going home to attend to a few things, and to join my traditional summer Saturday morning Paceline ride once again.  I plan to ride all days, and depending on how I feel I may try to stick with the fast A group, which does more like a AA pace.... low to mid 20s is the norm for them.