Wookiebikers cycling blog

August Numbers...

2011-09-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

Overall the month of August saw less riding that July...though a fair amount of that was due to my crash in the middle of the month that threw everything off.

Speaking of the crash...I'm finally, for the most part, healed up from the crash. I still have some visible areas where the road rash was on my knee and I'm finally bandage free from all areas of my body with my finger having it's final bandage yesterday (more than a month after the crash). My left index finger still doesn't bend all the way but I'm getting more and more mobility in it. I also had a banged up knee that hurt for a while but is feeling better now.

Numbers From August:

My numbers for the month of July look like this:

Total hours on the bike: 58:03:24
Total miles ridden: 1079.01 miles
Total TSS: 3505
Kilo joules of energy expended: 46726 kj

Even with the lower hours on the bike I still had over 1000 miles ridden and one stage race...so it was still a good month.

I've been continuing my riding since I'm not currently working, but have decided to stop with the really hard rides as my legs are just tired. Last week a bunch of teammates and I did the Timber route and overall I felt OK, but I had no top end left and I could feel that my legs were borderline dead.

With that said, I'm going into LSD work and just enjoying riding for as long as I can since the rainy season is coming around and hopefully a job will come my way soon. So I'm trying to get in a lot of lower intensity miles right now but am limiting my ride durations to 3 hours or so max to give my legs a break. When I climb, I'm trying to keep it at more of a tempo pace than near my threshold...though during group rides I'll probably push it a little, but I'm not going to hammer like I usually do and will let others ride up the road if my legs are not feeling it at all.

Overall for the race season this year, I'd call it a success...even though they canceled the Team Time Trial and the only real shot at a State Championship I had this year. My results on the year include:

Three road races races:

3rd place - Kings Valley
5th Place - Silverton (State RR championships)
5th place - Eugene Roubaix

Three Time Trials:

1st place (PIR)
3rd place (State ITT championships)
5th place (Jack Frost)

One Stage Race (post crash):

27th in the prologue
31st in the road race
15th in the ITT
25th in the crit
28th overall

Now to take two months easy then start hitting intervals again starting in the beginning of December. I'm starting these earlier this year because I came into this season without as much top end as I would have liked and felt behind most of the season. I also plan on hitting them harder this year with more intervals in the 5 and 10 minute range instead of focusing on my 20 minute threshold power.

Eugene Celebration - Thoughts...

2011-08-29T09:13:00.000-07:00

This was a race I had wanted to race for a while now and really enjoyed the format with only one road race in the mix. The start locations were all in different places, so we got to see a lot of the area around Eugene, OR. One of the nice things is the field sizes are not too large for this stage race, which generally makes the racing a little safer and easier to move around.

The courses are a nice mix of climbing, flat TT'ing and the road race is great for a climbing classics type of rider.

My only disappointment was crashing hard, two weeks before the race. I feel it really threw off my fitness not being able to taper properly and seemingly playing catch up for the week heading into the race. My legs felt good through the race, but never felt great and it felt like I had lost my top end speed over that two week period.

I do know that even without the crash I wouldn't have been in the top 5...but might have been able to stay in the road race to the final hill and finished in the top 15 instead of the bottom 20.

This is a race I'm looking at racing again next year as I really enjoyed it. Also considering it takes place 2.5 months after my last "A" race of the season it gives me enough time to work back toward a peak and drop some weight for the hill climbs. So...hopefully I'll get a chance to redeem myself next year with a better, more prepared race.

In the end, it was a great way to finish the season. I wasn't expecting to compete in this race, but it was fun. I had a good weekend of racing and spending time with great company in my teammates.

Congratulations to Jeff on an AWESOME GC win this weekend...it was well deserved. Heal quickly and enjoy bike shopping :)

Eugene Celebration - Criterium

2011-08-29T09:03:00.000-07:00

The final stage of the race.

My teammate had secured the overall GC with a 51 second lead heading into the criterium. Our basic plan was to try and mark attacks for the duration of the 45 minute race, then try and set me up over the last three laps to try and sprint for the win.

For the most part the Crit went as a normal crit goes...lots of attacks, fairly high speeds and a little sketchy riding here and there.

Heading into the 2nd corner on the 3rd to last lap, I hear the sounds of metal scraping on the road and knew there was a crash behind me. Knowing that our team leader was going to be moving back to just get a pack finish my first thought was...I hope he wasn't in that.

When we came around with 2 laps to go...sure enough, there he was running down the road carrying his bike....CRAP!

I was still in OK position, but as we entered came down the front straight the pace slowed and we were overtaken by most of the peloton so my position was lost. By the time we came around the 2nd corner I was near the back and in no position to contest the sprint.

In the end, this was probably a good thing, having hit the pavement "Hard" two weeks ago and seeing my teammate go down in the crit, I decided to shut it down and come in with the pack and not try risking a good placement at the cost of more pain.

Thankfully the gave our team leader same time as the pack since the crash was in the last 3 laps so he was able to keep his overall GC win. With that said...his bike is "Toast". He had a Cervelo S3 but broke his head tube, seat tube and down tube. He also broke his front brake, scraped up his shifters and destroyed his Zipp 808 front wheel pulling 3 spokes out and getting a crack in the rim that goes about 1/3rd the way around the rim. He was a little scrapped up with road rash on his hip and elbows but other than that came out of it in fairly good shape.

Eugene Celebration - Time Trial

2011-08-29T08:52:00.000-07:00

After yesterdays somewhat disappointing finish in the Road Race (I was expecting to lose time, just not as much as I did)...I was hoping to have a good TT and move up a few spots.

My leg felt fairly good in the morning and during warm up so I thought I had a chance at putting in a good time. Having never ridden this course I knew it was flat, 15 miles and a pretty simple course. There appeared to be a bit of a tailwind on the way out and a headwind on the way back in...which is opposite of what most every body prefers.

Since my dismal performance in the road race I was the 2nd off the line in the TT. The P/1/2 riders took off first, so the reality was I only had one person in front of me and after that nobody to chase so I knew I was in for a tougher TT than I wanted.

Off the line I felt good and by 1.5 - 1.75 miles into the TT I had caught my 30 second man...from there forward it was solo. The way out went really well as I was consistently keeping my speeds in the 28mph - 29mph range and my HR was mid 150's which is where I usually try and keep it.

Then I made the turn into the crosswind for about a mile and my speeds dropped, as did my HR.

When I turned for the final stretch back to the finish I had a hard time keeping my HR up. Most of the way back it was in the mid 140's...which is a good 10-15 beats lower than I like to keep it at this point in a TT.

I don't know if the lower HR was due to no carrots to chase or the effort I put in the day before trying to catch the peloton...but I was struggling a little at this point. I tried to get my HR up a little by spinning an easier gear faster, but that didn't seem to help and my speeds were a little slower, so I went back to a larger gear and tried to mash my way home.

It wasn't until the last mile that I was able to get my HR back up when I was pushing as hard as I could to the finish line and even then it was right at 152bpm, which is well below what it should be.

In the end I put in a time of 34:24 which was good enough for 15th overall...but about 1.5 minutes slower than I'm capable of doing on this course. This did move me up a place or two overall...but I was still sitting near the bottom of the GC.

Eugene Celebration - Briggs Hill Road Race

2011-08-27T18:01:00.001-07:00

My goal today was to try and help my teammate out as much as possible...with finishing with the pack the next goal.

The race was 57 miles and had two climbs for each lap (a 3 lap race). The first climb was at my limit for what I can sustain with other climbers and the second climb had the top part of the climb over my limits with about 3/4 of a mile being around 10% average grade.

The first lap went well...I felt comfortable for the whole lap but did get dropped on the second climb. However, there was a steep downhill just after and I was able to latch back on fairly quickly.

On the second lap, just after cresting the first climb we were going downhill at around 35 mph. Apparently a rock was bouncing around in the peloton and I was in the back of the pack...the last rider to hit the rock popped it up and it clocked me square between the eyes leaving a nice little divot in my nose which lead to a little bleeding along the way.

The rest of the lap went much like the first lap. I got dropped on the second climb, but was able to latch back on, though this time it took a little longer as the pack attacked a little on the downhill.

At the start of the third lap I still felt OK...but heading up the first climb I faded back a little too far and a gap formed between me and the main pack. The next thing I knew I had the wind in my face and I was falling back. I hit the downhill with everything I had trying to latch on...but my teammate who was in second had an opportunity to jump from the field forming a 4 man break...which caused the rest of the peloton to attack. I was chasing at speeds anywhere from 26-40 mph and not gaining any ground. I was trying to catch drafts (though not jumping in behind them) off of cars and still couldn't make a dent.

By the time I made the turn heading to the second climb I had lost about a minute. From there I decided to shut it down and ride tempo in hopes to save some energy for the ITT and crit tomorrow.

I haven't seen the results posted but it looks like I finished about 8 minutes behind the winner...and my teammate who took 2nd on the stage. I don't know if we dropped anybody else during the first two laps...which I think we might have...but I'm pretty sure I was the last guy across the finish line in the 3's.

I was hoping to finish with the pack, but I knew I was going to struggle a little on the climbs...which eventually bit me. It's hard to say how the crash two weeks effected me during the stage because overall I felt like I had good power, I just don't have good power/weight ratio right now and had I been able to keep my regular training schedule feel I would have been a bit stronger and 2-3 pounds lighter. Spending 4 days on the couch the week before a stage race isn't really helpful to keeping weight off or keeping your fitness.

I feel pretty good though and hopefully will have plenty for the ITT and crit tomorrow. I'd like to make some time up tomorrow if possible, even though I know I'll still be low in the overall standings, and if I can get my sprint on...maybe able to do well in the crit.

Eugene Celebration - Prologue

2011-08-27T17:50:00.000-07:00

Well...despite my crash two weeks ago, I was able to heal up enough to compete in the Eugene Celebration stage race this weekend. The race consists of a 3.1 mile uphill prologue, a 57 mile road race, a 15 mile flat ITT and a 45 minute criterium.

Yesterday was the Prologue and not being a hill climber I knew it was going to be tough. I was the 6th rider off the line but had driven the course before I started warming up so I kind of knew what to expect. Having run some power numbers before the race I figured my time would be somewhere between 12:30 and 13:00...which proved to be fairly close.

The start was good...I had a hard jump to speed and quickly settled in to a nice pace on the flatter section to start the race. Then I hit the steepest part of the climb where the pain really started. As I came over that section where the road leveled off a little (down to around 6% average grade) I found an issue with my bike. My rear derailleur wasn't adjusted properly since I was using my race wheels instead of training wheels...so my rear derailleur was skipping in the middle cogs. It would drop down a gear, then jump back up so I couldn't put out power in those gears forcing me to either spin faster than I wanted or put it in a harder gear using lower RPM's and more strength...generally I chose to spin faster.

I figure this cost me a good 10 seconds on the climb...maybe a bit more, but it's really hard to tell.

In the end I crossed the line in 26th place with a time of 13:09 with an average power output of 388 watts. Had I not had the skipping cog I know I would have broke 13 minutes and had my overall power around 400 watts for the climb...I could see the areas where my power dropped off when I downloaded my Powertap data.

I really wasn't expecting a lot from the Prologue but was happy with my ride.

Crashing sucks...

2011-08-13T20:42:00.000-07:00

Today was my worst day on a bike in a long time...I crashed twice on a group/team ride.

The first crash was stupid...I went by a big hole in the road that nobody in front of me called out, so I turned, pointed it out and called it out. As I turned to my left, the bike went right and the next thing I knew I was off the road dropping down into a ditch. It was a slow speed crash and just had a small amount of road rash on my shin and a small bump on my hip.

Checking out my bike and everything was OK except for some scratches on my left shifter.

So on with the ride...since there was still about 20 miles to where I was going to pull off (should have been 30 miles, but after the crash I figured I'd cut it short since the route goes by my house).

The second crash happened about 3 blocks from my house where we have our biggest "Sign Sprint" during our rides.

We were heading into the sprint and all was going well, then I hit the gas to go for the sprint. About 2-4 pedal strokes into sprint (1300 watts at the time and around 30 mph) my left foot pulled out of the pedal at the top of the pedal stroke. When I went to push down there was no resistance and down I went....Hard....taking out the guy who had jumped on my wheel as well (a former teammate).

Sitting in the road all I could think about was...Twice in one ride, "Really?"

Then the rest of the guys reached the two of us on the ground to see how we were doing. The guy that went down with me was cussing pretty good...so I figured he was hurt, but didn't know if it was more a reaction or a really hurt issue. I was in a good amount of pain but considering what had happened...not as much as I thought I should be.

The I looked at my left and that was bleeding pretty badly and could feel the blood dripping down from my chin. My teammates said my chin looked pretty bad and he rode with me the three blocks back to my house.

My wife got me some wet towels and drove me to the E.R. where I spent 3 hours or so. The cleaned all the asphalt out of my road rash and gashes, stitched me up and took good care of me.

I'm pretty sore right now but my left index finger hurts the most...I think I may have partially dislocated my finger as well as gashed it. The cut on it also went through to the bone...so it hurts. My chin doesn't hurt too bad actually, but my left knee is also pretty tight and has road rash all around it.

I'm hoping to be back on the bike (or trainer) in the next 2 - 3 days and hope I can heal up enough to race at the Eugene Celebration in two weeks...as I was originally planning on doing. I think I'll be good to go, but you never know.

Below are some pictures of the aftermath at the E.R. I left out the road rash pictures, but I have it on my back, shoulders, arms and legs.

My chin before stitches

My chin after Stitches

My left hand before stitches

My left hand after stitches

Lots of riding...Not much racing

2011-08-02T15:06:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've updated my blog, mostly because not a whole lot has been going on. I've basically been riding a lot trying to get ready for the Team Time Trial championships...that were unfortunately canceled not too long ago. Being my favorite race of the year I was a bit bummed to say the least about this happening, but I guess they had issues with permits and locations so there wasn't much they could do in the end.

The other change was that my position was cut at the end of June due to budget cuts...which means about all I've been doing since is riding and looking for work...which leaves a lot of time for riding.

My numbers for the month of July look like this:

Total hours on the bike: 71.5 hours
Total miles ridden: 1300.52 miles
Total TSS: 4201
Kilo joules of energy expended: 56844 kj

This was the most hours/miles I've ever ridden in a month and I'm actually not feeling too bad right now. After a few 17 hour weeks my legs are getting a great base in them and are recovering faster from the efforts.

My current schedule looks like this:

Monday: 4 hours on the bike with 4 good climbs (around 5500 feet of climbing) and 65-70 miles
Tuesday: 1.5 hour, 29 mile recovery ride
Wednesday: 4 hours on the bike with 4 good climbs (around 5500 feet of climbing) and 65-70 miles
Thursday: Off the bike
Friday: 1.5 hour, 30 mile recovery paced ride
Saturday: 4-5 hour group ride with some hard efforts at race pace
Sunday: 1.5 hour, 29 mile recovery ride

I'm going to continue with this schedule until I find a new job, which could be soon...or could be a while (the last time it took 11 months, so hopefully it won't take nearly that long this time).

If I can find the money I may do a stage race at the end of August since I have some really good fitness right now, just no money to go racing...so if my situation changes between now and then I may have something else to report on at the end of the month.

For now though...I see lots of riding in my future and lots of job hunting.

OBRA ITT Championships

2011-06-12T18:41:00.000-07:00

Today was absolutely perfect for racing, especially for a time trial. The temperature was in the mid 60's, low wind and no rain. My goal today was to get under 55 minutes for the first time in a 40K ITT. My best ever time on this course, or for 40K was 55:41 two years ago. However, last year was probably a better overall effort even though my time was 20 seconds or so slower due to more wind last year.

I was the 2nd to last one off in the 40-44 group with Karsten Hagen 30 seconds behind me. I wanted to hold him off as long as possible knowing he beat me by a little over 1:30 last year, then when he passed me

(Which I knew was only a matter of time) try and pace off of him as long as I could.

One change I made this year from years past...aside from my new bars and much changed position...was to ride without a water bottle. When I have brought one in the past I've only taken 2-3 small drinks out of it and never use more than 1/4 of the bottle, so I figured why put one on the bike since it just added drag to the bike and took me out of my rhythm when I took a drink. In t

he end, I never missed it.

I got off to a fast start, passing my 30 second guy in the first 1.5 miles. However, I was actually trying to hold back a little since I always start too hard then have to slow down to recover...then settle into a rhythm. I was missing a one minute man (one rider didn't show up it seems)...so I didn't really see anybody in front of me until around mile 8, which made for a lonely/paranoid ride knowing who was behind me.

On the way out my speeds were slower than expected since the forecast had a tail wind for the out portion of the time trial...however, after about 7 miles I still hadn't been passed so I figured there was a bit of a headwind on the way out...which as it turns out was true. It wasn't much, somewhere in the 3-4 mph range so it wasn't bad at all.

Once I caught and started passing other riders in front of me I started to feel better. At the turn around point I looked back and Karsten was about 20 seconds behind me so I felt pretty good about the first leg of the course. Last year at this point I suffered for several miles and lost a lot of time after the turnaround. This year however I kept hammering along and got into a good rhythm which was great with the tailwind.

Around mile 17-18 I was finally passed. I quickly tried to match pace with him about 10 meters back with a goal of holding pace as long as possible. Then he started to slow a little and I ended up passing him...which I'm guessing he didn't like because he quickly picked it back up and passed me...then he slowed again and around I went with him quickly passing me again. This tim

e he kept the pace up and stayed in front of me but never got more than about 15 - 20 meters away from me the rest of the race.

Coming into the finish I still felt good and gave it everything I had finishing about 5 seconds back of Karsten (35 seconds total)...and I thought I had avoided my annual end of the ITT butt cramp...then it hit!!! OUCH!!! I had a tough time pedaling back to the start/finish area, but managed to get there and stretch a little. I was in pretty good pain for about an hour before the cramp subsided. For whatever reason my left glute cramps up at the end of the OBRA ITT, but doesn't during any other long ITT effort. Why I'm not sure, but it's always there...and it hurts for several days after.

In the end I did meet my main goal of beating 55 minutes. My official time was 54:18 (27.4 mph average) so I beat it by quite a bit and averaged over 27 mph for the second time this season, however this was for a full 40K.

I did end up 3rd in my class which was what I predicted before the race started...I just didn't expect to be 35 seconds behind Karsten and about 1:10 behind Paul Bourcier who won our class. Last year I was 1:35 or so behind Karsten and over 2 minutes behind Paul...so I made some pretty good strides overall.

Overall I posted the 10th fastest time out of all classes (40k distance) which was the first time I had broke the top 10 at the ITT Championships. Overall a good day...the cramp has subsided but now I'm sore...but it's a good kind of sore

Bike Tires Direct ITT at PIR

2011-05-31T09:33:00.000-07:00

I’ve raced at PIR multiple times in their Tuesday night weekly road race series, but never had the opportunity to race a Time Trial around the track before. This year Bike Tires Direct held the first (that I know of) individual time trial out at PIR. The course was run in the counter clockwise direction and was 6 laps in length (approximately 12 miles, but looks to be closer to 11.6 miles).

The race format was similar to other TT’s with riders starting in one minute intervals. They had the start gate walled off with cones as well as the finishing stretch that lead into the warm up area when finished. Each rider was responsible for counting their own laps.

I wasn’t sure what to expect with how crowded or not so crowded the course would be with multiple riders going on the course…but it turned out to be just fine. There was plenty of room to move around and generally always somebody to chase down, or be passed by. The corners were all wide enough that you never needed to get out of your aerobars, but the hairpin turn on the back side of the course was tight and you had to hit the apex correctly at high speed to remain in good control.

The wind was swirling a little but mostly seemed to have the biggest effect at the end of the long straight where you could feel a little headwind.

My first lap was probably my fastest, but in reality was a bit too fast since my second lap was probably my slowest of the day. But after recovering a little I was able to pick my pace up each consecutive lap after that. Coming around on my second lap the guy who I figured to be my toughest competition had just left the starting gate and had about 200 meters on me by the end of the long straight, so this gave me somebody to chase and pace off of for a few laps.

As the next few laps ticked by I was slowly gaining ground on him and heading into the 5^th lap passed him along the front straight. I’m not sure how much distance I put on him from there since he now had somebody to pace off of.

The last lap I actually felt pretty good all things considered and was able to turn in a good effort coming into the finish.

Overall time was 25:14 and going off of a distance of 11.54 miles (a teammates Garmin distance) I had an average speed of 27.44 mph, which is the first time I’ve broken 27 mph in a TT of any distance. This was good enough for 1^st place in the masters 40+ class by 30 seconds and was my first win on the season.

The race format was great and everybody I talked with really enjoyed the race. I’m hoping they will keep it for future races as well…maybe have a Team Time Trial format one of these days. The only change I’d like to see is them adding a lap or two to the race to get the times closer to the 30 minute range.

I’m pretty happy with the effort since I’ve made a ton of changes to my position on my TT bike since my last race back in February. I put on a new set of bars Vision bars that I picked up from a teammate and installed a new seat post the night before the race…basically a regular road seat post that was turned in the reverse direction to move my seat forward and give me an effective seat tube angle of 78 degrees compared to my stock 76 degree seat tube angle.

Given all the changes and this was my first real hard effort riding with them I’m more than happy with the results. I did find that I needed to drop my seat my a small amount as I had a little pain in the back of my left knee at the end of the race, but that quickly went away after I finished and a small drop in the seat should take care of that for the upcoming State Championship ITT’s in two weeks.

So this race for me was to check out all the changes in my position as well as to see where my fitness is at right now for time trials. Getting the win was extra bonus on the day J

My goal in two weeks will to break 55 minutes over 40K at the ITT championships, which I think I can do, but a lot will depend on the conditions. Long term forecast has rain and low 60’s for temperatures, but considering how far out that is…it should change a lot between now and then.

Photos Courtesy of: Nick Blacklock

2011 OBRA RR Championships

2011-05-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

This was my first year racing the Silverton course so I didn't really know what to expect. I had seen the profile which showed a big climb with a lot of rollers. It didn't look much worse than a few other courses I had done before...but once on the climb it seemed like there was a lot more climbing than expected.

Once underway the first lap was really slow and there were very few break attempts. I think it may have been the easiest first lap I've had in a race. The first climb I expected the big guns to try and get away, but for the most part they didn't do anything...so we will call it a warm up for what was to come.

At the beginning of the second lap I had a bit of a lapse in judgement and at the beginning of the big hill found myself about 2/3 of the way back in the field. By the time I realized where I was at the road was full of people and moving up was hard to do. About 1/2 way up the climb people started to blow up which made room to move forward but I could already see a small group getting a gap up ahead. By the time I made my way to the front a small group of 5 had got off the front and I knew several riders in the group were really strong...If I wanted a shot at winning I "HAD" to be in that group.

Not being at the front of the group there was stupid on my part because I knew that since the first climb was easy, the 2nd was going to be hard and that was where the break would go.

Near the top of the climb there wasn't a good chase being formed by those that didn't make the break, so I gave it a good go to bridge the gap to the lead group. Nobody went with me and I found myself in "No man's land" by myself chasing the lead group. I made it to within about 25 seconds of them but got no closer. I would make up time on the downhills then loose a little on the climbs.

I spent the entire 2nd lap in TT mode chasing the lead group and still felt OK but wasn't going to close the gap any closer with out another rider or two to work with. If I had a super long downhill near the beginning of the chase I may have been able to latch on as well, but the downhills were all short...so no go there either.

At one point mid 2nd lap I could see what was left of the main group about 1 - 1.5 minutes back. I had a choice at that time to save my energy and stop chasing the break, which was still about 35 seconds up the road or dr

op back to the second group. The second group wasn't making much ground and I felt OK so I kept pushing hoping maybe the break group would slow for a short period of time allowing me to latch back on...so I kept chasing.

Near the top of the climb on lap 3 what was left of the main group caught back up to me and I joined in with them. Nobody was really in "Chase" mode and most seemed OK to sprint for whatever position was left, even though the break was only 1.5 minutes or so up the road. With that said the pace wasn't

too fast so it allowed me a little time to recover.

With about 6 miles to go a couple guys up front were motioning to for another jump to try and get a break going...When they went I went, but they gave up quickly. Immediately after they quit another guy counter attacked and I jumped on his wheel. Working together we were able to put 45 seconds or so on the group heading into the finish.

My legs were toast by this time having spent an entire lap trying to chase down the break and I was suffering on the climbs, as small as they were at that point, but was able to really push it on the downhills and flats. Eventually the other guy put about 10 seconds on me on the 2nd to last climb...but I was OK with that by this time.

Overall, I finished 5th in the 40+ CAT 3 class (7th across the line since there were 4 groups in my race), which I'm happy with...I just wish I had been paying attention because I know I could have made the initial break if I had been closer to the front during the first climb on the 2nd lap....but such is life...live and learn.

Some numbers for today:

52.098 miles
2:30:59 ride time
Average power: 257 watts (NP 312 watts)
20 min power: 343 watts
30 min power: 318 watts
60 min power: 300 watts

Eugene Roubaix

2011-04-30T17:46:00.000-07:00

This was my first time racing the Eugene Roubaix...mostly due to the dirt road section. But I wanted another race in before the OBRA championships in two weeks, so this became the year to race it.

I looked at the profile before heading to Eugene and overall it looked to be fairly flat, and for the most part it was...but there are a lot more rollers than expected on that course and the one little climb was fairly steep.

We had a neutral roll out over the hill the first time which lasted about 3K. Once we were able to start racing we had a lot of people trying to get breaks started. I jumped after a few of them, but nothing was able to get away during the first lap. When we hit the gravel section...it was smoother than expected...but the pedal was down as expected. We entered the gravel road at 30mph and held near that speed for most of the way through the first time.

This with the hill just after split the pack into two groups from what I could see.

Once we came down the hill and hit the sharp right hand turn one guy was able to get away and put 200-300 meters on the field. There was a short but shallow climb during this part, but then it went downhill for a while. I decided to bridge the gap here. It looked like a couple started to chase, but stopped after 10-15 seconds. Here I bridged with the other guy and we worked together for the next 35-37 miles putting at one point 3 minutes on the field.

However, the last lap we both started to tire from the rollers and I started to get cramps in my calves.

With about 4 miles to go a chase group of 4 caught us making our group 6 riders now. We kept the pace pretty mellow knowing we had 2+ minutes on the field and took tried to vie for position through the gravel section.

I started out in good position through the gravel...but somehow ended up in front, which was where I didn't want to be heading into the final 1K. With about 100 meters to go in the gravel the first guy jumped. I accelerated and was able to hold his pace for a while, but then my legs tied up on me and the others were able to get around me.

With 100 meters or so left there was a gap between me and the other 5 so I just put my head down and crossed the line for 6th place. Out of the prizes, but overall...a good day in the saddle. Looking at the results today (5/1/11) it looks like I moved up to 5th...so either I was ahead of somebody else, or they relegated a rider due to centerline violation, I'm not sure which.

I can honestly say I left it all out on the road today and am still feeling it now that I'm home and cleaned up.

Numbers on the day:

55.7 miles raced
2:26:58 total time
Average watts: 280 (NP 316 watts)
Max power: 1416 watts
20 min power: 329 watts
60 min power: 313 watts
Average HR: 155 bpm
TSS: 224.2

De Ronde Portland 2011

2011-04-19T08:18:00.000-07:00

This was the first time I had ridden the De Ronde Portland, though I’ve heard the legendary stories of the ride…Just under 48 miles and 7700+ feet of climbing, with a couple of climbs averaging 25% or greater for a ¼ mile or longer. The reality is the total climbing is somewhere between 4700 and 7700 feet. Mapmyride.com has it at 4700 feet, but I’ve seen GPS profiles with 7700-8000 feet of climbing. The unofficial amount is 5400 feet which I’ve seen listed on several different locations.

I’m not a climber…by any definition of the term, but wanted to at least ride it once in my life to say I had done it, so knowing the weather was supposed to be good and not a whole lot of racing leading up to the race or after the race, I thought this year was as good as any to give it a try.

I was able to get a ride with one of my teammates to the start line (about 25 miles from where I live) where we arrived early to kind of chill out a little before the ride. Slowly the area started filling up with riders from different teams as well as recreational riders. I’d say by the time we started there were at lest 300-400 riders, maybe closer to 500…but it’s always hard to tell with a group that size since there is no “Official” ride taking place and no registration to count numbers.

Some groups took off early but most left just after 10:00am with a few words from the unofficial organizer of the ride. The basic premise of the ride is to follow the “Lions” on the road until you reach the top of Council Crest.

Granted this is a “Ride” but there is an unofficial count through the first 10-20 riders to the top…kind of a bragging rights thing…so I didn’t want to take it easy, though I knew I wasn’t going to be near the front either. Mostly I wanted to push myself and see what kind of time I could put in.

The first climb was up Saltzman Road…I say road because it’s only a road in name. It’s really a gravel road/trail that goes up through Forest Park and takes us up to Skyline road. Saltzman was actually in good shape considering all of the rain we have had and we were moving out pretty good. I don’t know my time up Saltzman, but I averaged 371 watts up the climb without pushing it very hard.

After a little respite along Skyline we took a short downhill that led us to Brynwood…which is one “STEEP” climb. I turned the corner and was saying to myself WTF? Who lives up here and why? I hit the first part of the climb out of the saddle making it about a ¼ the way up when I sat down on my saddle to power up the climb. At this time I realized my cleat tension in my right cleat was too loose for this climb. Every time I would pull back on the pedal (I was pulling really hard) the cleat would push the cleat retention springs back far enough the front of the pedal would unclip and out would come my cleat. This was quite annoying and caused me to stop several times up the climb.

After that…the only other really steep climb was college st. which was equally difficult, but that didn’t come until about half way into the ride.

The rest of the climbs were normal climbs with spots getting into the 15% range, but not for very long.

I will say, the roads for this ride are not the best roads I’ve ever ridden on. In fact the Saltzman (the dirt/gravel road) was in better shape than half the roads we were on. So it was a rough ride for a large portion of it.

Overall, I completed the ride in 3 hours 30 minutes and 46 seconds…and that was with a little doubling back when I got lost a few times. Not bad for a 190+ pound sprinter/TT guy. Looking at the pictures I was in the top 40 or so crossing the line and wasn’t too far from some of my teammates that are true climbers. I would guess the fastest guys finished in around 3 hours, maybe a little faster. Most people were in the 4+ hour range and many of my teammates came in around 4.5+ hours.

As for the toughness of the ride…It’s not easy, I’ll give it that. However, if you took Brynwood and College St. out of the ride it wouldn’t be that bad…just a slower ride with a lot of climbing. It wasn’t the hardest ride I’ve ever done, but ranks up there overall especially for how short the distance was.

I will say this was the first ride I've ever completed where my upper body was more tired than my lower body. You had to use your whole body to get up some of those climbs and it took it's tool after a while.

There was great support along the route, especially considering this is not an “Organized” ride. Several families had tables set up and were giving out free food, water and other “Assorted Beverages”. There were also 5 or 6 port-a-potties located along through course to use. That really made things great, as well as people cheering us on as we hit the top of the steepest climbs.

Overall…it’s a great ride and if you haven’t done it…it’s worth giving it a shot at least once. I’m not sure I’ll do it again, but if the season has a lull at that time again, I’ll likely give it a go if the weather is OK. If it was cold and raining…it would have been miserable, but epic.

Photos courtesy of: cycling@dmroth.com

Kings Valley Road Race

2011-04-10T17:00:00.000-07:00

This was my first road race of the season, but heading into it I felt pretty good. My training has been going well, even though it's been raining forever, which has put me on my trainer during the week. But I can tell I'm getting stronger because my trainer workouts have been getting better and I'm holding my power longer on group rides.

With that said not knowing the course I didn't really know what to expect other than what I had heard from a few people. I knew it was 56.6 miles long and had some climbing (some very steep but short climbs and one longer climb where the race finished). I had heard it was a hard course to get a breakaway going, but could see a couple of places where one could be done if the conditions were right.

Looking at the course profile I was a little concerned about the main hill and finish since I'm not a climber and it was an uphill finish. As it turned out most of the climb wasn't that bad, but there were a few sections that pitched up past 6% which is beyond my "Anchor" point...I.E. where I struggle at...Generally anything over 4% - 5% grades.

The race was what I would call On/Off...It was attack after attack, but nobody followed through with their attacks. So it was full on, then full off for most of the race...Kind of annoying and it kept the field together for most of the race.

On the end of the second lap (of three) a guy just kind of drifted off the front. I'm not sure if it was an attack or he just went a little hard and found himself out by himself but once he had a gap...he looked like he picked up the pace and turned it into an attack (if it wasn't). As we started the 3rd lap another guy jumped (not long after the first guy took off) and soloed his way to the lead racer.

The two of them built up a lead of around 2 minutes or more and the field wasn't chasing them hard...of course, they had multiple teammates in the race and were effectively blocking the field by disrupting any chase that was started and had good control over the pack which allowed the lead riders to stay away.

With a bit over 7 miles to go a few guys had jumped and had a small gap on the field. It looked like a good group so I jumped to catch them. As I caught them...they gave up and drifted back to the pack.

I looked back and nobody was chasing so I decided push the pace and see if I could get away knowing if I didn't I was toast on the final climb since I was "Pack Sliding" each time up the steepest pitches. This was a great place for me to go because it was fairly flat and had a bit of a cross wind, which I love when racing. After about 1.5 miles of cross wind the course turned right and headed into a headwind for the next 2.5 miles before the final climb, which again I think helped keep the field at bay until the final climb.

For a short period of time it looked like they started to chase, but it was quickly shut down again...partially by the teammates of those in the front as well as by my teammates. If a chase was going to organize it would have had to have been done by some of the smaller teams or independent riders.

After a few minutes on my own I had separated myself from the pack by a fair distance and I could see I was making up time on the two guys in front. By the time I hit the final climb I was about 10-15 meters away from catching them and once the climb leveled out a bit I was able to catch them and work with them on the final climb.

With about 2.5k - 3k to go the official told us we had 47 seconds on the field. At that point I think we all felt fairly confident we could hold them off which meant the finish would be between the three of us for the win.

Going into the final steep pitch before the last 200 meters where the road leveled off a little...the effort put into catching them...caught up to me. I didn't have much left at that point. That part of the climb started at 9%, then dropped to 6% and stayed there until we crested the steep incline. During the start of this steep pitch The other two put a few meters on me and with nothing in the legs to accelerate, they kept it to the top where it leveled off a little.

At this point I started looking behind me to see where the field was.

Looking back and looking forward I decided...3rd was good enough at this point. I could try and sprint to make it close and still take 3rd or cruise in for 3rd...I chose to cruise at that point finishing 3rd on the day.

This was my best ever climbing finish, so I was pretty happy about that, but it wouldn't have happened without my teammates helping control the pack as I broke away and caught the break.

Some numbers from todays race:

Total time of race: 2:26:42
Average watts: 236 (NP 308 watts...all the accelerations)
Max watts: 1294
Average speed: 22.6 mph
TSS: 213.4
IF: .876

During the chase/break away I averaged 25.1 mph into a cross/headwind and the last 20 minutes of the race averaged 325 watts. Needless to say...I really like my new Corsa Concept wheels

March training...

2011-04-01T20:48:00.000-07:00

Well, unfortunately I wasn't able to race this month. I had planned on making the "Piece of Cake" road race my first mass start race of the year however a 3.5 mile gravel section each lap kept me from racing it. With age comes wisdom I guess...even if for the most part things were OK...though the early word was 10+ flats through the first gravel road section in the CAT 3 race alone. That just doesn't sound like much fun to me.

With that in mind, I've turned my focus to the Kings Valley road race on the 9th of this month. I've never raced Kings Valley so this will be a new experience for me. It's a Masters 3/4/5 race instead of the normal 1/2/3 races we have in the Masters field...so again something new.

Overall, I had a good month of March training wise:

58 hours and 29 minutes on the bike (trainer and outside)
1135 miles ridden
Longest ride: 79 miles (4 hours and 25 minutes)

Unfortunately most of this was spent on my single speed since we had 29 of 31 days where it rained and the 5th wettest March on record. Hopefully the month of April things start to dry out around here.

On the weight front...It was a tough month. My weight stagnated for about 3 weeks then all of the sudden over the past two days I've lost 3 pounds and finally hit 190 pounds again. I want to lose another 5-7 pounds before the end of May so I'm still watching what I eat and trying to lose the weight at a slower rate than early in the year.

For now though I'm really working on my threshold power. I've moved my training toward that direction with lots of threshold level intervals and SST training. All of my high speed work comes during group rides, so I'm only getting a small amount of that right now which is OK in the end because I need higher threshold power more than anything right now.

Jack Frost Time Trial...

2011-02-21T10:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was the fourth time I've raced the Jack Frost Time Trial. It's a fun early season Time Trail that usually runs around 12 miles in length. The course is an out and back on very flat roads. Last year due to Vancouver Lake being closed we had to start at a different location which added a little over 2 miles to the race.

This year, we were able to return to our normal starting location which has limited parking so findinga place to park and warm up is generally always an issue. You have teams setting up tents taking up several parking spots and lots of independents (or those that didn't bring a warm up tent looking for open spots. With this in mind I usually try and make it out a little early to find a parking spot, which thankfully one section of the park still had enough places left to park and warm up in.

Overall, I felt pretty good heading into the race and it's usually a good indication of my overall fitness level heading into the begining of the season. I haven't been doing any 20 minute intervals and up to this point hadn't done any interval longer than 2 minutes for the past two months....aside from last week where I have begun to lengthen my intervals to 7 minutes. This is still more of a VO2 max interval, but helps with my overall threshold since I'm doing 10 of them over the course of 2 hours.

The race started well enough. I had a shorter warm up than I wanted due to a number of factors, all of which were avoidable. But I was able to arrive to the starting gate with my 1 minute man just taking off, so I didn't have to stand around long before taking off.

Once on the course I felt pretty good, but could feel a weeks worth of hard efforts in my legs. From this point it was just a matter of going as hard as possible. I only had 4 racers in my catagory in front of me, but two other classes that I thought I might catch a few racers from and use as carrots during the race.

The first half of the race I felt pretty good, catching my 30 second man a few miles down the road, then my 1 minute man, 1:30 and 2:00 man by the turn around point. I had also started running into other catagory racers at the turn around point and had a fair amout of them to pass during the race.

On the return trip I could feel the lack of 20 minute intervals and had good minutes and bad minutes on the course. I would feel good for a little while, then slow down, realize I was going slow and pick the pace back up. I would love to be able to use a power meter to pace me instead of heart rate...but until I win the lottery, I don't see that happening.

However for a few TT's this year I'll be able to use a set of deep carbon wheels that I'm having built up with a powertap, so I'll get some numbers from those races, but they are short with lots of climbing so using those wheels makes some sense.

Overall, I came into the finish feeling fairly good. I wasn't gassed, but knew I had put in a hard effort.

I have also made some small position changes to my TT bike by adding a 2cm shorter stem that brings my elbows back a little and keeps me on the meat of the saddle a little more. This puts me closer to my road bike position which is what I ride the most, so in the end it should be benificial. I'm still plenty low enough on the bike, but need some new aero bars to be able to get narrower in the front than I am now (which is as narrow as my current bars will allow).

In the end I had a time of 28:10 which was good enough for 5th in the Masters 40+ field (out of 53 racers that showed up to race) and 25th overall out of 280+ racers. Not bad considering my lack of intervals to this point of the season and only 18 seconds slower than my PR on this course. The racers that took 3rd and 4th were both teammates of mine beating my by only a few seconds (13 second difference between me and 3rd place).

I can't complain much about that since I've really been concentrating on losing weight. I'm approximately 15 pounds lighter than I was at this time last year, currently sitting at 198-199 pounds. I would like to lose another 20 pounds and get down to 180, which would be a great racing weight for me (about 10 pounds under what I have raced at the last few seasons). With that in mind I working on continuing to drop the weight, but I've also got to put power back on. I'm about 30 watts under what I would normally be able to hold for 20 minutes during the race season...so work to do there.

The next planned race for me is the "Piece of Cake" in late March, but depending on the weather I might race a Banana Belt race or two, just to get back in the peloton and have some "Mass Start" racing under my belt before the Piece of Cake.

January Numbers....

2011-01-31T20:10:00.000-08:00

January actually turned out to be a great month for riding. Only two weekends were wet enough that I had to use my single speed, so lots of time on my road bike. Granted...It's still dark out on the weekdays so I'm still on my trainer during the week.

Overall I had several nice rides:

January 1st: 75.86 miles.
January 22nd: 76.15 miles.
January 29th: 74.29 miles

And some shorter road rides of 38.63 mile rides on the 23rd and 30th.

The month of January was the biggest month I've had on a bike since July of last year. I had a total of 54 hours and 39 minutes of ride time (trainer and road time) and technically around 1150 miles ridden.

The really bright spot has been weight loss. I've changed my diet around to allow for a larger percentage of it to come from fats and protein and less from carbs. Combine that with increased intensity of workouts and I've dropped a little over 15 pounds since the 22nd of December (5 weeks).

The only drawback I have seen so far is that my power numbers are down from the lack of intervals over the winter. Right now I'm only putting out around 360 watts for 20 minutes, which means I have a good 30 watts of continuous power to put on over the next several months as well as drop another 15-20 pounds.

I have also started my core work so my hamstrings and core section were pretty sore for about a week, but are feeling much better now that the soreness is gone. In the end though, some good core work always seems to make things better on the bike. I was noticing that my back was starting to get tired at around the 3 hour mark on rides, while this past weekend I still felt pretty good after 4 hours on the bike.

Overall.....A good start to the year, but a long way to go before things start to get better

The 2011 season is almost here...

2011-01-19T14:16:00.000-08:00

It has been a while since I’ve last updated my blog, so I thought I’d get some time riding in before my first post of the year.

Race season is only a month or so away from starting so my normal weight loss routine has begun and intervals are starting to get a little bit harder. On the weight front…I’m actually starting this year about a month or so ahead of last year. On January 1st last year I was somewhere in the 222-225 pound range, while this year I started around 215 pounds. I’m already down to 208 and if I stay on target I should be down to race weight (190 pounds or so) by the end of March.

Power wise, I’m not sure where I’m at since I haven’t used my Powertap (aside from a few rides when the weather has been nice). The only input I have toward power output right now is the average speeds I’m holding while completing trainer workouts. Going off of this data my power is better than it was at this time last year, though, how much better is unknown at this time. I’ll most likely have to wait until the Jack Frost ITT before I get a good idea of where I’m at.

As for rides so far this year, it started out great. I had several days off of work leading up to New Year’s weekend so I had time to ride. It basically turned into a winter training camp form me and with some nice weather was able to get in 15.5 hours on the bike and just under 300 miles for the week. The longest ride of the week was a 4.25 hour, 76 mile ride with two other teammates, though my legs were feeling it from 9 hours of riding that I had done over the 4 previous days.

Since then I’ve been getting in 11.5 – 12 hours a week of training time between the trainer and weekend group rides. I’ve started getting in an extra hour of riding before Saturday group rides for the extra time on the bike and more overall base miles than I did last year. I’ve also started doing a little core work, so my mid section and hamstrings are sore today…but that should dissipate over the next few days.

I’m not sure what my race schedule is going to look like this season other than my first race will be the Jack Frost ITT on February 20th. From there, I’m not sure what will be next. I may compete in a Banana Belt race or two or wait until the Piece of Cake (of which I will race unless I’m sick) at the end of March. I’m contemplating competing in the Cherry Blossom stage race and using it as a good training block and helping teammates if I have any in the race. My two “A” races will again be the OBRA TTT and ITT championship races, but will also likely race in the OBRA RR championship race again, even though it’s been moved back to May as it had been in years past.

Against my better judgment and my allergic reaction to asphalt, I’m planning on racing a few more crit’s this season. I haven’t singled any out other than maybe the OBRA Crit Championship in August, but will look at a few of the local races that I’ve avoided in the past. I however don’t have any plans on racing out at PIR again this season, but as with everything, that could change once racing starts up again.

With all that said…The first race is just a month away…so the season is almost upon us again :D

Breaking wheels...

2010-11-14T20:22:00.000-08:00

This fall has been a bit tough on my wheel sets.

I've only been out on weekend group rides but the second time I took my single speed out I broke two rear spokes and pulled a spoke out of the front rim. Not a good way to start the winter riding season.

The following weekend was nice and I was able to take my normal road bike out. It held up find on the Saturday group ride, but taking it out for a ride on Sunday resulted in another broken rear spoke.

Not feeling like rebuilding the wheel myself I took it into a local shop to get rebuilt only to find out that I had cracked the hub flange on my powertap....GREAT!!!

Upon further research the shop found out that Saris/Cyclops would either rebuild the hub with all new parts or just replace the hub...depending on what they felt like doing. However, since it was out of the warranty period it's going to cost me $300.00 to have them do so, but they will also reinstate a year warranty on the hub. So...it's not all bad. I'm not waiting on the hub to be returned to the shop and have the wheel built.

On a side note, I'm looking at purchasing a new wheel set for my road bike. One of our team sponsors is Corsa Concepts so I'm looking at having them build up a set of their 2.3T wheels with a Powertap on the rear wheel.

So far the training over the winter has been going fairly well for the winter. I haven't been doing as many hours on the bike/trainer this year as in the past, but have had some good intensity with short intervals. I'm going to slowly ramp up my time on the bike/trainer over the next two months in preparation for the upcoming season. With cross season winding down I'm expecting to see more teammates show up for the group rides Saturday mornings...which should make the pace pick up a little as the winter moves along.

This past weekend was a good ride since we had a few more people join the 21+ group and we had a few short climbs thrown in for good measure. It was probably the best ride I've been on for the past two months and climbing on the single speed is always an adventure, but a good power builder :)

So far most of the weekend rides have been wet since we are in a La Nina year and they are expecting it to be wetter than normal with some saying much wetter than normal. So I'm expecting a lot of wet rides this winter...Not great fun, but it gets you ready to race in the rain should that be the case in the spring.

Anyway...Hopefully the broken spokes are over for the year...since I'm getting my Powertap wheel rebuild and I replaced my single speed wheel set with a new set of wheels.

First rain ride of the year...

2010-10-10T22:00:00.000-07:00

The weather has turned...lots of rain this weekend and showers are in the forecast for next weekend. With that in mind it was time to break out the single speed for the first time this season.

In some ways I like to ride the single speed...it's simple, builds both power and aerobic capacity and works on my spin. The only real downside is that I get bogged down on steeper hills and struggle when the pace really picks up in the pace line...but that just makes me stronger for the first part of the race season.

This weekends group ride was 43 flattish miles, with just a few short rollers so it wasn't a hard ride by any means. I however did have issues with my wheels. My single speed is a cheaper bike and hence came with cheap wheels. Last year I broke several spokes during the winter and this year started with a bang.

About 5 miles into the ride I heard a "Pop" and knew the sound all too well...broken spoke. Since I was already on the road with a 32 spoke rear wheel it wasn't too big of a wheel. I loosened up the rear brakes as much as possible and continued on the ride.

About 30 miles into the ride I hear "Pop"...another spoke down, again on the rear wheel. This one was a little ways away from the front and actually balanced the wheel out a little.

Then with about 5 miles left on the ride I heard a big "Pop"...this time coming from the front of the bike. One of the spokes on my 3 year old Neuvation M28's pulled through the rim...so that wheel is completely shot now.

So, one ride...43 miles and 3 broken spokes...a great start to the winter riding season. I'm going to be shopping for some new wheels before next weekend so I'll be ready to ride again and be able to put the power down again on the shorter climbs.

I'm about 2 weeks into the new training program and so far, so good. My legs are a little sore today but nothing that won't be gone by tomorrow. I feel like I'm starting to drop a little weight which is a good thing...so I'm hopeful the shorter more intense rides will be a good thing this winter.

Winter Training...

2010-10-06T14:32:00.001-07:00

It’s time to move to my winter training schedule now that the days are too short to get riding in after work and the daily rain we get in the winter will be starting soon. With that in mind I’m going to try something a little different this year for my “Trainer” riding sessions.

In years past I’ve done 4-5 days a week on the trainer and one group ride per week (and if the weather was nice a second outside on Sundays). The rides were longer in duration during the week usually in the 2 – 2.5 hour range with longer intervals with the intent of putting the focus on getting ready for Time Trials the next season. These have worked fairly well, but this past season I felt like I was missing a little “Top End” compared to years and lost some of my top end power only getting over 1400 watts on a couple of occasions this summer and never over 1500 watts as I had done the previous year. I’ve also found it hard to maintain focus for 20 minute intervals while on the trainer, which I feel resulted in a less “Quality workout” overall.

I’ve also been moving much of my training time to the trainer recently due to the normal end of season reasons and have been having difficulty with motivation, especially when it comes to the longer 2 hour rides.

So with all that in mind, I’m changing my strategy for my indoor trainer rides this winter. Instead of 5 - 6 days a week, I’m going to ride each day of the week with two hard interval rides, two easy recovery/endurance based rides, one tempo paced ride and one group ride. My trainer rides will not go over 1.5 hours in length, but not under 1 hour and my group rides will hopefully be around 3 hours or more in length on Saturdays.

The change will allow me to focus more on “Quality” trainer workouts with higher intensity, though shorter interval durations than I have completed over the past two seasons. The 7 days a week is to make sure my caloric expenditure stays high for the week since weight gain is always an issue for me during the winter. Even with riding 7 days a week my weekly caloric burn will be less than previous winters.

Right now I’m concentrating on 30 second intervals at 150% of FTP. Over a 1.5 hour interval workout I’m completing (16) 30 second intervals and (10) 20 second intervals. The rest of the ride is completed at a high tempo pace, so recovery is limited during the entire training session. Overall this has resulted in higher average wattages compared to the threshold workouts I was doing in the past and similar caloric burns (though a bit lower) with 30 minutes less spent on the trainer.

So far, even though I’ve only been doing these for a few weeks, I’ve already seen my max power output go up and my ability to hold a high tempo pace on group rides remain at the same level. My peak power on my last group ride was just under 1500 watts and I was only a few watts off of my 5 second peak, without anybody there to push me hard. I’ve also been able to hold a pretty hard tempo on group rides taking very long pulls up front….so….so far so good.

I’m not sure what the long term effects of this type of training will be, or how my shape will be when the race season comes around in February…but as long as I can keep my weight down I think I’ll be able to push a little harder in races, especially during surges that take place separating the contenders from the non contenders. The question is whether I’ll be able to hold on for the 2.5 hour races considering the shorter duration of my workouts over the winter.

End of the season

2010-09-08T21:15:00.000-07:00

Well the cycling season has ended for me. I actually did two more races than planned with the OBRA Road Race and Crit championships. All in all it was successful, but could have been better.

The good:

Dropping my weight back down into the 180’s (though I didn’t stay there long enough). This is a trend that I need to stop…and I’ve been on my way back up since the start of July and am already over 200 pounds again. Though I’m keeping an eye on it already and am working on slowly dropping back down to 190 so I don’t have to “Diet” myself down during the race season.

Winning the first “As The Raven Flies” TT series with a 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finish at the race. This was the first year for the series and I hope it’s brought back. The course was a lot of fun, but very difficult for a TT and I hope it will build in participation over the next few years.

Taking 2nd in the newly located “Piece of Cake” road race. This was my first time racing in the Piece of Cake, which as it turns out is my type of race…flat with lots of cross and head winds. It was my first attempt at a break away during a road race and for the most part it paid off well.

Winning the CAT 3 OBRA TTT Championships again with an awesome team. This is the 3rd year in a row our team has won this race, each year with a different combination of riders. I’ve been part of two of them and look forward to the race again next season…whether it’s in the CAT 3’s again or in the Masters 160+ division.

Lots of great rides with the team. Almost every weekend I was participating in the weekly team rides. We completed two centuries this year with my longest ride ever being 114.02 miles back in early June. I would have liked to have seen a bit more of a “Race” attitude during many of the rides for more intensity, but at the same time, it was fun to ride with so many great riders.

The bad:

Letting my weight get beyond 220 pounds in the off season and having to yet again, work my butt off to get back down to a weight low enough to be competitive. As already mentioned, I need to get this under control now, before I’m 220+ pounds again this off season.

Not getting in enough “High” intensity work during the season. I never felt like I had a great top end at any point during the season. Part of this was due to a change in team rides from years past. This year they were more “Group ride” oriented than “Hammer/Nail” oriented. I missed the see how hard you can make a ride…rides of years past. To me, that’s an integral part of training and it was missed this season. In the past I've used the group rides to push myself against others and build that top end on the rides, without those super hard rides, I suffered a little.

Not racing enough. I only raced in 13 races this season, passing up on several early season road races due to my weight. I only competed in one crit and 4 road races during the season which was my lowest total over the past two seasons. I really want to come into next season at a weight that I can climb at which will allow me to be more competitive early in the season. I may also race a few more crits next season, at least the smaller ones, just for more experience, which I think the lack of hurt me at the OBRA Crit Championships.

What’s next:

The off season training has begun already. The days are getting short enough that riding after work outside isn’t plausible since the best I can do is a “Pressed for time” 2 hour ride now. Also, the rain seems to have moved back in sooner than past seasons…So I’m already back on my trainer. I’m hoping to get a better base built up over the next 4 months by pushing myself harder on the trainer than last season. This will allow me to hit the intervals harder and be faster for early season races. I’m also hoping to get some harder group rides going next season with the basic idea being that our group rides being harder than the races we compete in. This will help a lot with the “Top End” form we need when it comes to races, something I feel was missing this season, at least by myself and will get more members of the team ready for the intense efforts needed to stay in and place well in races.

Race more next season. My original plan was to race more MTB races this year, but I was unable to afford a new MTB so that put a major hold on that idea. I may try and race more MTB races next season…but unless I can pickup a new MTB, that won’t be in the plans. However, I do plan on racing more single day races as well as a few more Crits next year, while competing in the same TT’s that I did this year (Jack Frost, As the Raven Flies, Estacada, OBRA TTT and OBRA TT). I don’t think I’ll do any stage races next season though, unless I can get some extra cash flow over the next few months.

This is something I’d like to do…but I’m not sure how many others on my team want to do it. I’m hoping to get a very strong 40+ Road Race team together next season since we have at least 6 very strong Masters level racers. I’d like to work as a team to get as many people on the podium as possible next season. The Masters races are generally dominated by the Team Echelon guys…but I feel if we come into the race season in shape…we can give them a run for their money at any venue.

I want to work on my TT position. I’ve been working on it for a while and feel it’s still off by a little ways. I think I’m getting closer, but knowing my power numbers and seeing my times on the bike…they don’t match up. This means I have position work to do because I’m losing too much power in my current position compared to what I can put out on my road bike. I need to find that balance between power and aerodynamics which I have yet been able to do.

All in all…not really a season I can complain about. Actually having a job this year didn’t make any difference in my training and my work schedule allows training time during the season, which shouldn’t change next year. I’m looking forward to getting stronger during the off season and even some wet weather group rides with the team on my single speed…as crazy as that may sound :D

2010 OBRA Crit Championships

2010-08-23T20:42:00.000-07:00

On a whim this year I decided to race in the OBRA Crit Championships. I'm not sure why I decided to race this year because I haven't raced in a crit in over a year...but I just felt like racing it this year.

So off to Albany I went to compete in the Masters 40-49 category.

The course was a nice 6 corner crit with good wide turns and nice road conditions. This allowed good speeds through the turns and a better overall flow during the race.

Going into this race I had no idea what my race shape was since I haven't been doing any VO2 max intervals and all of my riding has been basic hill climbing and some occasional efforts during group rides. Give crits are all about constant accelerations...I just didn't know how I would fare.

Once the race started, I moved to the front with the basic plan of getting into break aways, starting break aways or chasing breaks down that got away.

It didn't take very long before riders started shooting off the front of the pack. Staying up front I jumped in every break I could until I started to feel it and needed a little break.

About 15 minutes into the race I found myself out front by myself with a good 30 meter or so gap on the field. I kept pushing it hard, but couldn't make any ground on the field and they slowly brought me back in.

For the next 5 minutes or so I stayed in the pack and waited for other chances to get into a break. With about 10 laps to go we had a small group of 4 that if we worked together could have had a chance of staying away. At one point we had 30 meters or so on the field, but nobody in the group wanted to rotate or pull through, which led to being pulled back into the field pretty quickly.

From this point I decided to stay in the pack and see if I could place well in the field sprint and just tried to maintain field position.

I moved around a little but stayed near the front, somewhere around the top 10-15 riders trying to hold position.

With a few laps to go things started to pick up. One rider caught a pedal in a turn and almost went down (and would have taken the eventual 3rd place finisher with him). A few laps later (with one or two to go) it started getting really dicey and some bumping started taking place. I was on the inside and got bumped a little but was able to accelerate out of it. Unfortunately at this time a small gap was forming that separated me from the front 10-12 racers and it was a gap we never made up.

Coming around the final corner the leaders had taken off full sprint while I was still 20 meters or so back, so my race was essentially over, with no real sprint finish. I think I finished somewhere between 12th and 15th.

In the end I felt like I had a good race, but lack of doing any crits or similar races hurt when it came to the final lap. I knew better than to let the gap develop, but not being in that situation for over a year it didn't dawn on me at the time. I felt pretty strong overall and gave a lot of effort going for break away attempts...and had I been there for the final sprint feel I could have placed well, how well I'll never know.

I can't really complain though considering I was worried about getting pulled/dropped from the main field...so all is good.

This was my last road race of the season, so now it's time to wind down the miles a little and start building a base up again for next race season which is approximately 6 months away. One area I need to improve on is dropping weight again...a constant battle for me. I'm currently sitting around 200 pounds or so and last winter jumped up to 220, working my way down to 187 by the "Meat" of my racing schedule. I'd like to come into the season around 190 pounds next year so I'm competitive in the early season races....so I have a lot of work to do when it comes to monitoring my weight and building my base.

Overall...a good year, but I know I have some areas to improve on. I may even do a few extra crits next year for good measure so I can get another shot at the OBRA Crit Championships :)

OBRA RR Championships

2010-08-09T18:51:00.000-07:00

So this year I decided to race in the OBRA Road Race Championships. I've avoided this race for the last two years because they were oriented more toward climbers, which is something I'm not great at. This year however, aside from the beginning climb the course suited my abilities fairly well....the big issue was getting over the first climb with the lead group, or close enough that I could latch back on.

The elevation profile shown below gives you an idea of the course. It was supposed to go the other way, but due to some fresh road resurfacing they change the direction with the profile showing the correct view (I turned the photo around)

The race started out well enough with the pack riding together to the end of the neutral zone. From there the pace picked up and I was hoping a few big guys would jump to the front and the pack would allow us to get 30 seconds or so on them before the climb started giving us a chance to stay with them.

As expected a few guys jumped and I jumped with them. After a minute of trying to get away the field wasn't having anything to do with it and the pulled us back in before the first climb started.

The first climb turned out to be a game changer for almost every class that raced this past weekend. It was a 1.5 mile climb that averaged around 10% for the climb. Anything over about 5% I struggle on, but I knew that it was a game changer so I actually covered up my wattage on my powertap so I couldn't see how hard I was working. I stayed with the pack as long as possible and took myself to the edge of blowing up, then backed it off just a bit. I fell off the pace about midway up the climb, but then started passing others that had blown up trying to stay with the leaders. Looking back on my powertap numbers, I set a new 4 minute power record of 445 watts and took just over 8 minutes to make it over the top of the climb.

Once over the top, I felt pretty good all things considered and was able to push it hard on the downhill. As I went down the hill I started picking up riders as I passed them, thus forming a chase group. By the time we hit the bottom of the downhill we had around 9 riders that were working together hard in a rotating pace line.

We could see the chase car just up the road and we were slowly pulling them back in. After 10 minutes of chasing we had pulled them to within around 35 seconds or so, but by this time our chase group was both tiring and dropping riders. The longer we went, the more riders dropped off until we hit the turn into the side wind with 5 riders.

We were still pushing it hard, but the lead car was slowing starting to pull away. Mid way through the back side of the course we had lost our 5th man and were down to 4 riders. We still had the chase car in sight and by the time we started the 2nd climb we were no farther back than about 50 seconds. However, the other riders I was with were getting tired so I started taking longer pulls up front.

By this time the chase for the front group was over and they pulled away from us.

Through the feed zone I was able to pick up some bottled water from my wife, that was very welcomed at the time. Downing the bottle it was time for the downhill. I lead our chase pack all the way down bombing the course to the flat middle section where we started rotating again until the next downhill where I led the whole way again.

At the bottom of the hill we had just over 10 miles to the finish line. It was a gradual 2.1% average climb, so nothing hard. We started out with a good steady pace until we saw a 1k to go sign (that happened to be 5 miles or so from the finish). At that point we started playing "Cat/Mouse" games and slowed way down. We continued our slow pace for another 3 miles or so picking up one of the dropped riders in front of us and having two riders catch us from behind...so now we were back up to 7 riders.

The two that caught us picked the pace of the pack up and were pushing harder than the rest of us, so we did some small rotations but much of the pack had lost the will to pull and I think were trying to rest for a final group sprint.

The real 1k to go sign finally came into view when one of the guys jumped. Everybody else went with him and we started jockeying for position for a final sprint...just for the fun of it. Knowing I was a sprinter, most wanted me to be the first to go so they could draft off me and try and pull around. I waited for a while until another guy jumped...then went into a full sprint. I put about 4 bike lengths on him before looking back to see where he was and letting up a little on my sprint crossing the line 1st in my chase pack....but 13th overall.

For the most part I'm happy with my performance. I couldn't have done anything differently to have placed higher since I couldn't hang with the better climbers on the hill. I pushed as hard as possible on the flats with the cross wind and the downhill, but couldn't make up enough ground to catch the lead groups. So overall...a good race.

If I could have been 15 pounds lighter...I might have stood a chance :P I was a good 10 pounds over my more ideal race weight (as seen by not so thin middle section in the pic below)...so theoretically I could have been lighter, but I was in good condition so I can't really complain.

July numbers

2010-08-01T20:39:00.000-07:00

July was a good month for getting in lots of miles. I didn't have any races and for the most part my race season was over. The weather has been awesome with no rain during the month so I've been able to get out whenever I wanted.

I've mostly been riding 3 hours on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday with either a day off or a short recovery ride on Friday...then group rides on Saturdays and medium paced rides on Sundays. I averaged around 15 hours a week on the bike and 270 miles or so.

Here are my numbers for July:

Total hours riding: 63 hours 45 minutes and 37 seconds
Total miles ridden: 1174.49 miles
Total TSS: 3717
Longest Ride: 102.02 miles

Power Numbers: Not great this month due to no racing

1 minute power: 570 watts
5 minute power: 409 watts
20 minute power: 361 watts
1 hour power: 315 watts

Next Race: OBRA State Championship Road Race.

I fully expect to get my butt kicked at this race with a 1800 foot climb about 10 miles into the race with one section that's about a mile long and averages 7%-8% for that section. I'm in OK shape, but not really race shape right now and am about 10-12 pounds heaver than my lightest point this year....so unless I'm near the front at the top of the climb (Doubtful) it's going to be for fun since those I could help will be in front of me and I'll be chasing them instead of helping them.

Such is life...should be fun anyway :)

June Numbers

2010-06-30T21:16:00.000-07:00

June was a good month for me on the bike. I completed my final "A" race of the season, had my longest ride of the year, had more miles this month than any other month this year and since summer finally decided to show up I was able to get out and ride almost every day, which means I was able to get away from my trainer.

I'm currently putting in 15-17 hours a week with the nice weather. Basically 10 - 10.5 hours during the week and another 6 - 7 hours on the weekend with group rides and recovery rides.

Here are my numbers for June:

Total hours riding: 59:46:42
Total miles ridden: 1141.92 miles
Total TSS: 3297
Longest Ride: 114.02 miles (My longest ride ever)

Power Numbers:

1 minute power: 534 watts
5 minute power: 423 watts
20 minute power: 340 watts
1 hour power: Unknown, but likely around 330 - 340 watts during the State ITT Championships

Races:

State Championship Individual Time Trial: 3rd place in the Masters 40-44 age group

Next race: The OBRA Road Race Championships (maybe, depending on how I feel at the time)

OBRA ITT Championships

2010-06-14T19:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the OBRA (Oregon Bicycle Racing Association) Individual Time Trial Championships.

This was my second "A" race of the season aside from the TTT championships which took place 3 weeks ago. Originally the ITT championships were slated for the last week of July but due to some scheduling issues were moved up to the 2nd week of June. Overall, this was a good move because it's when many people are still in peak condition from the road race season...however, having it so close to the TTT I had to decide which one to peak for the most. Since the TTT is a team event and it was my best chance at winning a championship I chose that one.

Regardless of peaking, I still felt pretty good for this race. I hadn't been able to ride outside much over the last three weeks because of all the rain here in Oregon. We had surpassed our monthly average in the first three days of the month so I got to continue my relationship with my indoor trainer for most of June.

Looking at the start list I knew I wasn't going to be able to win my division since two of the fastest TT guys in the state were in my division, however 3rd place was a very distinct possibility. Last year Karsten Hagen beat me by 2 minutes 34 seconds and Paul Boucier beat me by 2 minutes and 48 seconds. This year Paul was the 2nd rider off, I was the 4th to last rider and Karsten was one minute behind me (two riders).

With the start list in mind, my goal was to hold off Karsten Hagen off as long as possible. I really wanted to ride under 55 minutes this year, but the weather wasn't conducive to super fast times because of a strong headwind on the return trip. Other than the wind the weather was great with temps around 70 degrees at start time.

Once underway I felt pretty good. I was able to keep my HR in the mid 160 range all the way out to the turn around point, which is better than I've done all season. My average speed was also right around 29 mph at the turn around which meant the return trip was going to be hard. One bright spot is Karsten hadn't passed me yet, so I was doing well up to this point.

After the turn around I struggled a little getting back into a rhythm with the headwind. One of the guys I passed on the way out passed me back shortly after the turn around. However, this was a good thing as it gave me somebody to pace off of. He originally put about 10 meters on me, but I was able to match pace with him over the next mile or so, then we hit a wooded section with less wind and I closed the gap and eventually passed him again for good.

Back in a descent rhythm I was still going well. Around mile 18.5 Karsten finally passed me, which put him 1 minute up on me at this time. Again, this wasn't all bad because it gave me somebody to pace off of again. I was able to keep him within 30 meters or so for about 3 miles before he finally pulled away enough that I couldn't pace off of him any longer.

Coming into the final stretch I still felt OK and pushed it hard over the last mile heading into the finishing stretch around 27mph - 28mph, crossing the line with a time of 56:02. It was a minute slower than I wanted to run this season, but given the wind it wasn't bad.

The one bright spot was that I could compare my times against Paul and Karsten to see if I had improved over last year. Our time differences were: Karsten had 1:32 on me and Paul had 2:30 so I had made up some time over them from last year. Overall, everybody's times were a little slower than last year and it looks like on average they were about a minute slower overall.

My time of 56:02 was fast enough for 3rd in my division (40-44) which was also the 2nd fastest group on the day...so I felt good knowing I gave it my best shot, performed better than last year and still came away with a medal. It's my first bronze medal, but now I have a matching set :D

For the most part my racing season is complete. I'm planning on doing a lot of base miles over the next two months, trying to get in 16-19 hours a week on the bike and just enjoy the ride for a while. I'm not going to specifically train for anything, but use hills for intervals and try and drop a few pounds. My next race will likely be the OBRA Road Race Championships where I'll race with the Masters. Then I'm thinking the Eugene Celebration road race to put a cap on the season.

For now though...it's all about miles and enjoying the ride on the new frame :-)

May numbers...

2010-05-31T21:40:00.000-07:00

May was a good month overall. It was my largest training month so far this year including most miles ridden, most hours on the bike, TSS and Longest Ride of the year. Most of this was due to a long month, low number of races and some good riding near the end of the month including a couple of long group rides during the month.

Total hours riding: 53:10:10
Total miles ridden: 1064.32
Total TSS: 3305
Longest Ride: 72.96 miles

Total weight lost: 0 pounds (Leveled off over the last month due to "A" races the last week of May and the 2nd week of June).

Power Numbers:

1 minute power: 540 watts
5 minute power: 431 watts
20 minute power: 385 watts
1 hour power: Unknown, but likely around 330 - 340 watts during the State TTT Championships

Races:

State Championship Team Time Trial: 1st place, mens CAT 3....State Champions again :)

Next race up: The Individual State Championship ITT (June 13th)

Pumpkin Ridge Redux...

2010-05-29T15:51:00.000-07:00

During today's group ride, we made a trip up Pumpkin Ridge...as I've written about many times being my "Baseline Climb".

Today I had many carrots to chase...Mitch being one of them (probably the best climber on the team)...the others were club members that made it to the climb before we did since we took a longer route to get to the climb.

Since I was on my new bike I wanted to give it a good workout today...even though it was wet and got dirty (ARRRGGGHHHH!!!!).

The trip to the climb was actually pretty hard. We were holding a good pace averaging 21.5 mph on some fairly flat roads, but we had many sections where we were rolling along at 24+ mph....so I wasn't exactly fresh going into the climb, though my legs felt pretty good.

Once we started the climb Mitch and I immediately dropped the other two in our group and hammered the climb. The first 2/3 of the climb I felt like I was holding Mitch's wheel well and we were rotating up the hill trying to get a little draft along the way, but I started to fade a little about 15 minutes into the climb as he put a small gap on me.

Looking back he saw I was off his wheel so he slowed until I caught back up to him and kept pushing me all the way up the climb. I'm doubting he was hurting much considering he's 155 pounds and I'm 190, but it was good to be there with him.

The whole way up the climb we were flying by other club members on the road...and getting some angry honks by passing cars (such is life when your riding a bicycle on the road).

At the top I pushed it to the end and set a new Personal Record for time up the climb. We climbed it in 22:10 (21 second faster than I've ever climbed it before) with an average wattage of 384 watts for the entire climb.

I must say the new frame fits very well and I'm glad I decided to get a new custom frame that would fit my body much better with no compromises when it comes to fit. It's definitely stiff...stiffer than my old Velo Vie, but some 25c tires and a few less PSI in the tires will take care of the ride. However, the bottom bracket area has to be the stiffest I've ever ridden on a bike. Also having more room on the front of the bike makes climbing more comfortable because I can use more positions than I could before.

Once side benefit of the new frame...I can ride with no hands if I need to and not have the bike feel really squirrelly. I've not been able to do this for quite some time.

Anyway...A great ride today (66.72 miles and just under 3.5 hours) with some great teammates and a new PR...which means I just have another number to chase after :)

My new race bike

2010-05-26T20:33:00.000-07:00

My new frame finally came in this past weekend, but with the TTT State Championships, work and continuing to prepare for the State ITT championships in 3 weeks I didn't have a ton of time to build it up....so I spent the last couple days doing a little bit here and there.

Tonight I finally finished the build and took it out for a few short trips around the block to get it fit properly and make a few adjustments here and there.

The frame is from Tsunami who is located in Phoenix Arizona (not to be confused with the Tsunami bikes that Chucks bikes used to sell before the went out of business). Tsunami bikes make custom frames out of (I believe) 7005 series aluminum then heat treat the frames after construction.

The have some stock frame sizes but specialize in custom geometry...which is the way I went because I'm very hard to fit on a bike with short legs, short femurs and a long torso.

The Geometry for the bike:

Top Tube: 57 cm
Seat Tube: 50 cm
Seat Tube Angle: 74 degrees
Head Tube: 11.2 cm (Total stack height 14 cm)
Head Tube Angle: 73.5 degrees

Frame weight was 2 pounds 13 oz with the Chris King headset installed (so take 2 oz away for the headset). Total bike weight with power tap and bottle cages comes in at 18 pounds 6 ounces. It's a bit heavier than my old Velo Vie, but fits better overall with less compromises when it comes to fit.

I'll be looking forward to taking it out over the next couple of days if the weather holds...and really put it through it's paces on Saturday at the group ride if the weather is nice.

Internal rear brake cable routing...Pretty slick and easier that I would have thought.

A close up of the rear internal brake cable routing

A picture of the head tube junction and welds on the frame.

When I have time I'll take some better pictures outside with better lighting as it looks much better than it does in with the inside shots.

Oregon TTT State Championships

2010-05-23T20:28:00.000-07:00

I, along with 250 or so other racers were watching the weather all week in hopes of seeing sun, or at least dry conditions for the Oregon State TTT championships. Leading up to the race things seemed to be looking good for today. As of Saturday night they had a 10% chance of showers during the day...but mostly cloudy conditions.

Well....so much for the weatherman being right :(

The women and age categories were greeted to a downpour at the start of their race early in the morning. Driving down to Tangent, OR I passed through shower after shower arriving to roads that were a little wet but drying out fairly quickly.

Before I started warming up things looked really good. The roads were dry and there didn't appear to be any big rain clouds heading our way...I guess it's a good thing I'm not a weatherman since 10 minutes before I jumped on my trainer it started to rain buckets. It continued raining through my warm up, but started to taper off near the end. Looking at the rain area it appeared to have only hit the front 1/4 or so of the course and now that it passed may allow for good racing conditions on most of the course.

Lining up for the start of the race was a little, shall I say, exciting. One of my teammates waited until the last minute to show up....literally. With 1:15 to go before starting he finally rolled up ready to race.

Once we started, we all got clipped in and were off...or at least so we thought. The guy that was late didn't get clipped in and he was the last guy in the rotation, so nobody thought to look back for him. Well...we were a good 1/4 mile down the road before he was clipped in and rolling...so he sprinted to catch up to us latching on just before the first turn.

From there we headed up the only small climb on the course (I'm talking small...30 feet of climbing maybe) and were off. No teams passed us while in the starting box and we were the first CAT 3 team out so the closest team to us had a 3 minute head start and they were one of our CAT 4/5 teams. So we didn't have anybody to chase for a while. Regardless we settled into some really good pulls and a nice pace.

Coming around the 3rd main corner on the course the first "Shower" of the day hit us. It was a complete downpour including high winds and pea sized hail. Needless to say when you are moving at 25 mph - 26 mph and the wind is blowing pea sized hail and big rain drops into your face at 15 mph or so...it hurts. I found if I looked down a little most of the hail would hit my helmet and not my face which helped but at the same time put more wheel spray in my face from the riders in front of me.

2 miles or so of this and we had worked our way out of it and onto some semi-dry roads. We were able to ramp up the pace and get in some great work during this section.

Coming into the second lap midway down the back stretch we ran into the "Shower" again...more wind, rain and hail to deal with...Ugghh.

Continuing on with the race we worked our way out of the "Shower" and kept on our way.

The wind was constantly changing direction which made setting up a consistent echelon difficult. We ended up having the lead rider take the center of the lane which allowed the following riders to pick a side that shielded them best from the wind, which worked well for the rest of the race.

As we entered our 3rd lap we ran into some of the Senior Mens teams coming up on one just after they started. Already having completed two laps we gave them a bit of room to get moving figuring they would soon be going faster than us...however, that wasn't the case so we passed them. Shortly thereafter a team goes by us, which we think is the team we just passed...however, later we figure out it was a different team all together from the Senior Mens class. That confused us there for a while.

During this confusion we lost one of our teammates who blew up...and when I say "Blew Up" I mean "Blew Chunks" as he had some digestion issues or something. All I knew during the race is we were nearing turn #2 and I look back and he's nowhere to be seen...se we were down to three racers (which is what we needed to finish) and were hoping for no mechanicals.

With three racers you don't get as much rest between pulls, which tires you out quicker, but we made the best of the situation given we were all pretty equally matched when it came to our TT abilities.

Coming into the final lap we were greeted with a stiff headwind on the way down the back stretch and could only muster up speeds in the 23 mph - 24 mph range. I was very thankful to see turn #2 because that meant a minute or two with a cross wind then a good tail wind to the finish. As we made it through turn #3 we were able to pick the pace up into the 33 mph - 34 mph range all the way home.

In the end, we crossed the line with a time of 1:00:21 over a 27.3 mile course in horrendous conditions. This was good enough for 1st place in the CAT 3 mens field and should have us in the top 5 or 6 fastest times on the day. So I have been part of 3 TTT State Championships in the past three years and our CAT 3 team has brought home the title the past three years (I have been a part of the past two).

So goal #1 on the season has been achieved :)

April Numbers

2010-05-09T19:29:00.000-07:00

This month didn't have as much riding or intensity as March. Much of this was due to a lot of rain and riding my trainer a lot. My group rides were less on Saturdays which contributed to less long rides.

Total hours riding: 47:12:16
Total miles ridden: 915.20
Total TSS: 2627
Longest Ride: 61.04 miles

Total weight lost: 5.5 pounds (down to 187 pounds...35 pounds lost since January 1st).

1 minute power: 532 watts
5 minute power: 402 watts
20 minute power: 371 watts
1 hour power: 291 watts

Races:

Estacada #1: 2nd place in Masters 40+ division

Next race up: The State Championship TTT

Pumpkin Ridge...again

2010-05-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

Today I met up with one of my teammates for some threshold work up Pumpkin Ridge...my favorite 20 minute threshold climb.

Since the State Championship TTT is only 2.5 weeks away I'm spending all my riding time on my TT bike to get more power/comfort in the TT position. I've also been having some issues with my position and power on my TT bike which can be seen by my lack of results in the Estacada Time Trials.

I think a big part of the problem was my position on my TT bike. I've been on a quest to get lower on the bike and switched my position before the season started moving from a 11cm -6 degree stem to a 9cm -10 degree stem and reduced the spacers under the stem. I think this may have reduced my hip angle enough to take away a fair amount of power. So I put the 11cm stem back on and 1cm of spacer under the stem which effectively raised my bar 2cm's and lengthened my reach by 2cm.

Today on my first climb up Pumpkin Ridge I was able to average 354 watts for the first 20 minutes of the climb making sure to not get out of my aero bars for a true test of my TT position power. That's only about 20 watts off of my road bike position....which is a good balance between power and aerodynamics. In the Estacada TT's I was only able to average around 320 watts, so by raising my stem 2cm and lengthening it by 2cm I've picked up 30 watts of power. It's pretty amazing which such a small change can do.

On another bright side I put in my best time ever up Pumpkin Ridge on my TT bike making it up the hill in 23 minutes 01 seconds...which is 2.5 minutes better than I've ever done on my TT bike and only 30 seconds off of my best time on my road bike.

This has given me confidence back heading into the TTT, especially considering I was able to do this today on partially dead legs (several hard workouts over the last two days). Hopefully by riding my TT bike exclusively over the next several weeks I'll adapt a little better to the position and get another 10 watts or so before the TTT. We have a good team put together and should be able to mount a good defense of our State Championship for last year and the last thing I want to do is let down my teammates.

This weekend we have our first official TTT practice, which should be fun...though my legs won't be their best...but they need the hard work over the next two weeks before tapering for the big race.

Estacada #2...

2010-05-02T20:42:00.000-07:00

Going into Estacada #2 I had good hopes of turning in a good time. I wasn't recovering from the flu, my legs felt OK (not great but OK), the weather was supposed to be nice and basically everything was set to have a good day on the bike.

The first issue was the weather. A week before the race they were saying 70 degree temps. Mid week 65 degree temps. The day before 60 degree temps. The day of....55 degree temps with some early morning rain that left the roads a little wet in parts, even though it was supposed to be dry.

I arrived to the staging area on time, got set up and had an OK warm up before the race.

Then it was time to head to the start line. Overall, I still felt good.

Out of the starting gate, everything is going well. My HR is up in the 160 bpm range for the first few minutes and I settle into a nice rhythm. From all I can tell my speeds are up from the first race, but it's hard to tell overall.

I get to the only steep climb on the course and things are still going well, until I go to get back into my big ring. My front chain falls off to the pedal side of the crank, so I keep pedaling and try and pull the chain back on, this time dropping it to the inside of my small ring onto the bottom bracket. Two more rounds of this and it finally hooks onto a ring and I can get under way again. Some lost time, but not more than 10-15 seconds or so.

Under way again and things are normal again.

For the first half of the course I haven't passed anybody so it's been a lonely ITT so far. Heading into the turnaround I see a few people, one of which is a rider from my club who is just getting into racing. He had a 4 minute lead on me at the start but knew I would catch him from the first races times. About 5 minutes after the turnaround, I pass him...the first of the day.

Then it's solo again.

It's at this point that I think I went into la-la land and didn't pay attention to what I was doing. Over the next 10 minutes my heart rate hovered between 145-150 bpm, which is basically a high tempo range, not a threshold pace for me. I'm pushing a big gear and not really thinking about it and just keep plodding along seeing another rider coming up a few miles before the finish....passing him with about 3 miles to go before the finish.

Coming into the last mile I finally get my HR above 150 bpm again and into the upper 150's on the final climb of the race.

I finished with a time of 47:57, which was slower than the first race and about 1.5 minutes slower than I should be able to do on this course. I'm not really sure what happened, but I have several thoughts.

1. My position on my bike isn't optimal. I changed things up this year going to a more comfortable seat and a shorter, but lower stem than last year. However the seat can't be moved as far forward as my other seat and I'm more compact than last year. So I think I'm not getting full power compared to last year.

2. I have done enough high intensity work to this point. My 20 minute threshold is good, still in the 380 watt range on my road bike, but that power isn't translating to my TT bike and solo efforts. I haven't been able to do a lot of high intensity group rides like I did last year, which is having a mental effect on my pushing through the pain and keeping my HR in the higher end of the spectrum.

With the TTT only three weeks away, I need to get things sorted out.

The good is that I ride much harder and don't have a problem pushing it when I'm around other people...so in the TTT I should be just fine pushing it. There is also the fact that I'm still able to finish 2nd in my category and 9th fastest time on the day just doing a high tempo ride in an ITT so my fitness is very good right now.

The bad...I just have to get over the mental thing this year and give it top level efforts. I think practicing with my teammates over the next two weeks will help a lot with this.

Overall....not a bad result, but I have a bit of a hollow feeling after this race knowing that I can go a lot faster....I just didn't :(

Estacada #1

2010-04-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

Today was the first of two Time Trials that take place just outside of Estacada, OR. The TT a 20 mile out and back race that has a little over 500 feet of climbing on the way out, and about the same amount of descending on the way back. Only one section is a steep climb where you have to drop out of your big ring and get out of your aero bars.

I've ridden this course seven or so times now so I know the course well and the pacing needed for the race. The big issue is always the weather. One race a year or two back had temps in the low 30's, wind, rain, snow, hail and for brief period of time sun....though most years its the wind that makes a difference. Parts of the course follow a canyon wall which causes the wind to swirl so you might enter a section with a tail wind and leave it with a head wind. Also up on the mountain side the wind likes to change direction mid day...when many riders are out on the course.

Today was one of those days. On the way out we had a headwind, not a strong wind, but enough to make a difference. On the way back we had a good tail wind for the first 6 miles, but then it turned into a head wind for the final 4 miles or so, which in a TT are the hardest without the wind.

Going into today I didn't know what to expect performance wise. Last week I would have had a good idea, but I caught a flu bug last Thursday and went home early on Friday with a fever of 101 degrees. I was in and out of a fever all weekend and had stomach issues through Monday.

Basically, I felt like crap all week long. I did a 1 hour easy ride on Monday just to get on the bike, did some really, really bad intervals on Tuesday, went out for a 2 hour ride on Wednesday and could barely hold 200 watts for an extended period of time, did intervals again (with a bit more success) on Thursday and had easy rides on Friday and Saturday.

My legs were sore this morning, which is never a good sign, but didn't feel too bad really. After warming up (extending it to an hour this time) I still didn't feel too bad. My legs may not have had as much punch as usual but their endurance seemed to be good.

Once underway I was able to get into a steady rhythm and keep my HR in the high 150's. The course was in fairly good condition but I could see more broken glass on the side of the road....which caused a flat for a teammate of mine....so I stayed to the road side of the while line just to avoid issues with glass.

At the turn around point, felt pretty good catching one of the riders that started in front of me at around mile 8.5. Shortly after the turn around point I passed another rider, then caught one more for good measure before crossing the finish line.

On the day I had an official time of 47:48 which isn't bad all things considered and finished 2nd in the 40+ masters division. That is about 40 seconds slower than my fastest time on this course, which I'll get a second shot at in two weeks when I race there again...hopefully feeling much better. I'd like to chop a good minute off of that time and get under 47 minutes for the first time.

Overall....a beautiful day to race on a beautiful course :D

Numbers for March....

2010-03-31T19:35:00.000-07:00

Total hours riding: 50:23:35 (my first 50 hour month of the year)
Total miles riden: 1001.89 (my first 1000 mile of the month)
Total TSS: 2952
Longest Ride: 64.14 miles (actually during the Piece of Cake)

Total weight lost: 6.2 pounds

1 min power: 577 watts
5 min power: 406 watts
20 min power: 369 watts
1 hour power: 334 watts (a new hour record for me)

My 20 minute power may have been higher but I don't have a way to measure power on my TT bike.

6 Races this month...3 road and 3 TT

TT's....all at "As the Raven Flies" (won the overall series title for 40+ masters division)

Race #1...2nd place
Race #2...1st place
Race #3...3rd place

RR's (all 40+ Masters 1/2/3):

Banana Belt #2...19th
Banana Belt #3...10th
Piece of Cake......2nd

Piece of Cake

2010-03-28T19:24:00.001-07:00

Today was the "Piece of Cake" road race...one that I've wanted to do for a while, but something has always got in the way. The race had a fairly flat profile and the only hills were basically rollers on the backside of the course. This is my type of race :)

Overall before the race started I felt pretty good, though until I hit the road, I never know how my legs are going to respond. I actually went a little harder than I wanted to yesterday...so I was unsure how my legs would do. I set up my bike on my trainer and got in a 35 minute warm up and could tell my legs felt OK but I didn't push them, so I was still waiting to see how they would respond.

The weather was not the best for racing, with temps in the mid 50's wind blowing a stead 10-15 mph with gusts to 20 mph and showers all day long.

The wind was what had me excited. Most people hate wind, but I like it because it lead to break aways and you just have to be up front to get in them instead of getting gapped in a field that doesn't want to respond.

So right from the start I was looking for a break away. One guy kept attacking and I knew he was looking to go, so I kept jumping on his wheel. When we made the first turn into the crosswind he went again, I jumped on his wheel and we immediately opened up a gap.

The two of us worked together for the next 3 laps building a lead of 1:35 over a chase group at one point, but going into the final lap my legs gave up and I just couldn't pull any more, nor could I hold his wheel. So off he went and I eased up and waited for the chase pack to catch up knowing there was a group of 4 behind me.

Once the chase pack caught up to me, I jumped in their rotation and we worked together.

With about 5 miles to go the whole race was stopped due to a bad crash in the womens CAT 4 field. Looks like somebody broke their collar bone and had to be taken off in an ambulance. Other than that it sounds like she is OK.

Thankfully, they were keeping time gaps of the various groups so we were not merged with the rest of the peloton which at this point was 6-7 minutes behind us.

Once underway again, I felt a little better but the time off let the legs seize up a little. After a mile or two they started to loosen up again and we were rotating making sure nobody else caught up to us.

Coming into the final turn most of the other guys started playing sprinter games and wouldn't pull any longer, however one guy came around me so I jumped on his wheel. We made the final turn and had about 1K to go to the finish.

About half way to the finish (250 - 300 meters to go) I made a hard jump and opened up an immediate 5 meter or so gap on the other 4 guys and kept that gap or increased it to the finish line finishing 2nd on the day...so even though I couldn't keep 2nd in the break away, I was still able to finish there thanks to my sprint.

Overall on the day I set new power numbers for all times beyond 40 minutes:

40 minutes: 347 watts
60 minutes: 334 watts
90 minutes: 323 watts
120 minutes: 309 watts

In the end, it was a good day, a great workout and a hard day in the saddle. My legs are sore, my back is sore from spending so much time with my elbows on my handlebars and I'm worn out....But I'm happy with the end result....My best Road Race result in the upper categories so far :)

Photo: Pat Malach

As the Raven Flies #3...

2010-03-20T15:32:00.000-07:00

This week was the last race of the series and it couldn't have ended with better springtime weather....65-70 degrees for highs, blue skies and fairly low wind. I'm excited about this being a continuing series, of which the promoter was talking about it being after the awards ceremony. A 3 race TT series near Portland is a good thing.

The race it's self went fairly well. My legs were not feeling bad, but were a little tired from intervals this past week and a harder than normal ride yesterday. After warming up they were feeling better, but I could tell they were still missing that "Spark" you have when you are ready for an "A" race.

This being my 3rd time on the course I've started to figure it out a little better which resulted in my best time so far by 10 seconds, even with less than fresh legs.

My time on the day was 28:43 which was good enough for 3rd place on the day in the 40+ group...though I only missed 2nd place by approx. 1.6 seconds, so just a bit more effort here or there and I would have moved up a spot today. I did however miss out on 1st by about 24 seconds so I'm not stressing about that any.

With that said...I did win the series in the 40+ category and am happy with my overall results from the race. I've improved during the series, feel like my power is still improving and my weight is still dropping and overall I'm getting faster on the bike....as should happen this time of the season. I still have approximately 2 months until I need to peak for the Team Time Trial so I'm on a good pace to do so.

On another bright side...I didn't crash this week...though I did take the turnaround corner very tentatively, which may have cost me that 1.6 seconds I needed. Ahhh, such is the life when it comes to Time Trials...every second matters, which is why I like them so much :D

Banana Belt #3

2010-03-14T20:28:00.000-07:00

Well, against my better judgement...not that I had any to begin with...I decided to head to Hagg Lake and race in the 3rd and final Banana Belt race of the season. This week the course was going clockwise which suites my abilities a little better then counter-clockwise because most of the climbs are more gradual...though there are still two short steep climbs, which I have decided are my nemesis at this stage of the season.

I wasn't sure how I would feel today with a few bruises and road rash from my minor wipe out at yesterdays ITT...but after riding around for 30 minutes I felt fine and didn't feel any lingering effects while on the bike...so off to racing.

The race started out as usual, mostly a steady pace with people getting warm....then BAM....Zimbleman takes off about 5-10 minutes into the race. I was up front and chased after him, thus pulling the rest of the field with me. Looking back he decided not to push it any further and went back into the pack.

Not much longer after that 4 riders got off the front...Not sure when or how, but I missed that one completely. I think everybody thought it was Zimbleman with a few in tow...but it turns out it was pretty much the entire Echelon Gran Fondo/Z-Team's team. How they all got off the front with no response from the rest of the field is beyond me...but major "KUDOS" for them being able to pull it off.

With them gone, the rest of the field seemed to give up the chase...which drives me nuts. If they would just organize, get into a rotating paceline we could chase these guys down, but everybody seems like they would rather just sit in the pack and sprint for 4th, 5th, 6th or what ever is left at the end.

Not wanting to give up I spent a lot of time up front trying to pull the group back, but when there are only 4 riders or so willing to do any work it becomes pointless...regardless, I gave it my best effort while on the course.

The pace of the race was fast today...the first hour we averaged over 24 mph, which is pretty fast for such a hilly course. For the race today I averaged 278 watts with "Normalized Power" being 343 watts (for just over 1 hour and 46 minutes)...so it wasn't an easy day in the saddle.

At the beginning of the 4th lap...two guys took a flyer from the back of the pack. Turns out it was Zimbleman who had been sitting back relaxing for most of the race (and may thought he was gone) and somebody else...so that meant 6 riders up the road.

At this point I just wanted to stay with the pack and see if I could stay in it for the pack sprint.

Heading into the last steep hill....Lee Hill....I did the pack slide...and then some. By the time I crested the top I was a good 100 meters behind the pack and thought the race was over for me. But never wanting to give up I kept pushing on the downhill section before the last hill, picking up a few others who were dropped on Lee Hill and we were able to latch onto the back of the pack mid way up the last hill.

I immediately went around the pack to the front for the final downhill stretch trying to get in position for the final sprint.

Over the bridge and up the slight hill I was sitting 3rd or 4th when the sprint started. I didn't gain any ground, but didn't lose any positions at the end of the race. The last effort up Lee Hill and the chase back to the group killed my legs for the sprint...but I was able to hang on for 10th overall on the day.

In the end, I had a 19th last week and a 10th this week...which isn't too bad considering I wasn't planning on racing any of these races and I'm still way too fat to climb, especially with the little guys.

Next week, the last "As the Raven Flies" ITT for the year...then a two week break before the "Piece of Cake" road race which was to be my first road race of the season :)

Should be fun :D

As the Raven Flies #2...

2010-03-13T16:51:00.000-08:00

Today was the 2nd race in the "As the Raven Flies" series...though the weather was worse than last week having wet roads and colder temps.

I arrived at the race a little later than I wanted and was a bit rushed to get things set up and start my warm up, so I had 5 minutes less on my warm up time than usual. Though I still got in all of my harder efforts, so not to big of a deal.

This week, knowing the course better I went with an 11x25 rear cassette which having the 11 tooth was very beneficial on a lot of the course. I was able to hit higher speeds on the steep downhills and carry a lower cadence though other parts. I was actually able to establish a bit better rhythm than last week and felt good on the way out. Next week I'll be going with an 11x23 rear cassette since I feel jumping to the 25 tooth rear might have made me not work hard enough on the hill sections.

At the turn around point is where it went a bit downhill. The roads were still a little wet and I think there was a bit of dirt around the cones on the road and when I went to turn into the corner, my front wheel washed out and down I went. It wasn't too bad since I was only going around 8mph - 10mph....but it still hurt. I have some road rash and a bruise on my left hip and forearm and some road rash down around my knee on my upper and lower leg.

After rushing to get up I could feel the pain in my forearm and it made it hard to sit in the aero bars for a little while. The adrenaline from the crash also made it hard to get going again and very hard to get a rhythm going for the next 3-4 minutes.

After I came out of the rollers from the turnaround I started to feel better and was able to get things rolling again hitting the finish line at 29:16...which was 23 seconds slower than last week. If not for the crash I think I would have finished a good 10-15 seconds faster than last week....but such is life, I still won the 40+ masters division getting my first win on the year :) I also had the 4th fastest time on the day, so it wasn't all bad.

One more race to do out there next week to finish off the series.

I'm currently debating whether to race the 3rd Banana Belt tomorrow or just go out for a long ride. That will mostly depend on how my body feels after I wake up and how sore I am.

Banana Belt #2....

2010-03-07T19:54:00.001-08:00

Given the weather and the fact I will be missing my teams group rides for the next three weeks, I decided to start my road race season early and raced the Banana Belt #2 race in the Masters 40+ 1/2/3's.

My original plan was to have my first road race of the season be the "Piece of Cake" since it's a flat 54 mile race instead of the very hilly Banana Belt races....especially considering how poorly I've been climbing early in the season.

I really wasn't sure what to expect speed wise considering the Masters 40+ races many times can be the 2nd fastest race of the day behind the P/1/2 races. Also this race had a nice 6% - 7% climb that went up about 200 feet or so and I knew it would be hit hard every lap....and anything over about 5% I start to struggle on...so the "Pack Slide" was my friend today.

The early part of the race was spent by everybody watching David Zimbleman since he's a freak of nature on the bike (last years 55-59 world TT champ). Every time he jumped, so did the pack...so the early part of the race was faster than the last part. Basically the field was able to keep him in check until the 3rd time up the major climb where he counter attacked just after cresting the top....opened a gap and nobody wanted to chace....so it became a race for 2nd at that point since Zimbleman opened up a 1+ minute gap within about a 1/3 of a lap and was gone.

From that point it was just a matter of staying with the pack and hoping to position myself for a good sprint at the end if my legs had anything in them.

The last lap was actually fairly slow compared to the others (aside from two hard climbs to try and break up the pack) due to the fact that the "Fast Guy" was off the front and others were saving themselves for position.

In the end with 1k to go...the attacks started to happen and I was able to stay with them getting myself in good position for the final sprint...sitting around 3rd or 4th with 200 meters to go. However, this was an uphill finish that seemed to get steeper the farther the climb went. The first 100 meters or so I held position well....then the legs went and went fast. I tried to stand up to get some extra power but that wasn't a option as my legs refused to work at that point...so back into the saddle I went pushing as hard as I could watching guys fly past me to the finish line.

In the end I was 19th place, which considering this course didn't suit my abilities at all and the fact I raced a TT yesterday.....I'll take it :)

Hopefully the weather will hold out next week so I can do the double again...but with the race going the other direction which suites my abilities a little better with a long "Downhill" run to the finish and a fast sprint finish.

Tomorrow is an off day for me so my legs get some rest :)

As the Raven Flies ITT....

2010-03-06T18:59:00.001-08:00

Today was the "As the Raven Flies" ITT...It's a new TT series near Portland, so another chance to break out the TT bike and have some fun.

I've had two weeks of hard riding and upped my interval sessions by 30 minutes on Tuesday and Thursday to include and extra 20 minute threshold effort...so my legs were a little worn out yesterday and a bit sore as well. With that in mind I didn't know what kind of performance I could put in today, especially since I hadn't seen this course before.

Looking at the profile of the TT it didn't look all that bad. The steepest grade looked to be about 2% with a 75 foot or so climb at the beginning and a slow descent to the turn around point, then an uphill climb to the finish and back over the initial climb.

Well....the profile was very deceiving. The initial climb was closer to 150-200 feet and was closer to 6% - 8%....Then there was only one short flat section and the rest of the course was fairly steep rollers.

Basically it was hard to establish a rhythm with all the course changes and turns...which in many ways is nice because it adds some diversity to the course.

Given my poor performance at Jack Frost I wanted to get a bit more warm up, so I gave myself 45 minutes to warm up and got back into my rhythm from last year. My legs actually felt fairly good overall especially considering how hard the past two weeks have been on my legs, and the fact I'm still running a fairly high caloric deficit to lose weight....down to 198 pounds now....only 18 to go :)

The start of the race was on a nice flat road, but you couldn't see the first climb until you turned the corner....it was here where the "Oh Crap" though ran through my mind. I topped the climb in my 52x23 at around 12.5 mph...then promptly hit 43 mph on the back side of the climb.

On the way out I passed a lot of people that were in front of me...A couple from my category, the womens category and some of the CAT 4/5 racers...but on the way back there were not many to catch, which means few if any carrots to chase and it becomes a mental game.

Knowing the final climb was coming, I backed off just a little heading into it and thankfully it wasn't as steep from this side so the climb was a little faster.

Overall....I had a time of 28:52 and took 2nd in the Masters 40+ category and had the 8th fastest time on the day. It was a better showing than at Jack frost when comparing my times to others that I raced against then and I was much closer to them (or put more distance on them) than at Jack Frost on a harder course that has much, much more climbing....so I feel a lot better about the progression of my fitness to this point.

In the end, a beautiful day (temps in the low 60's), a fun though unexpected course and some good racing.

I'm currently planning on racing at the Banana Belt #2 road race tomorrow in the Masters 40+ race, but I'm keeping an eye on the weather. I wasn't planning on doing a road race for another 3 weeks...so this isn't a planned race and will be weather dependent. As it is, I'm still likely too fat to hang on to the pack considering the reverse direction this week and a nice steep climb that we will have to go up 4 times...but if I race, I'll see what kind of road race shape I'm currently in.

Photos courtesy of: Matthew Haughey

Numbers for February....

2010-02-28T14:03:00.000-08:00

Here are my numbers for the month of February...which given the shorter month are still showing some progression.

Total hours ridding: 48 hours 57 minutes
Total miles ridden: 935.86 miles
TSS total for Feb: 3028 (highest since July 09)
Longest ride: 66.89 miles

Power numbers:

1 min: 601 watts
5 min: 425 watts
20 min: 378 watts
1 hour: 304 watts

Weight lost: 8 pounds

Jack Frost TT = Fail (kind of)

2010-02-21T20:06:00.000-08:00

Well, I was hoping for a much better day on the bike today....but fell well short of my goal of 31 minutes at the Jack Frost TT. There are several likely contributing factors, but most of the problem was I'm still fat and need to lose weight.

The morning started well enough. I woke up early, got ready, had the car warmed up (a bit of frost on the car this morning) and made it to the parking area about half an hour earlier than originally planned.

When I got there, I went to sync my watch with the start time, but they had yet to start the clock. So I searched out the race officials and asked which one of their watches was the clock going to be started by....one guy spoke up and said it was his, so I asked him what time he had and I was about a minute faster than his.....So that's what I went by when planning my warm up.

Bike hooked up in the trainer, everything on and ready to warm up. I wanted to get in a good 30 minute warm up today, just enough to get a good sweat going and get in some good threshold efforts before heading to the start line. 10 minutes before my start time, I jump off, put my trainer up, hand the keys to my wife and head to the start line. I pull up and it's about 10:23 (my start time was 10:30) so all was good.....then I look at the start clock and it says 00:06....which means they have 10:06???? What the???? Their clock was a good 15+ minutes slow.

So much for my warm up. I tried to keep things going by taking trips up and down the road to stay warm, which is a bit hard when it's 45 degrees out and you planned to be going full bore just a few minutes after getting off your trainer which warms you up quickly. So I slowly got colder and colder.

Finally, it was time to get started and overall my legs felt pretty good. There was a head/cross wind all the way out....not a big wind (3-6 mph), but just enough to let you know it was there. Having an early start time (I had to ask for an early time since I was heading to a memorial service just after the race) didn't give me many carrots to chase. I caught most of who was in front of me in the first couple of miles and had nobody in front of me after the turnaround until about 3/4 of a mile from the finish.

Overall....I finished with an unofficial time of around 32:45 (+/- a few seconds) which is well short of what I wanted. I don't know where this will place me since the results haven't been posted yet, but I'm guessing it's not great.

Basically, I still need to lose 20 more pounds and keep working on my threshold workouts. Starting in April I'll be doing more 2x20's for the TTT in May which will give me a bit more endurance, but I think I need to work a bit on my speed before then, maybe a few more 5 minute VO2 max intervals between now and then.

Overall.....not a bad day considering the weather was beautiful, but I failed to meet my own expectations knowing I can go much faster than I did.

Oh well....Two more weeks until the next TT which will be a bit shorter, but will have a bit more elevation change than Jack Frost did.

Edit: The results have finally been posted and it appears my effort was only a "Moderate" fail. I took 3rd out of 63 racers in the 40-49 catagory and 25th overall on the day (which my overall was better than last year by a few places).

Losing weight...

2010-02-10T20:30:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately this past year I let things slip when it came to weight. I kept my fitness level fairly high during the off season but lots of Skittles, Carmel (store bought and home made), strawberry whoppers and just general over eating and not watching my caloric intake led to my weight going north of 220 pounds.

With the race season just around the corner I started my weight loss back on January 4th weighing in around 220 pounds or so. As of this morning I weighed in at 203.4 pounds....so 5 weeks and 17 pounds lost so far.

Below is the graph showing the weight loss progression:

At my current rate of weight loss I should be back down to....what I consider race weight....in 4 weeks and if I can continue the weight loss I'll be down to 180 pounds in around 7 weeks.

To this point I haven't seen a loss in power and actually turned my best "Solo" time up Pumpkin Ridge ever yesterday with a time of 23:28. Last season I had to drop to my small ring in a few places for the best times...however now I'm able to big ring the climb the whole way with just a few instances of cross chaining (i.e. 53x23 or 53x26). The fact that I'm heavier than I was then, but turing in faster times tells me my power is better than last year especially at this time of the year.

I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of time I can turn in next weekend at the Jack Frost Time Trial. I'll be happy with anything under 31 minutes (assuming good conditions) since they extended it to 14 miles this year, but would like something closer to 30 minutes flat.

20 minute power test...

2010-02-02T16:26:00.001-08:00

Since it's February and it was a beautiful day (upper 50's) in the Pacific Northwest it was time to get out and ride. I'm still suffering a little from a cold, but I wanted to get a good baseline for my 20 minute threshold power to see if I'm where I wanted to be right now or not.

So....I headed out to my basic test climb....Pumpkin Ridge to give it a good effort. Overall, I felt pretty good, but feel I could have squeezed out a few more watts overall especially if I had somebody there to push me.

End result: 378 watts for 20 minutes....375 watts for 24:28 that it took me to climb the hill.

My average HR was 160 which is right where it should be for an effort like this, but again, if I had somebody to push me it would have been closer to 164.

Coming into this year I wanted to be putting out around 380 watts for 20 minutes so this puts me right on schedule for where I want to be power wise. Now only another 22 watts or so to go before I get to the 400 watt level.

On a side note, I've also lost another pound....down to 207.6 now and another 12-17+ pounds to go. My goal is to settle in around 195 pounds, but may try and see if I can get to 180 pounds just to see if I can do it.

Two seasons ago I was down to 187.5 for a couple of weeks and I was climbing very well at that time. Currently I'm putting out a lot more power than I did two years ago so if I can get my weight down....it should be a good year on the bike :)

January Numbers....

2010-01-30T17:15:00.001-08:00

January gave me a nice start for the new year on the bike. I spent about half on the trainer and half on the road...which is pretty good for January in Oregon.

Overall my numbers look like this:

52 hours on the bike (trainer and road time)
1010 miles ridden (trainer and road time)
72.49 miles was my longest ride of the month (on my single speed)
3 hours 49 minutes was the most time I spent on my bike during one ride.
39,982 KJ burned
12 pounds lost

Not a bad start to the new year :D

I hate colds....

2010-01-28T18:56:00.000-08:00

I hate colds, even when they are mild. Somehow I came down with a mild cold and have been battling it for the past week or so. Mostly just a few minor sore throats, but today I started to get a little stuffy. I'm still able to breath fairly well...but it's there.

Aside from feeling worse than normal they get in the way of training since energy is pulled away from your exercise routine to battle the virus, which means performance suffers.

This past week was a recovery week for me since I had 5 hard weeks in a row...but the cold has made it harder to recover so I'm not sure how much I was able to actually recover. I guess we will see next week when I get back to intervals again.

The one benefit of being ill is it helps with weight loss....a side benefit I guess. As of today I'm down to 208 pounds, which puts me down 12 pounds or so for the month of January. Only another 13-15 pounds to go before I'm happy with my weight again for the season.

This week has actually been quite nice in the Northwest since the rain has stayed away. This has allowed me to get outside and ride all week, which has been nice. I took my TT bike out today for the first time this year and made a few adjustments to the seat height (new shoes and cleats) and overall it feels pretty good. I'd really like to switch to shorter cranks....from 172.5 to 170's....but with no job right now, it makes it a little hard to get new parts. Of course, I'd like a new carbon frame/fork for my TT bike and some more aero bars...but those will have to wait as well.

Overall though, things seem to be progressing nicely as the new season moves forward. I should finish the month of January with over 1000 miles ridden (road and trainer miles) and 50+ hours on the bike....a good start to the riding season :)

The weight is coming down quickly and my fitness feels fairly good for this point in the season. I won't really know where I'm at until the first ITT of the season....the Jack Frost ITT which has been lengthened from a 20K (12.4 miles) to 14 miles this year, which means good times should be in the sub 30 minute range if the conditions are good....My goal will be to finish below 31 minutes, which will put me at an average speed of around 27 mph.

Time will tell :)

On a side note...it looks like there will be a series of 3 semi-local ITT's this year in McMinnville. They look to be around 20K in length, so I should get in 6 TT's before the state championship TTT this year....more than in years past, so hopefully my fitness will be better this year for a faster time and better performance for the team.

Losing weight....

2010-01-16T18:14:00.000-08:00

My weight loss program is now in full effect.

As usual the first week is usually the hardest. Hunger pains tell you that it's time to eat (all the time), getting back in the habit of counting every calorie and adding up your BMR and daily caloric burn from activities...it takes a little while to adjust.

So I started keeping track of everything back on January 4th, 2010 where I was sitting at 220 pounds. Over the last 10 days or so I've dropped 8.2 pounds weighing in at 211.8 pounds on the January 14th, 2010.

My goal is to get back down to 190-195 pounds by mid march...however at the current rate of weight loss I should be there by mid February which is fine since my first ITT of the season is the 3rd week of February and word is it has been lengthened from 12.4 miles to 15 miles (though I'm not sure that's true or not).

The nice thing about weight loss is how much better you feel. I already feel lighter when climbing stairs, my clothes are starting to loosen up and my performance on the bicycle is getting better with every pound lost.

Today was a good group ride with about 30 teammates showing up on a cloudy, wet day with mild temps. For the most part it was a pretty laid back day with a lot of small group pace line work, but we had a few times where we could "open it up" a little. On the short climbs along old HWY 47 I felt much better than I did two months or so ago when we rode the same route. I had a lot more punch and was able to carry more speed up the climbs.....that's a great feeling :D

Anyway....just an update on my blog with my weight loss progression. I still have a way's to go and when I get back down to my goal/race weight I'll look at where I am and see how feasible it is to go lower since I'd love to be in the 185 pound range for most of the race season....especially if I can get my 20 minute power over 400 watts :)

Single speeds and climbing....

2010-01-11T22:32:00.000-08:00

This past Saturday our team rides goal was to work on threshold climbing which is great, because part of my workout plan includes a hard group ride on Saturdays.

The only problem is in the winter I ride a Single Speed that has an equivalent gearing of 53x19 (73 gear inches). It's the only bike I have fenders on and I like the workout I get from riding it in the winter. On any given Saturday ride I could be grinding up a climb at 40 RPM or riding in a pace line at 150+ RPM...so I get both power and high end cardio work on the bike.

However, on this ride we rode up Old Germantown Rd. which has some nice 8.5% - 9% sections, Rock Creek Rd. which wasn't too bad and then came down the west side of Logie Trail which is a fun road to come down, but has a section in the middle of it with a 14%+ grind....it's not long but it doesn't matter....it's 14%

Overall I was able to get in a good 3 hour ride and just short of 50 miles....however, the legs were still feeling it today during my interval session. The ride definitely turned out to be harder than expected. At the top of Old Germantown Rd. I was only able to hit 4.5 mph which is about 20 RPM...and the 14% section on Logie Trail I hit 4.0 mph which is about 18 RPM. I was pedaling so slowly up those sections I couldn't stand up for fear of falling over since my legs were turning over at such a slow pace. It was just a bit painful :)

However, it was a great power workout.

This ride ended up making my interval session today hard. I think I may have been a bit dehydrated since it was hard to get my HR beyond 150 RPM and my power was down a little so I'll take it a little easy over the next two days before my next interval session.

As far as my weight loss goes...I'm currently down approximately 5 pounds over the past week and a half. I'm actually a little ahead of schedule, but part of that is because I've gotten past the first few days when the hunger pains are the worst from cutting back on food intake.

With that said I've been able to maintain a -700 to -1000 calorie a day deficit. This is very attainable for me and is much easier than the -1500 a day I ran two years ago for almost 4 months :)

I do need to increase my protein intake though, so I need to incorporate a little more meat into my regular eating.....That means, more chicken :D

3 weeks into intervals....

2010-01-06T19:20:00.000-08:00

Believe it or not, I am enjoying my intervals again because I can feel the power coming back and it just feels good to push some limits again.

I started my intervals approximately 3 weeks ago and have now put 28 watts back on my 20 minute threshold intervals. This puts me very close to the point where I had stopped doing long intervals back in September/October and started doing more "Tempo" work.

My goal is to put another 40 watts of power (i.e. about 12% increase) over the next month and a half heading into the first ITT of the year the Jack Frost ITT, which is a 20k ITT held in Vancouver. If I can accomplish this...I should be around 380-400 watts for my 20 minute threshold efforts. What that will do for my ITT time...who knows, but it won't hurt :)

On a side note...I've also started my weight loss. This means watching what I eat and monitoring my caloric intake compared to my caloric expenditure. I'm currently running a deficit of around 700-1000 calories a day which should equal out to a loss of 1.4 - 2 pounds per week, which will get me back down to "Race Weight" around mid March...So I might hit one of the Banana Belt races this year and am looking at racing the "Piece of Cake" race for the first time this year...which may be my first road race of the season.

Overall....things are on schedule to be ready when I want for the race season....but lots of things can mess that up, so it's a matter of remaining disciplined and sticking to the plan.

Winter training...

2009-12-29T22:46:00.000-08:00

Well, things haven't gone quite as planned with my original training plan. To this point the weather has been nicer than normal with a lot of days where there was little or no rain, which allowed me to ride outside more. So I decided to hold off on my intervals for a while and focus more on "Tempo" paced rides with some harder work when possible during group rides on Saturdays.

However, I have slowly been building the hours per month back up on the bike. With the end of December coming to a close I should have just under 50 hours on the bike and a little over 900 miles ridden....not to bad for the month of December.

I however, did start my interval training two weeks ago with my current schedule looking like this:

Monday: 1.5 hours on the trainer....20 minute warm up, 20 minute threshold interval, 10 minute recovery/endurance pace, 20 minutes of 1x1 intervals at VO2 max or higher, 20 minutes endurance pace to finish.

Tuesday: 2 hours of high endurance or low tempo pace either on the trainer or outside on my single speed.

Wednesday: 2 hours of high endurance or low tempo pace either on my trainer or outside on my single speed.

Thursday: 1.5 hours on the trainer.....same intervals as on Monday.

Friday: 1 - 1.5 hours of recovery paced riding.

Saturday: 3 - 3.5 hours group riding. We usually get a good 30 minutes of very fast paced riding near the end of the ride, and have been working on break aways, chasing breaks and pace-line work....which has allowed some sprinting.

Sunday: off the bike.

This gives me 11 - 12 hours a week on the bike, with some good threshold and VO2 max work thrown in. I can see that my 20 minute power levels have dropped a little over the past few months however over the past two weeks I've already put 18 watts back on and am holding a more steady interval for the full 20 minutes.

The group rides have been very good for me this year because of some of the high speed pace-line work we have done. Pretty much every ride we have done 20-30 minutes of high intensity work near the end of the ride...which means speeds between 24 and 30 mph. On my single speed my gearing is 73 gear inches (equivalent to a 53x19 or pretty close)...which means when we get going I'm spinning 120-150 RPM for the duration of the pace-line work. I've even hit 35 mph on one stretch during break away work which is around 165 RPM....so I'm getting my speed work in :D

I also know my sprinting power hasn't gone away over the last few months. A few weeks ago a teammate of mine and I had a fun sprint. He matched the gearing on my single speed and we went "Sign Sprinting". He had his powertap on his bike and clocked 1595 watts during the sprint and we were either dead even or I beat him by maybe an inch or so....but I'm a good 35-40 pounds heavier than he is which puts my top end power over 1600 watts right now....which is better than I hit this past summer.

My big issue that I need to work on right now is my weight....I'm just way to heavy for this time of the year.

Last year the heaviest I allowed myself to get was 208 pounds during the winter, which made dropping back down to 195 or so for the race season fairly easy. This year however with my over training during the summer, lower levels of riding during the months of August, September and October and eating like I was still riding 18 hours a week....my weight has hit a high of 220 pounds this winter. With the new year coming around...it's time to start cutting calories.

Overall...I'm not too worried about my weight though since two years ago I dropped about 50 pounds in less than 4 months heading into the race season...this year I only have 20-25 pounds to drop so not nearly as hard as before, but still not super easy. The big key is cutting calories and turning up the intensity on my training which I've started with the intervals.

In the end...Lots of work to do, but I think I'll be ready for the upcoming race season that's quickly approaching. The first TT of the year is the 3rd week of February and there are 4 road races in March.

One racing change for me this year....I'm likely going to race in the masters 40+ category for most of the races this year instead of in the CAT 3's. The reason...fewer people and somewhat less aggressive riding compared to the CAT 3's. However, since the masters category is CAT 1/2/3 the races are still fast, and in many cases faster than the CAT 3 races....so it's not going to be any easier, that much is for sure!

On a side note...by the 31st of this year when you take my trainer mileage (which is pretty close to what I would do on the road) as well as my road mileage I will have ridden over 11,750 miles on a bicycle this year...a new record for me :D

Fall is here...

2009-10-04T18:15:00.000-07:00

The days are getting shorter, the morning air a little crisp and the rainy days more frequent...which means fall is here and winter not far away. With this in mind I've moved my Powertap to my indoor trainer and am prepping my singlespeed for the winter months.

Many of my teammates have moved onto the "Cross" season, as I did for a while last year...but it's just not for me. To much of a risk for tearing up a knee (I've already had too many knee surgeries) and in all honesty I just didn't enjoy racing cross that much. There are so many people at the cross races that if you are not in the top 20 by the first corner, your race just became a training ride due to bottlenecks when the course narrows...Today was the first "Cross Crusade" race and over 1350 people showed up to race, which means well over 100 people per category (I wouldn't be surprised if the C's had close to 200 people).

With that said...The winter is where I get in a lot of "Quality" training because the workouts on the trainer are so structured. There are no hills or wind to get in the way, rain is no longer an excuse for not riding and the workouts can be planned out weeks in advance. With the Powertap it makes it easier to follow specific plans, which is something I couldn't do before.

My plans for the winter include a whole lot of 2x20's and tempo rides with my main goal...to raise my FTP for Time Trials and MTB racing next year. My hope is to steadily raise my 20 minute power each month over the winter. I'm starting this month at 320 watts with hopes of raising it 20 watts each month through February when the racing season starts again.

So...October 320 watts, November 340 watts, December 360 watts, January 380 watts, February 400 watts....Then scale back just a little for March to really hit it hard in April and May when the TT season starts culminating with the Team Time Trial at the end of May.

I hit 391 watts for 20 minutes this year so this should be attainable. My goal for next year is to break 400 watts for 20 minutes and if possible break 420 watts, while getting my weight back down to 190 pounds or if possible 185, which I haven't seen since the start of my 8th grade year :)

My basic training plan will be this:

Monday: 2 hours (2x20's) with a 10 minute threshold effort near the end of the workout
Tuesday: 2 hours at tempo
Wednesday: 1.5 hours at endurance pace
Thursday: 2 hours (2x20's) with a 10 minute threshold effort near the end of the workout
Friday: 1.5 hours at tempo
Saturday: Group ride on my singlespeed (hopefully 2.5 - 3 hours on the bike)
Sunday: Off the bike

So bring on the rain, winter and college football...Lots of work to be done over the next few months :)

Seasons End...

2009-08-11T18:10:00.000-07:00

With the State Individual Time Trial Championships over....so ends my season. My original plan was to end it with the Krugers Kermese series, but due to land use permits they are no longer able to hold the series. Last year I also did some cross races, but racing from February through October/November was just way too long and I didn't really enjoy cross racing all that much.

I set out to accomplish two goals this year:

1) Get my upgrade from CAT 4 to CAT 3.
2) To compete/complete at least one stage race.

I actually accomplished both of these goals on the same weekend back in April during/after the Cherry Blossom stage race in The Dalles. This was my first stage race and with my 2nd place in the first stage I had enough points to upgrade to CAT 3, which I did the Monday after the race.

Overall the year went well (22 races).

Podium placings: 8
Wins: 3
State Championships: 1

Some numbers on the year:

Highest ATL: 159.5
Highest CTL: 123.2
Lowest TSB: -73.7

The ATL and CTL ratings took place pretty close to the Cascade Classic which probably explains my poor performance there. I was clearly over-trained by the time I hit the Cascade Classic and when combined with the altitude, heat and some dehydration lead to extremely poor performances. If I had been using the Powertap all winter, chances are these numbers would actually have been higher :s

The low TSB took place early in the season just after getting my Powertap so this doesn't reflect as much toward my performance at the CC.

Power numbers for the year:

Max power: 1564 watts
Max 5 second: 1391 watts
Max 1 minute: 659 watts
Max 5 minute: 434 watts
Max 10 minute: 404 watts
Max 20 minute: 391 watts

Goals for next year:

1) Keep my power numbers high over the winter to go into the season next year strong.
2) Drop my weight back down to at least 190 pounds (spent the latter half of the season over 200 this year).
3) Win the CAT 3 TTT State Championship again.
4) Better my 40K ITT time again...get under 55 minutes.
5) Concentrate on ITT's more than road races.

State ITT championships...

2009-08-02T16:03:00.000-07:00

I want to thank whoever dialed up the perfect weather for the State Championship ITT's today. The weather was absolutely perfect this morning with temps in the upper 60's to low 70's and wind in the 3 mph range...Simply awesome!!!

It seems I found my legs that I left at home last weekend...well, most of them at least. Overall, my legs felt pretty good, but I think I could have/should have gone a bit faster today...but then I seem to always feel that way after a time trial.

Being the weather watcher I am, I was expecting a tailwind on the way out this morning, but was greeted with a headwind instead...though it was only around 3 mph or so, so nothing bad for sure.

The plan was to go out a little easy this year remembering my cramping from last year and my death at Cascade last week. Even going out easy my HR was around 161 bpm for the first 10-15 minutes...though my plan was to keep it around 152-155 bpm...but my legs didn't feel bad and my breathing wasn't to labored soooo, such is life.

After 5 - 10 minutes I picked the pace up and was able to keep my HR in the 160 bpm range for pretty much the entire race, which is where it should be.

During the race, I caught my 30 second guy somewhere around mile 7 or 8 and I'm guessing my 1 minute man shortly there after...then started to run into what I'm guessing were racers in the 40-44 category. At the start I only saw my 30 second guy so I didn't know what any of the other riders in front of me looked like, which in a way helped keep me pushing along the way.

The way back was a lot faster than the way out thanks to the tailwind with speeds in the 29 mph - 30 mph range most of the way back. That was a nice change of pace compared to the 24-26 mph I was going on the way out.

I ended up crossing the line with a time of 55:40 (26.73 mph average) which is 1 minute 19 seconds faster than last year....though I still cramped up a little after I crossed the line. Nothing like last year, but my left hamstring is a bit sore.

My time was good enough for 2nd place...lost by 32 seconds...but I'll take a PR of 1:19, especially after such a crappy performance last week.

Cascade Classic Day 3...

2009-07-28T16:34:00.000-07:00

Today....I called it quits on the race.

I woke up and could tell I had nothing in my legs and I knew I'd get dropped from near the start of the race. The way I figured it was better to just call it good and not race then trash my legs even farther in the heat to try and battle my way into 80th place again.

My stomach still didn't feel well and felt nauseous for about 1/2 my 3.5 hour ride home from Bend. I also had a headache for the better part of the day that 3 Advil helped with but didn't eliminate.

In all honesty, I'm not sure what happened this weekend. Two weeks ago I set a 20 minute power PR....this week I couldn't get within nearly 70 watts of that for 20 minutes. I'm not sure if it was the altitude (one race started at 5400 feet and ended at 6400 feet, the ITT topped out around 4500 feet, the crit was around 3500 feet)...the heat with temps in the upper 80's, lack of sleep (only got around 12 hours total for the weekend) or over-training that made me turn in such a crappy performance for the weekend...maybe it was a combination of all of them...not sure, but I do know it was a horrendous performance for me.

I've taken the last 3 days off the bike and am starting to feel a bit better, but am still contemplating competing in the State ITT championships this weekend. I've got until Wednesday to sign up so I'm waiting to see how I feel tomorrow after a ride before signing up. Hopefully the legs come back quickly so I can compete and try and get a state title...but after this weekend, I'm not so sure my chances are all that good for turning in a descent performance.

Cascade Classic Day 2

2009-07-28T16:08:00.001-07:00

I think I'm going to put this day down as possibly my worst race day on the bike ever. I couldn't get anything going all day and by the end of it was suffering.

The ITT came pretty early in the morning with a start time of 9:17 am. I went through my normal warm up and didn't feel too bad all things considered. Got everything put away and headed for the starting line.

The countdown started and I was off....Going hard from the start...a bit too hard. By the first 1/2 mile I had to slow down to regain my legs/lungs. I was breathing super hard, but only had a HR of 148 - 150 bpm and couldn't get it to go up. After a minute or two I felt things returning to normal and slowly picked things up. About 2/3 the way up the climb (on an out/back course) I was passed by my trailing 30 second man...the first time I think I've ever been passed in an ITT.

I was actually making pretty good ground on my 30 second man, who was just in front of me and that I had passed shortly after the guy behind me passed me. My legs were on fire, but it felt like I was pedaling in mud.

At the turnaround I put everything I had into the descent, but found that I was under-geared for a portion of the course using a 52x12 for my biggest gear. I spun out on one section doing 44 mph and really needed an 11 tooth rear cog, which would have given me a few more mph at several points on the downhill.

In the end my effort was good enough for 52nd place on the day with a time of 24:54 on the 10 mile course. The worst ever in an ITT by me ever.

After the race my legs were feeling a bit like Jello, but I still had the crit to compete in later in the day. Needing some food, some of my teammates and I went for a late breakfast where I had a pretty good Denver Omelet with some hash browns. However, they didn't settle well, or I was having some issues with digestion because by the time the crit came around, I could still feel them sitting in my stomach...and they didn't feel good.

The CAT 4's finished, so I jumped on the course to get a little warm up. Coming around on my first warm up lap racers had already started lining up getting ready to race. So from the start I was pushed to the back of the pack.

Once the whistle blew and we went through the first set of corners, accelerating out of turn 2...I knew I was in trouble. My legs had nothing in them, no top end at all. I got out of the saddle and accelerated as hard as I could staying in the packs draft. As the race went on, I slowly moved back, farther and farther until I was dangling off the back.

The final breaking point was when a "TALL" rider in front of me lost the wheel of the guy in front of him and I couldn't accelerate around him to latch back on the pack. From that point the four of us there were all off the back and later got pulled at the 20 minute mark in the 30 minute crit.

This was the first time I've ever been pulled from a crit and in reality the pace wasn't that bad and nothing I shouldn't have been able to handle, but with not acceleration left in my legs I couldn't do anything to stay alive.

After the race I showered and met up with some teammates to watch the pro's race...which was pretty cool. A breakaway of 4 got away early and stayed off for a long time, almost lapping the field...at which time the leaders of the main peloton picked the pace up and started pulling 5 seconds a lap back on the breakaway...catching them with 1.5 laps to go. Crazy how fast those guys can go when they want to.

Back at the hotel, all I could do is sit in amazement at how poorly my day on the bike had gone. I guess ever body has one...today was it for me.

Cascade Classic Day 1

2009-07-24T19:41:00.000-07:00

This is the first time I've raced in the Cascade Classic (taking place in Bend, OR) so I wasn't completely sure what to expect with the courses. The only thing I had to go on was the profile maps posted in the manuals they handed out and posted on their web site...and those basically told me it would be a hard race.

Todays race didn't exactly play into my "Strength's" if you will...the meat of the course was great for me, however the finish was a 10 mile or so climb with approximately 2000 feet of climbing. The initial stages of the climb were pretty shallow, but it progressively got steeper as you went along.

The beginning of the race started with a nice 600 foot climb right out of the gate that covered 3 miles or so before going into a long 1600 foot descent. One guy...who as far as I can tell stayed out front on a break the entire stage...took off on this hill and was later joined by two others that bridged the gap. The rest of us were pushed pretty hard by the lead riders as we averaged 15.5 mph or so up the climb and I sustained 374 watts for just under 10 minutes on the climb.

After the long descent things smoothed out and leveled off for a while until we came up to the first feed zone. They had neutral bottles they were handing out to riders, but they had the neutral bottles after the section where team helpers were handing out bottles to their team members...which made for some interesting feed zones. It was almost a fight to get into position and get a bottle before you exited the feed zone. I do thank all the volunteers for helping out with this since I'd still be lost somewhere in the outskirts of Bend suffering from heat stroke without them.

The next 25 miles were a series of rollers through the middle of nowhere, Oregon. The pace would pick up...then suddenly slow down with everybody yelling "Slowing" while hitting the brakes pretty hard.

The second feed zone was a crazy affair...but they did have more people there handing out bottles so it was a bit easier to get on (kind of)...however, as usual the leaders got their bottles then hit a hard tempo as the pack strung out. I found myself way back after the second feed zone and came up on one of my teammates (the only one with a real shot of finishing well on this stage) and he was way back with me and there was separation from the main pack. So I went by him to help pull him back to the main pack. Along the way I picked up another teammate of mine who was trying to help but had spent a lot of time up front pace setting so his legs were a bit tired at this point.

The last 21 miles of the race were a series of hard accelerations and slow downs...up to the point I got popped off the back on a steep section. The guys up front shot off like rockets and completely shattered the group into bits and pieces. From here my race was basically over...and I knew it was coming before it actually came, it was just a matter of where and when...so I rode tempo up the climb to the finish. Along the way I passed a good 10 - 15 riders along the way including two of my teammates that were shot out the back later up the hill.

All in all, not a bad day considering my legs felt like mud for the first 15-20 miles. I finished the 71 miles in just a bit over 3 hours and 15 minutes and feel pretty good all things considered.

Tomorrow is the Individual Time Trial in the morning and a 30 minute crit in the afternoon. These two stages play more into my strengths and I'm hoping go well.

Crashing sucks...

2009-07-14T21:51:00.000-07:00

This weekend I went on a ride with several members of my team...another big climbing day at 87 miles with about 5500 - 6000 feet of climbing, most of which came on a single 17ish mile 3300 foot climb. I'm soooo sick of 15+ mile climbs as they never seem to end...and I'm far from a climber :)

At the top of the climb we all re-grouped since it was an out and back then headed back down the hill. Not more than a minute into the descent I came up on the tightest corner at around 40 mph and overshot the corner. I was able to ride the dirt for 30-40 feet before either going too far into the ditch or hitting a rock...not sure which, but I went down...apparently doing a cartwheel in the process.

This was my first crash in several years...and in some ways, it's good to get it out of the way.

As I laid in the ditch I did a once over of my body and other than a few scratches and my side hurting a fair amount I was fine. No broken bones...nothing separated...just a nice hematoma on the right side of my abdomen that has swelled a bit and a bit of a cut in the same place. I'm guessing I landed on a rock.

Once I stood up, I did a once over of my bike and nothing was broken, but the rear derailleur hanger was bent in a bit so my granny gear was inaccessible for the time being...though I later did stop and give it a good pull to allow me to use it again.

For the next 30-45 minutes I had zero power. I was getting throttled on any small climb and was just trying to hang on in pace lines. It's amazing how much even a small crash can take out of you.

As we continued I started to feel a bit better, but never got back to the original feeling I had before the crash...but felt good enough to stop getting dropped to bad on the climbs.

All in all for the day we rode a little over 87 miles in 4 hours and 41 minutes with 5500-6000 feet of climbing.

With my abdomen still swollen today I decided to not race PIR this week...which turned out to be a good idea since there was a pile up in the field tonight that one of my teammates got caught up in, but wasn't hurt other then a small amount of road rash...but his brand new "Flashpoint 60's" need to be re-trued due to the crash...big time bummer on that one.

Hopefully my crashing is done for the next several years and considering I only had minor injuries I should be good to go by next week for the Cascade Classic. In some ways this is probably good because it's making me take it a bit easier on the bike. After the ride this Saturday my CTL jumped to over 123 and my legs were feeling a bit "toasty"...so I took both Sunday and Monday off...went out for a ride today (a little over 2 hours) and it's still in the mid 117 range. I'm going to try and keep my intensity up over the next two weeks, but start reducing some of the longer rides to taper off...which will hopefully bring that down into the 110 range or so which should give me fresh legs for the Cascade Classic.

Now if I can just get this swelling to go down :P

New PR's...

2009-07-08T18:28:00.000-07:00

After a rather sketchy and uneventful night at PIR on Tuesday (19th overall on the night) I went out on the regular Wednesday morning group ride. Most of the normal group of riders were there, with a few that normally can't show due to work able to make it today.

The route we decided on took us up Pumpkin Ridge which is a nice 6.5 mile, 1000 foot or so climb. It only averages around 3.25% grade wise but is a good hill for 20 minute intervals since it's a fairly steady grade overall (though the middle is fairly flat with a small, slight downhill section).

Previously my best time up the climb was 23:07 at which time I averaged 372 watts for the climb and for the most part did it solo on a group ride.

Today one of my teammates who's been climbing very well lately showed up for the ride and really pushed me the whole way. We did a little drafting off of one another up the climb as well, which helped with the overall time, but it didn't make much of a difference overall since speeds are lower going up the climb.

At the time I didn't know what my time was, only my 20 minute average...which was 391 watts. When I returned home and downloaded my Powertap data (I set the interval mode for the climb) we had climbed it in 22:20 and my average power output for the entire climb was 390 watts.

I hadn't done this climb in a while so it was good to hit it hard and see where I am leading up to the Cascade Classic in a few weeks. This is an 18 watt jump over my previous 20 minute max effort and I also set a new 10 minute effort at 404 watts during the climb. I've also recently set new 1 minute power numbers and have been close on my 5 minute numbers a lot....so things are looking good for the upcoming stage race.

Now if I could just lose 15 pounds in 2.5 weeks without any loss in power :D

Trip around Mt. Hood

2009-07-05T11:21:00.001-07:00

Given the holiday weekend, many people had Friday off....so one of my teammates had the sadistic idea of riding what was to be the "Hell of the Cascades Race" loop which from where we started was just a little over 91 miles and somewhere between 7500 - 8000 feet of total climbing.

Here is the "Races" elevation profile, which has a little less riding than what we did, though it starts in the town of Odel, which was our 1/2 way point:

The ride started out in Welches, OR at around 9:30 am with fairly low temps at the time. We had 7 team members and 3 club members joining us on the ride. A right turn out of Welches for maybe a mile than a left turn up Lolo Pass Rd. This was the first climb of the day and immediately started climbing for a while...approximately 2000 feet of climbing with several miles of 6%-8% grades.

Being the first climb of the day and everybody feeling good we all hit it fairly hard...harder than we should have. One of my teammates took off like a "ROCKET" up the climb just destroying everybody in the process. However, he has been recovering from a broken collar bone among other injuries and has been stuck on his trainer for the last several months so getting out was good for him :)

I did my best to stay within threshold on the climb, but went over for about 15 minutes of the climb...not bad, but probably a bit hard considering the day ahead.

At the top of the climb we had a 5 mile gravel descent (though there were a few small hills thrown in as well). We started down the hill keeping things in check given the gravel road, then went up a small incline. At the top there was a minivan stopped in the middle of the road that I didn't pay much attention to thinking they were changing a flat tire. Then a teammate said "We should help them"...then I turned around and noticed the car in the ditch...some good observational skills by me :S

The Minivan had a strap hooked up to the car, but couldn't get them out due to it being high sided on some rocks. So we helped dig out some of the rocks, then got in front of the car and pushed while the Minivan pulled. After a bit of rocking it we were able to get it out of the ditch...Good deed for the day accomplished!!! :D

From there we continued our gravel downhill descent...which then turned into a "Euro" type narrow, twisty road that was a lot of fun to go down.

Once at the bottom of the road things leveled off for a while with it being a slight downhill, but a few rollers into the town of Odel. It was here where we re-fueled loading up on water and a little food.

From this point the ride turned into a death march. We had a 25 mile, 4300 foot (or so) climb out of Odel up HWY 35. I've never done a climb this long before and it just seemed to go on forever. A few teammates took off over the first small incline and I didn't want to push it too hard knowing we were going to be climbing for a while (though not sure for how long). We had a short downhill from there where we caught back up to them.

From there we had 6 of us together and 4 back and we stayed together for a while until the heat, hill and dehydration started kicking in. One of my teammates fell off the back after a few miles (later to find out he was putting out 200 watts with a HR of 180 BPM). Another rider, one of the club guys dropped off the pace a mile or so later. The rest of us kept pushing the pace working our way up the mountain.

About 15 miles into the climb we stopped off at a river to take a break, dip our hats into the water and cool off. It was now around 95 degrees out and we were all over heating a bit. We were also starting to run low on water and we still had a long time to go. At least one of my teammates was smart bringing an iodine pill to drop in a bottle so he could fill up on some river water...which ended up going to one of my teammates who was almost out and hurting pretty bad at the time.

After we all re-grouped at the river, we started back on our way up the climb. We again split up fairly quickly with the climbers pushing the pace. I stayed with them for the next 9 miles or so until one of them picked up the pace again...knowing I could maintain 320 watts at this point in the ride, I backed off and held a high tempo pace to get over the top...which seemed like it was never going to come. The other two slowly pulled away from me, until one of them popped...big time! He started falling back and I started catching up to him. About 200 meters from the top of the climb I caught up to him and went by him thinking he would jump on my wheel and follow me down the descent. I started the descent, looked back and he was nowhere to be seen. I think he was passed by another teammate before cresting the top of the climb.

On the way down this descent I ran out of water...somewhere around mile 72 - 74. Knowing it was a 91 mile ride I did the math and thought to my self...."OH CRAP"

At the bottom of the descent we had another climb that went for a mile or two...which turned out to lead to Government Camp...which I didn't know about at the time. Up this climb there was a waterfall on the side of the road that I was just a hair from stopping and jumping under to cool off...it looked sooooo refreshing at the time. The thought also ran through my mind...I could just fill up on water there and if I get sick...they have medications for it...but I passed on the idea and kept pedaling.

Near the top of the climb I saw a sign "Rest Stop" ahead and knew there would be water there which made me feel better. When I crested the top not only was there a rest stop, but a convenience store and a town...I was soooo happy :) I filled back up on water, had a diet Mt. Dew and a cliff bar and aside from the legs freezing up from not riding I was feeling better. We all waited to re-group at this point.

From here it was all downhill back to Welches...and I still went through a bottles worth of water.

Back at Welches one of my teammates has a house there where we were all able to take showers which made us all feel better. Then we headed out for some food...a nice 10" pizza fit the bill nicely.

With dead legs, some mild dehydration and some good memories of a lot of pain...we all headed back home. It was an epic day on the bike and a beautiful ride with some great teammates. Total ride time for me was 5 hours and 17 minutes with 92.3 miles ridden.

PIR 6/30/09

2009-07-01T19:16:00.000-07:00

I wasn't sure how this race would go. I was coming off of a hard week of riding and my legs were still feeling pretty tired, but it was Tuesday and time to race. I warmed up around the track and infield for a little over an hour and my legs still felt tight, but not terribly bad.

The race conditions were not the greatest. It was pretty windy with a headwind/crosswind down the back straight and the temps were in the low 80's...so water was a definite need for the night. Coming around the corner after the straight speeds would drop about 7-10 mph due to the wind.

The race started with a group going off the front almost immediately...it was only 3-4 racers, which is normal, as the rest of the pack ramps up the pace getting the blood flowing before turning up the heat. However, this time about a half lap into the race about 10-15 more racers joined them and they had the makings of a break away that could stay away.

Nobody in the main pack seemed like they wanted to chase for a while...until the break away had about a .25+ lead on the rest of the group. It was at this time people started to chase, but we didn't make much of a dent for a while. We had a small group of riders up front that were doing a lot of work chasing down the break. For a while we just could make up much ground, but after about 8 laps we finally started gaining on them. As we got closer a second group formed and jumped off the front...so we had two break away groups.

At this time those of us left at the back started chasing really hard and as we got close to the second group I put in a 34 mph effort down the main stretch to latch onto the back of the 2nd group dragging the rest of the remaining group with me. Once caught we worked together to catch the main pack, which we finally did with about 8 laps to go.

Once they were caught it was attack after attack with riders going off the front then being reeled back in. The race started to feel like a crit with all the accelerations. This was the first PIR race that I've been in where we lapped the CAT 3/4 field twice in one night...we have come close several times, but on this night we came around them a second time with 6 or so laps to go...which just showed how hard we were working on the night.

Going into the final lap things really heated up....as usual. There was the normal fighting for position but since we were going counter clockwise we had the long finishing stretch. I tried to get myself in position by moving up and made a good dent in getting toward the front but found myself about 20 riders back going through the corner...about 10 farther back than I wanted.

Once we came around the corner the pace really picked up and the sprint was on. A group separated to the left and I followed them but made a tactical error in doing so. As they pulled off they were accelerating so I jumped hard to latch on. As I came up to them they started to slow, playing positioning games. At this time I slowed and looked for a wheel to jump on for the last 300 meters or so...when I should have jumped out of the saddle and went blowing by them. In the end I think this cost me a good 5-6 positions in the final standings on the night.

Overall in the end though I was able to cross the line 9th or 10th in the final sprint and finished with 2 points on the night which put me in 12th for the night when the hot spot points were added. Not a bad night considering my legs didn't feel very good going into the race and the efforts put in during the race to catch the break away groups.

On a side note...with the tail wind I was able to hold 38.5 mph for 30 seconds during the final sprint with a top end of 39.5 mph. If I would have jumped like I should have, I would have easily broke 40 mph in the final sprint...and yes, I'm kicking myself for not jumping when I should have....Oh well...live and learn, race and learn, get better and don't make the same mistake twice :D

Tired legs...

2009-06-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

Today capped off an intense week on the bike. I was right up there for most miles/time in a week on the bike with 17.5 hours and 323 miles ridden...but it was the intensity that's hurting right now. My TSS Score (Total Stress Score) for the week was 1001...a hard week is usually in the mid 800's.

Since I've started doing PIR on Tuesday nights my intensity has gone up, but on top of that I've been putting in long and hard rides on Wednesdays to back up the races on Tuesday night. This is giving me back to back hard days...which is good preparation for the upcoming Cascade Classic at the end of July....and is much needed right now.

I think yesterday hurt the most riding with some teammates at the normal PV group ride. The club ride had a few good climbs and was approximately 46 miles in length going up Rock Creek and Mason Hill.

Well, we wanted more distance and climbing so we also added in Skyline down to Rocky Point, down to HWY 30 then up Logie Trail. We were going to add Pumpkin Ridge as well, but after topping Mason Hill, we decided to add extra miles by riding the flats instead and heading out to Roy before turning back toward Hillsboro. I had never been down Rocky Point or up Logie Trail...but the descent down Rocky Point is a lot of fun....Logie Trail however...well, lets just say...it's not one of my favorite climbs :)

The pace was high during this ride starting out with 9 of us, dropping to 7 by the first real climb, then down to 3 by the time we hit Mason Hill. Overall, this ride hurt a lot because I rarely ever have fresh legs on our Saturday training rides...which is good because I push my self into some serious pain levels sometimes...but bad, because on the really steep climbs I get dropped not having the reserves to stay with others...that and my power to weight ratio sucks on the super steep stuff as I'm sitting right around 200 pounds right now.... :P

In the end we put in around 62 miles in just under 3 hours and 20 minutes with 4000+ feet of climbing.

All in all though, a good week on the bike. I have a bit of maintenance to do to my bike tomorrow, but other than that it's a day off the bike...then back to PIR on Tuesday.

For the number geeks out there...Another notable number from my training...My CTL has now topped out at 115.3 and continues to climb with all the riding I've been doing. My hope is to get in 3 more really hard weeks, then the week of Cascade Classic have just one hard day, that being PIR so I can go into that race with fresh legs.

PIR 6/23/09

2009-06-23T23:16:00.000-07:00

Tonight was a good race, but slower than has been the last couple of weeks...27.8 mph average...Compared to 28.4 last week and 28.3 the previous two weeks. However there were some hard attacks tonight, which made the race feel harder than the speed would indicate.

Mid race I got stuck between a break away and the main pack and wasn't sure which way to go...expending a lot of energy in the process. In retrospect, knowing few break away attempts get away in the 1/2/3 race...I should have sat up and waited for the pack and saved energy for the finish.

At one point in the race I was up front with three other racers heading down the main stretch when one guy took off for the start/finish line...we were wondering why he took off...then another guy went around us...turned out it was a points lap and none of us knew it, so I missed out on a few points there.

Tonight the racing was a bit more, lets say twitchy, than the past couple of weeks. I bumped shoulders several times during the race with other riders and crossed hands once...people seemed to be fighting for position more tonight...could have been the wind....or the "Seven" CAT 4 racers that decided to jump into the 1/2/3 race...where they shouldn't have been (Sounds like some disciplinary action is going to take place as well).

However, everybody stayed upright and tempers were cool so it was all good.

In the end I had a teammate up front with me, but he got pushed off to the inside infield rounding the final corner...so I lost my lead out man and ended up jumping on somebody's wheel following them down the straight...My legs were feeling a bit toasty by this point, but I managed to be the 6th guy across the line at the end...not bad, but could have been better.

Looking back I think I burned too much energy mid race on my own out in the middle by myself and when the points were added up with the "Hot Spots" I finished 7th overall on the night.

Overall...Not a bad night at PIR =D

Championship Jersey...

2009-06-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

I finally received my State Championship Jersey for our effort in winning the Team Time Trial. I received my vest a week before....just thought I'd post pics of them on my blog for the fun of it :)

Cirque Du Cycling

2009-06-14T19:05:00.000-07:00

Originally I wasn't going to do this race, but decided to do so with some of my teammates because it looked like a fun course and the atmosphere was supposed to be great with lots of spectators surrounding the course.

This was my second Criterium I've ever raced, though the first one was during a stage race and I only wanted to stay with the main pack...so I didn't give the first one everything I had. This one however I wanted to try and do as well as possible since it was a one day race.

The course was almost a figure 8 with the center "Main" lane separated by cones, so it was an 8 turn "Crit" course instead of a somewhat more normal 4 corner course. This meant a whole lot of accelerations, lots of corners (i.e chances for front wheels washing out and overlapping wheels) and all around pain.

I'm not sure how many riders were entered, but we had a full field...so I'm guessing between 75 and 80 riders at the start of the race. Being a 45 minute + 1 lap race the pace was high from the starting whistle (started by Portland's Mayor Sam Adams).

For some reason, regardless of my warm up I've been having a hard time with the start of races. I basically do everything I can to hold on for the first 15-20 minutes then I start feeling stronger and can start doing things I want in a race. This was no different. I didn't get a good starting position, probably 3/4 of the way back in the field at the start and for the first 5 or 6 laps didn't move from there much. After a few more laps I had worked my way to around mid pack and just kept trying to hang on.

By mid race I was hurting pretty good...which checking power numbers after the race would confirm that this indeed was a hard race. However, as usual I started feeling stronger at this point. I don't know if it was because other riders started to tire or I just felt better but I was able to make up a lot of ground through the corners and on one small incline on the back side of the course. At about 2/3 into the race I had moved up into the front 5 - 10 riders and stayed there for a while...However, nobody wanted to pull hard at that point so we would go in surges with the front going hard, then slowing and the rest of the pack would surge around and then moving up would start all over again.

With two laps to go, I put myself toward the front of the pack that was left over...down to around 35 riders now (some dropped out, some had mechanicals and others had been pulled). I was able to maintain position for the next two laps as the pace was picking up really fast and as usual in races like this everybody starts to fight for their line and things get dicey.

With three turns to go a rider on the outside slide out, touched wheels or something and went down hard sliding into the curb...which he later posted that he had a broken fibula and several broken ribs. I saw him go down, but at that point there is nothing you can do but hope for the best. Everybody kept pushing on for the final two corners and the finishing stretch. On the final corner I took an inside line and dove for the apex of the corner hoping to get to the front for the final stretch.

In the end this turned out to be a mistake as another rider dropped down in front of me and I had to brake hard exiting the final corner...as I did this 10-15 riders went by dropping me from the front of the group to the middle and slowing my momentum down as others were sprinting away. So at this point I decided to just bring it home without dropping any places...though one of my teammates sprinted past me just before the line :P

Looking at my power numbers on the day....The first 5 minute average: 416 watts, The first 10 minutes: 389 watts, the first 20 minutes: 368 watts.

That was a lot of work done in a race to blow it on the last corner...but that's racing :) All in all I ended up 25th on the day in the CAT 3 race.

PIR....

2009-06-14T18:40:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday 6/9/09 I competed in the P/1/2/3 race at PIR. The race is held on the race track at Portland International Raceway which is a nicely paved 2 mile loop where you don't have to worry about traffic, pot holes or other issues on the road. The race is considered a circuit race and the winner is determined by points and not necessarily who crosses the finish line first. They award points on "Hot Spot" laps that are pre-determined before the race and the first 3 across the line get 3, 2, 1 points respectively. Usually there are 2 to 3 hot spot laps during a race to gain points, then during the final sprint they place a larger number of riders with the winner of the final sprint getting 15 points with reduced points for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc.

This Tuesday they decided to make us hurt by making every lap a hot spot lap...and we had 18 laps to race. This made the pace heat up every lap and kept the pace high the entire race. Last week my goal was just to hang on, get in a great VO2 max workout and not crash or crash anybody else out...Goal accomplished!

This week, I had similar goals, but wanted to position my self better for the final sprint and try and get some points for a placing. The pace started out fast and never let up. Around the 5th lap I found myself in front of the main group with two riders that had broken away in front of me. I really didn't want to pull the pack around and was trying to keep my wheels out of the wind, but nobody would go around me...so on I went. By the time I got to the long straight I had pulled the two that had broken away in and they were within catching distance so I figured what the heck and began pushing harder. Again, nobody came around me and I ended up catching one rider for 2nd place "Hot Spot" points on that lap. It was almost purely accident that I pulled in those points, but hey...I had points :)

A few laps later I found myself in a similar situation again, but I was about 5 riders back this time. As we came closer to the start/finish line other riders started to fade, so I kept pushing hard and again came across the line in 2nd place for more points.

At this time I was content to just finish the race and enjoy having points. So I moved back a ways and kept my nose out of the wind saving myself for the finish. With two laps to go the pace really started to pick up as riders started jockeying for position. I started moving myself up through the field and placed myself somewhere in the top 20 of the field. With one lap to go, the pace really picked up and I continued to move up placing myself in the top 10 riders or so.

As we came around the final corner, I spotted two riders taking an inside line and pulling hard so I jumped on their wheel and tried to use them as a lead out. They pulled hard down the stretch but started to fade with about 200 meters to go. Then I spotted a rider who had started his sprint to my left, so I jumped at that point giving it everything I had. Down the stretch it was your basic drag race...with me coming up short by 1/2 to a full bike length. However, I did finish the night 2nd overall with 15 total points on the night. It felt great to finish that high in a P/1/2/3 race.

During the first hot spot points I nabbed I actually set a new 1 minute PR power output of 651 watts...which is still low for me (I was at 712 watts at 52 seconds, but then crossed the line and shut it down) and I'm pretty sure I can sustain 700+ watts for 1 minute if pushed.

Overall it was a great night of racing.

Numbers for May...

2009-06-04T17:09:00.001-07:00

Well, once again I was able to get in a record/PR month on the bike. For the month of May I put in 68 hours and 15 minutes on the bike with a total of 1294 miles ridden during that time.

I didn't produce any record power numbers this month and the only race was the State Championship Team Time Trial...of which I purposefully stayed away from mass start races to avoid any possibility of crashing.

My biggest day in May was the Scponia loop that we did on May 23rd with a little over 95 mile ridden that day.

I'm not sure how this month will turn out mileage wise, but I'm planning on doing a lot more racing, circuit (PIR) and crit as well as some Short Track XC racing...so I'll be doing a lot more VO2 max work and getting away from the longer TT type training.

State Team Time Trial Championships...

2009-06-01T13:09:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was the Oregon Team Time Trial State Championships....My favorite/Most rewarding race of the year. I love the TTT because it's not just you against everybody else, teams are comprised of 4 teammates and you have to work together if you want to do well. The clock doesn't stop until your 3rd of the 4 riders crosses the line and to go fast you have to work as a team.

It's still a race against the clock, but teamwork is absolutely crucial.

The other aspect of TTT's is there probably isn't a race out there where you can brutalize your body to such levels and keep going because your team is relying on your help to finish...then sit around after and talk about how great the race was. Basically it's a straight hour of VO2 Max intervals. My Heart rate stayed at or above threshold for the entire 58 minutes we were racing. To put it in simple terms......it just plain hurts...A LOT =)

Last year I raced on our CAT 4/5 team where we finished with a time of 59:28 for the 27.2 mile course. It was hard, really hard but we were able to win the CAT 4/5 class and bring home a State Championship for Portland Velo as well as set a CAT 4/5 course record.

This year I'm a CAT 3 racer and hence moved up to the CAT 3 team. We had a pretty loaded team this year and knew we had a good shot at winning another State Championship this year (our CAT 3 team won last year as well).

Overall, the conditions were good...at least on the surface.

The temps continually rose through the day and at the start were somewhere between 88 and 90 degrees...which is probably the hottest day of the year so far. The wind wasn't too bad with a bit of a cross wind in the 4 mph - 7 mph range with gusts to around 10 mph. So overall...not bad, but the heat took it's toll on a lot of people including several teammates of mine (from both of our CAT 3 teams as well as our CAT 4/5 team).

Our start was good, but as we waited at the start line several teams passed us...which caused some problems on the first lap. We were faster than those teams in front of us and as we came up on them, they failed to neutralize or at least give us room to pass...so we had to keep shouting "On your left" until we were able to get by. We had to do this 4 times on the first long stretch of road. Once we got by them things smoothed out a lot and we didn't run into any congestion like that again the rest of the race. However, that cost our team a good 10 - 20 seconds.

I think part of the congestion at the start put our team in a "Hurry up" mode as we averaged right around 30 mph for the first lap and it was taking everything I had just to hang on. The second lap was still pretty fast, but we settled in and had a smoother rotation going.

Our biggest problem was in the corners where we were inconsistant. On some corners we were perfect, others we had gaps open up and we would have to slow down to re-group.

The first two laps, I was also suffering from a bit of "Heartburn" from a powerbar/energy drink combo that didn't sit well in my stomach, so I was suffering a lot the first two laps. I had the thought of "If I drop off now, will the miss me?" go through my head more than once during the fist two laps. However, I hung in there and kept pulling my rotations as hard as I could.

Coming around for the 3rd lap I started to feel a lot better and was getting into a good rhythm during my pulls and was able to double my pull length with as high or higher speeds than for the first two laps. This was good because one of my teammates was starting to dehydrate and was suffering from a lack of electrolytes (his skinsuit was covered with salt at the end of the race). So his pulls were getting shorter and by the last lap he was just pulling through to hang on...which is exactly what he should have done because having the 4th person in the line still allows extra drafting while the rest of us were recovering from our pulls.

In the end we were able to finish with all 4 riders and a time of 58:30 which is also a new course record for the CAT 3 class. We were hoping to be about a minute faster on the day...but as it turns out, our time was pretty good this year.

We won the CAT 3 State Championship by 3 minutes and 50 seconds and had the 6th best time on the day out of all categories (including 2 teams put together by Land Rover/ORBEA...a domestic Pro squad...one of which we were faster than).

It was a hard day in the saddle....but again, this goes down as my favorite/most rewarding race of the year. It just doesn't get harder than a TTT =)

Scaponia Loop....

2009-05-24T17:56:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was an Epic day of a ride for those that were not racing the Rehearsal Road Race up in Rainer, OR.

Scaponia is a combination of Scapoose and Vernonia which were both towns we rode through yesterday. The ride started in our normal location "Longbottoms Coffee" in Hillsboro, but due to the length of the ride we started an hour early at 8am sharp. Yesterday's ride was to be an endurance paced ride, but as usual we turn it up from time to time =)

The first part of the ride is one of our favorites...it goes from Hillsboro to HWY 6...up HWY 6 to the Timber Road turn off where we ride up to Timber. The climb up to Timber is always a good, but short "Race" since it's only a couple hundred feet of steep climbing (though a steady climb for several miles before the steep part). It's on this climb that I set my 5 minute power record (435 watt average). Yesterday, given the length of the ride I kept things in check a little holding a 417 watt average up the climb. After cresting the climb you drop down into the very small town of Timber and work your way to HWY 26.

We re-grouped there since we had 22 people that had come out for this ride instead of the normal club ride, or racing. From here we crossed HWY 26 and rode to the town of Vernonia, a nice small town about 40 miles outside of Portland. Vernonia has had some tough times with flooding over the past couple of years, but the town is picturesque small town Oregon. We stopped here to re-fuel with water and food for those that needed it.

From here we headed north on HWY 47 to the Scapoose turnoff. After the turnoff the road took a steady but shallow climb on some very "Pot Hole" ridden roads. The pace started to pick up here as we were keeping speeds in the low 20's up a steady climb. Then we hit the steep part and the pack separated quickly. By the top of the climb there were 4 of us together on a "Break Away" if you can call it that...but three of us are on the CAT 3 TTT team and it was downhill or flat from here to Scapoose so we laid on the heat. There was some really twisty parts to the road, which I just love to bomb down...once we came off the downhill we had 6-7 miles of fairly flat to slightly downhill roads where we had a good rotating pace line and held an average speed of 29-30 mph until we came to HWY 30 and shut it down.

We ended up about 3-4 minutes ahead of the next group to come in, which overall the group of 22 (down to 17 (?) by the time we left Vernonia) spatted into 4 different groups up the climb.

In Scapoose we stopped at another small store/gas station to fill up on water and food before heading out again.

After leaving Scapoose we made a right hand turn up Rocky Point Rd. which is a tough climb...3.19 miles, 1264 feet of elevation gain, 7.48% average grade with a short section of 14.2% grade right in the middle of the climb. Usually this is a hard climb....but after 80 miles and some hard riding already...it was a very hard climb =) I decided since I had been going fairly hard and had done a lot of pulling during the day I'd take it fairly easy on the climb and dropped it into my 39x26 for most of the climb. Overall, it took me just over 22 minutes to get up the climb with an average watt output of 326 watts, which is basically a high tempo or low threshold climb for me. I still felt pretty good overall and knowing it was pretty much all downhill from here...I was ready to go.

From here we went down Skyline to Moreland Rd. then down to Mason Hill, Jackson school and back to Longbottoms Coffee.

For the day I had 95.67 miles with 5300 feet or so of climbing at an average speed of 19.36 mph. This was the longest ride of the year for me and the first ride where my daily TSS Score was above 300 (303.6).

The ride was a beautiful route and aside from one section of really crappy roads...had some great roads to ride on. The weather was gorgeous with a high of 74 degrees, clear skies and low wind...just can't beat weather like that.

It was definitely one of the best rides I've ever done and hopefully we will do this one again this year...maybe reverse the direction. It was just to "Epic" of a ride not to :D

This was the 3rd week in a row I've had over 17 hours and 320+ miles of riding during the week. I've started taking Monday's off due to sore legs on Monday's which has helped out a lot.

This week will be a taper week...Hard (but shorter distances) on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday then just an hour on Friday and Saturday since the State Championship Team Time Trials are on Sunday. Hopefully the legs are fresh and ready to go for Sunday since I really want to bring home another TTT championship for Portland Velo. Love the TTT race and can't wait for Sunday.

My dogs...

2009-05-18T10:35:00.000-07:00

Before my wife and I were married we made the decision not to have children. We both wanted careers and neither of us ever really had that parental desire that many others have. With that said, I've always loved dogs and don't know that I could go though life without one at this point.

For the first year or so of marriage we couldn't have a dog (or other pet for that matter) due to renting a house. Once we moved (and eventually purchased our first house)...we decided it was time to get a dog.

I love big dogs and really wanted a Mastiff, my wife however didn't want a "Horse" for a pet and wanted a Schnauzer. Well...we ended up settling somewhere in the middle when I saw an add for Shar Pei's. We didn't know much about them at the time...but one sight of the puppies and we both melted.

The result of this was our first puppy....

Ching

Ching was an awesome dog, probably the best dog I've ever had the pleasure of having. He was loving, playful and protective of both myself and my wife. We had our normal puppy issues with chewing a few things and some early potty training issues since we lived in an apartment when he first came home with us...however he learned to use a "We We box" which worked awesome. The funniest thing with him....we used to leave the TV on for him while we were at work so there was some background noise for him. We left the channel on NBC and when I came home he had somehow changed the channel to the "Animal Planet" channel and was watching a Dog Show of all things when I came home...LOL

He was huge for a Shar Pei weighing in at 75 pounds and standing 25" at the shoulder. Most people couldn't believe how big he was. He loved to go to the beach, his favorite place in the world :)

He eventually had to be put down at 7.5 years old due to kidney failure. We almost lost him a year earlier due to the same issues (he lost over 20 pounds over a month or so) but he was a fighter all the way and battled through it to live for a full year longer...one year I will treasure my whole life.

Diva

Approximately 2 years after we brought Ching home we decided he needed a friend, so we went looking again and brought Diva home.

Diva was the opposite of Ching...she was small for a shar pei at 43 pounds and only 18" at the shoulder. She was much quieter and didn't play nearly as much as Ching, but was more of a lap puppy than Ching was. She always had a big smile on her face and loved the beach as well. I think both her and Ching would have spent their whole life at the beach if they could have.

Diva and Ching became best buddies...Diva would bark at other dogs, then run behind Ching and let him take care of business :P She would just crack us up every time.

We unfortunately lost Diva a short 4 days after we lost Ching due to kidney failure as well. We don't know what happened with her since we had her kidneys checked for Amylidosis, but she started showing symptoms shortly after Ching took his 2nd downturn. We had her blood work completed and it was off the charts and we knew her time was limited.

Needless to say....I think that was the hardest week that my wife and I have had to share. Thankfully, we have a great vet who makes house calls and both were euthanized at home where they could pass with their family members, at the comfort of their own home.

I still think of both of these guys often....they were just awesome companions.

Drizzle

Drizzle was our first puppy after the passing of Ching and Diva. We waited about two months before looking for a new puppy and decided to look toward some of the top breeders in the region in hopes that we could avoid the kidney issues we ran into with Ching and Diva.

Looking at the websites I saw Drizzle....She was considered a "Breed Quality" puppy, however she was 4 months old and still hadn't gone to a home.

When I first saw Drizzle I loved how playful she was. She was basically playing Peek-a-Boo with me at the Kennel. She was just a bundle of energy and I knew we had to bring her home.

Given that she was already 4 months old at the time, it took a little while longer than normal for the attachment to take place and she has been a bit more "Aloof" than any of our other dogs. With that said, she has also been the quietest...but loves to guard the house now. She loves to play catch and chase balls....however, her big problem is she gets "Car Sick"!!!

She made it home just fine the first time...but we decided to take her to a race about 40 miles from our house. Five miles from home....chunks of dog food all over the back seat....Ugghh!!! After talking with the vet, he suggested some Dramamine for long trips so we gave her 1/2 a pill about an hour before leaving the 2nd time....She made it about 20 miles this time before blowing chunks. We are now working with her by taking her to the doggie park when it's nice out which is about a 5 mile trip. She usually makes it there just fine, but still has issues on the way back.

She is now 1.5 years old and about average size for a Shar Pei...just under 50 pounds and about 19" at the shoulder. Even though she is very "Aloof" we love her to death.

Louie

Ever since Ching, I have wanted a "Black" Shar Pei, so we kept our eyes out for one. One day while surfing web pages again...there he was, cute as could be and we had to have him.

As it turns out Louie is a Birthday dog for both my wife and I...He was born on my birthday and turned 8 weeks old (the day he could first come home) on my wife's birthday. He is a total "wrinkle bag" and has the biggest eyes ever! Right now I call him our "Little Pudge Ball"...LOL

Louie is what I've termed our "Sloth" dog...he has got to be the laziest dog I've ever owned, but at the same time one of the funniest. The things he does just cracks me up. He's already a big boy (35 pounds at 5 months) and is going to be a very big Shar Pei (I'm guessing 65 pounds or so). The only time he moves fast is when he's chasing Drizzle or chasing a ball. The rest of the time he looks like he struggles to move and wants us to pick him up to get on the couch, bed, anywhere that takes effort. He also follows us everywhere...so we have also named him our "Co-Dependent" dog :P

Currently, he wakes up, eats, plays for a short while...then sleeps all day and grows like 2" every time :P Then, he wakes up eats, plays a bit more and sleeps all night.

Basically we love our "Sloth" dog :D

Anyway....that's my tribute to my puppies/children....We love the breed and will likely always have a Shar Pei in the family now. They are just the perfect dogs for us. Hope you enjoyed reading about them and if anybody has any questions about the breed please feel free to send me an e-mail...I also have a link to the Shar Pei Club of America in my links section for more information.

Cycling tans...

2009-05-17T16:36:00.000-07:00

You just have to love the "Cycling Tan"....mid thigh to ankle, upper arm to wrist, middle part of your fingers to the finger nails, neck and face all nice and tan....the rest of your body....a nice shade of "Glow in the Dark" white, except for the little tan dot you get on your hands where there is an open gap in your gloves :)

Needless to say...after a few weeks of nice weather all cyclists start to look a bit....ummm....discolored...LOL.

With the weather taking a turn for the better I no longer have to don the bib knickers, long sleeve base layers, full finger gloves or even the balaclava in really cold weather. It's time for shorts, jerseys and lots of riding.

Today finished off another record week of riding for me....at least in miles and time....17:33:06 on the bike and 328.42 miles ridden (total TSS score this week 806, last week 857). This even includes me taking Monday completely off the bike....which I don't do to often.

Yesterday was a hard, but shorter day on the bike. Saturdays right now are reserved for Team Time Trial practice...however, this week one of my teammates was taking a rest week and the other had to work...so there was just two of us that were able to meet. After looking at options, we decided to head out to Sauvies Island anyway and do two 30 minute intervals with a warm up and cool down. The intervals would be done as training for the TTT with each of us rotating every 50-60 pedal strokes. Basically, it was an hours worth of VO2 Max intervals.

I forgot my Powertap at home...of which I was ticked off with myself for doing so...so the only numbers I have are my teammates which are lower than what mine usually are (I'm about 30 pounds and a fair bit wider than he is). During the first interval he averaged 315 watts and the second interval 307 watts...so overall, we were pretty consistent which is good. Overall, we put in about 2:20 on the bike with an average speed a bit over 22 mph (including warm up and cool down, 80 minutes worth of easy riding).

I still have yet to hit a TTT session with fresh legs, but I'm able to stay in the rotation with out any problems so come time for the actual race with a race taper...my legs should be strong and ready to go :)

Today, given the awesome weather I wanted to get in a nice long ride and ended up meeting two of my teammates, as well as a club member who showed up for the "Fixie" ride an hour late...but rode the first two hours with us...which was mostly climbing. I kind of felt sorry for the guy...but given I spent all winter chasing the race team on my single speed I felt his pain :D

In the end I was able to get in 79 miles and 4:20 worth of riding...and a good cycling tan :)

Talk is we my be doing a 94 mile ride on Wednesday, a route that is awesome...which again will give me dead legs for TTT practice on Thursday night when we are hoping to get the whole team together for the first time. However, it's tough to pass up on great rides....when it's race day...my legs will be more than ready :D

70 miles today...

2009-05-14T17:25:00.000-07:00

Looks like spring time finally decided to show up here in Oregon. The weather was beautiful today and as usual....I just couldn't resist riding :)

My original intent was to do around 3 hours, but it was so nice it turned into just under 4 hours and 70 miles...which the end hurt a bit because I didn't bring enough food or water for a 4 hour ride (one bottle of water and one small energy bar)....Regardless it was a nice ride.

This weekend is supposed to bring the first 80 degree weekend of the year, which just means...more riding :)

I'm not sure if we are going to get in any TTT practice this weekend since it's looking like two of my teammates will be off the bike on Saturday...so I might be riding with the group instead on Saturday. If we can get three of us together, we will practice...two, not really a reason to practice other than a really good interval workout.

Sunday, I'm trying to get a group together for another 4 hour ride...so far no takers, but if nobody else want's to go...I'll head out for one since it's supposed to be mid 80's out. It just doesn't get any better than that.

On a side note...for the month I'm sitting at 32:17:58 for ride time and 612.6 miles for the month of May and it's only the 14th...not even half way through the month. I'm on schedule for my biggest month so far, especially considering I'll probably get in 40+ miles tomorrow, 50+ on Saturday and 70+ on Sunday :)

Lots of miles...

2009-05-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

This week was full of miles on the bike.

Monday - Easy 1.5 hour spin on the trainer (raining)
Tuesday - 2 hours 20 minutes on the trainer (raining) with 5 minute intervals
Wednesday - 48.6 miles on the single speed with lots of climbing
Thursday - 46.1 miles on my road bike with lots of climbing
Friday - 52.1 miles on the road bike with the Friday Morning crew...a little harder than I wanted, but lots of fun
Saturday - 50.1 miles on the TT bike at Sauvies Island...TTT practice (more on this in a minute)
Sunday - 57.1 miles on the road bike with Jeff

This week I totaled 17 hours, 5 minutes and 8 seconds on the bike for a total of 321.11 miles and my legs are toast right now....A new PR for most hours on the bike and miles ridden in one week for me.

I really wanted a bit more legs under me on Saturday for the TTT practice, but couldn't pass up on a great Friday ride that for the most part was held in check, but we had some good fun on Dairy Creek Road, especially with the wind at our backs.

Saturday we had 3 of our 4 team members for the TTT championships out at Sauvies Island to get in some ride time, practice riding together and practice rotations. Overall it went very well. The rotations were pretty smooth, corners went well and we worked well as a team. The actual starting rotation will still have to be worked out and we still need a bit of work on getting the lead rider in the right position for escheloning into the wind, but so far so good. We also have yet to do any 90 degree turns which we will see 4 of at the championships, so not sure how that will go yet.

The weather on Saturday was good, but a bit windy. We did a nice easy warm up lap, then started the real work on the second lap. We waited until we passed the "Speed Bump" section before turning it up.

Our first effort covered 9.71 miles over 20:34 of time at an average speed of 28.4 mph. The first 2-3 miles were into a 7-8 mph headwind which averaged things out with the rest having a tail wind (though with the turns in the road it wasn't a true tailwind and 1/2 the time was more of a rear cross wind). My legs were very dead during our practice, but I gave what effort I could, which for the most part I was able to keep pace on my pulls with out too much problem...averaging 354 watts for the first 20:34 effort. Not bad with all of my pulls averaging over 400 watts.

The second effort we took it just a bit easier covering 9.52 miles in 21:10 at an average speed of 27 mph. Again the first 2-3 miles were into a head wind. My average wattage dropped to 316 watts during this effort and my lead efforts were down in power compared to the second lap. Overall, my legs still felt OK, but I could tell they were very tired from the day before and didn't have the endurance or "Pop" from the day before.

Hopefully the next two weeks we will be able to get all 4 team members out to practice and really put our team through it's paces. The extra member will help with rest during pulls and will add another strong member on the team and keep the pace higher.

Looking at our numbers and the effort from Saturday (I'd put the 1st effort at a 90% effort) when we have all 4 members together with rested legs, full aero gear and disc wheels I think we will have a very, very fast team.

Bring back the nice weather...!!!!!

2009-05-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

We had a nice stretch of nice weather going there for a couple of weeks that allowed all of us to get out and ride a lot....Then the April....errr....May Showers came back and we've had rain and wind it seems like for the past week. Since it's been showers there are spells of dry periods each day...it's just a matter of timing it right so you can get out ride and get back before the rain hits again.

With that said...I have been able to get some good riding in.

Last Saturday we had our first "Team Time Trial" practice out at Sauvies Island. The morning started out with rain, and the first lap was a little wet. However, by the time we started working together things dried up enough that we could draft without having water thrown up in our faces. The day was windy though so we got some good echelon work in. We were missing one team member, but overall a good day of practice. Looking over the Powertap numbers during the 2nd lap when myself and one team member were hoofing it we averaged 26.5 mph into the wind and around 315 watts...during the 3rd lap with the 3 of us together (and another guy that was a bit slower) we averaged 26 mph and around 298 watts. Not bad, but things will start picking up a bit over the next three weeks.

On Sunday three of us got together for a planned 2 - 3 hour ride and about 10 showed up...which made for a nice ride. In the hills we were really pushing it, but on the flats we kept a nice easy tempo that allowed everybody to recover, talk and get in a nice workout. We didn't hit any rain during the ride even though the day before there was a 90% chance of rain for the day...it was a nice break. Afterwords we went to CPR (Cornelius Pass Roadhouse) where some had food, others post ride livations and others just some water.

Monday...rain, all day and I ended up spending 1.5 hours on the trainer doing a recovery ride. Two weeks of riding outside spoiled me as the trainer was just dreadful.

Tuesday...rain again which meant the trainer again...Ugghh! This was a harder ride with a 2 hour minimum on the bike. I ended up doing "five" 5 minute intervals over the span of 2 hours and 10 minutes...30 minutes warm up, 5 minute interval (out of 10), 10 minutes tempo...repeat for 1.5 hours.

Today I waited the rain out and took my single speed out for a ride...just in case it rained...which it didn't. However, it was a tough ride because it's been very windy out lately. Nothing like plodding along at 15-17 mph into a headwind pushing probably 280-300 watts :(

The next three days are looking much better weather wise so I should be able to get in some good riding...Beyond that it looks like a low chance of showers each day next week, so hopefully it will be mostly nice.

Saturday is our next TTT practice and the weather is supposed to be very nice...All four members of our team should be there this Saturday so we get our first real run with everybody on the team. We need to work on being smooth with our transitions, figure out a running order and work on corners. We have a very strong team so it should be interesting to see how we mesh together over the next couple of weeks. We have two goals this year...bring home a state championship in the CAT 3's and to set a new course record for our class (which both our CAT 3 and 4/5 teams did last year).

Numbers for April...

2009-04-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

April was a Personal Record cycling month for me:

Most miles ridden in a month: 1161.97 miles
Most hours ridden in a month: 63 hours, 6 minutes, 45 seconds
Most KJ burned in a month: 50838 kj
Total TSS Score: 3463

I also set new power numbers in the following time frames:

5 seconds - 1391 watts
1 minute - 643 watts (which is still low)
5 minutes - 434 watts
20 minute - 373 watts
1 hour - 333 watts (though my FTP should be around 355 watts for a full hour effort)
2 hour - 301 watts

Race results for April

My first stage race - 11th overall on GC, 1 stage win and a 2nd place in another stage
Estacada ITT - 2nd place CAT 3 class and a personal best for the course

I actually spent a bit more time on the bike than the numbers tell because time spent on the trainer warming up for the ITT at the Cherry Blossom Stage Race as well as at Estacada are not included in those numbers (add another 1.5 hours, some KJ and a bit extra TSS to the totals). There is also another hour or so of riding around warming up where I didn't have my Powertap turned on.

With the weather getting nicer outside and the cycling season still very early...I can see breaking these numbers again in May or June.

My big goal after the Team Time Trial at the end of May will be to lose a few pounds (5-10 pounds) heading into July where I plan on competing in the Cascade Classic Stage Race. Since there is a lot of climbing involved in that race I want my power to weight ratio to be as high as possible to both help my teammates as well as get as high as possible on the GC.

Monster Cookie Ride...Cookies Good :)

2009-04-26T16:20:00.000-07:00

Today was the Monster Cookie Ride in Salem that's put on by the Salem Bicycle Club. This is the second time I've ridden this, though the first time was several years ago. The Ride starts at the Capitol building, goes through Salem out on country roads to Champoeg State Park and back. The total ride is approximately 62 miles (a metric century) and for most is a nice casual ride with friends...or for some a huge challenge/hurdle as they have never ridden that far before in their life.

Today many of the club members were there to ride as well as approximately 15 members of the race team. Two years ago it was dubbed "The Monster Cookie Beat Down" as many team members rode it "Hard" for most, if not all of the ride...it was a beat down and considered one of the hardest rides many had ever done.

This year we really didn't have an idea of how we were going to ride it...though I think many were ready for it to be "Beat Down #2". The ride started out fairly easy as we made our way through Salem together as a team keeping the pace sane. As we started making our way out of town the pace started to pick up. We had a nice pace line going with rotations taking place in the 24 mph - 26 mph range.

We decided to stop at the first stop for those that didn't get to make a "Pit Stop" before starting...but only one really had to go, so we decided he could hold it until the mid way point. So off we went again...unknowingly leaving behind a teammate who had turned his back for about 10 seconds to talk to his parents who were at the rest stop already....Opps. He saw us leaving but had to lay chase and I guess never really caught the group until the midway point. I say "I guess" because about a mile out of the rest stop there was a log jam on the road and I made my way around it with another teammate...two others bridged up and it was "Game On!".

For the next 35-40 minutes we were a 4 man rotating pace line taking pulls at 26 mph - 28 mph flying along the road. This was great for me because it was a pre-cursor of things to come for the Team Time Trial next month. We were taking 30 second to 1 minute pulls up front keeping a very fast pace until we hit the midway point of the ride. At this point we pulled in, ate some cookies and waited for the rest of the team to pull up, fuel up, relieve themselves and get moving again...it was a bit cold and once we stopped with the hard efforts we cooled off quickly.

Back on the road we were moving as a team again, but the first several miles were very rough roads. We came across a particularly bad pothole and I tried to lead the team around it, but I think they were in an eschelon due to the cross winds and one member rode right through the middle of it getting a flat tire. After a very quick change tube change we were off again.

We worked together as a team until the only hill...I call it a hill, but it was more of a short incline (60-70 foot climb)...on the course. Several members on the team knew there was going to be some separation here...including myself. Two of my teammates from the first high speed breakaway took off up the climb as did I. When I crested the hill, I looked back and we had a 50-60 foot gap on the rest of the team...one of my teammates smelled blood and it was "Game On" again :) The three of us went into full on TTT mode and started to pull away.

Three teammates gave chase, two oh so close to latching on...but just couldn't do it before the "Popped" and off they went...but one did make it and he held on for about 10 minutes or so. We kept the pace high and eventually put 4-5 minutes on the group (over approximately 25-30 minute of hard riding). The 4th caught us again once we got back into town. From there we rode back for our final Cookie of the day waiting for teammates and talking about a GREAT ride :)

This was definitely a "Beat Down" of a ride today...Actually I guess it was survival of the fittest :) My legs are toast...though I'm feeling better now that I've re-fueled and have been sitting for a while.

This week finishes the most time and miles I've logged on a bike ever in a week...16 hours 43 minutes on the bike...320 miles ridden...Total TSS Score 930...and 13072 kj of energy burned (approximately 13840 calories burned).

Tomorrow a nice easy recovery ride...then a couple of hard days and a taper to see what I can do at Estacada #3 on Sunday. I really want to break 46 minutes on the 20 mile course, so hopefully I'll have fresh legs and be able to put in a really hard effort.

Off for some rest and maybe more food :)

Weight Loss

2009-04-25T07:01:00.001-07:00

One of the big reason I starting riding bicycles long ago was weight loss. In college I participated in intercollegiate athletics throwing the shot, discus and hammer. I was always a big guy, by the time I was a freshman in high school I was 225 pounds, by my senior year I was 245 and in college my weight varied from 245-260 pounds.

With that said, I never worried about weight because I was always lifting weights and in a sense needed the weight for throwing. I was always muscular (max bench 455 pounds, max squat 650 pounds) and weight loss, eating healthy, endurance sports were the last thing on my mind.

Then, my eligibility ran out and I stopped throwing, which meant there wasn't much reason to work out. Over time my weight went up, my muscle mass went down and my body shape changed...over time though it's hard to notice until that one day you look in the mirror and go "Oh My God! I'm so freaking fat"...time to do something about it.

My time came a little over two years ago after a trip to Las Vegas with my wife and two close friends. We took a lot of pictures, but I avoided most of them...however, one I could avoid showed me just how far I had fallen.

In this picture I'm sitting right around 290 pounds give or take a few depending on breakfast that day :) By this time I was starting to feel like I was wearing a fat suit, which wasn't good. It limited my mobility, made doing things I liked hard and my self esteem was through the floor.

Another concern for me was my family history with obesity. My mother is approximately 5'1" tall and at times weight well over 300 pounds. My father was always between 260 and 330 pounds. My brother who is 3.5 years older than I am was up to 330 pounds. To combat their weight issues my mother had gastric bypass surgery, my brother a lapband procedure and my father...well, he didn't care whether he was fat or not but is paying for it now with daily insulin shots, a stroke and many other health related issues.

This was not the route I wanted to take and I knew I needed to do something about it.

When we returned from our trip I decided it was time so I ordered a new custom framed bike (from Doug Curtiss at http://www.curtlo.com/ ) which was something I had always wanted, and began riding my trainer inside (it was January in the Northwest after all). I started easy with 45 minutes a day 5 days a week. After a month I bumped that to 1 hour a day 5 days a week. Then 1 hour a day 6 days a week and just continued from there.

On top of this I decided I needed to do something about my diet.

For me I signed on with http://www.fitday.com/ to monitor my daily caloric intake and found out I was eating 5000 - 6000 calories a day with very little activity to go with it...hence the increase in weight.

So I decided on some drastic action with eating. I limited my diet to a -1500 calorie a day deficit to go along with beginning workouts. This is very drastic but something I needed to do. I also shunned junk food and started eating better foods: more meats, vegetables, fruits and nuts.

The weight started coming off pretty quickly. By April of 2006 I had dropped 30 pounds and was starting to feel better. By the time my bike had come in (Mid June) I had dropped 40 pounds and had increased my riding a fair amount...I was up to 9-10 hours a week on the bike. By the end of the summer I had dropped my weight down to 235 which was a weight I wasn't sure I'd ever see again.

Then in the spring of 2007, after putting a few pounds back on over the winter not riding my trainer (back up to 270 pounds) I got back into riding with the new year and joined Portland Velo in the spring. By this time I had dropped my weight back down to 245 but had found a group to ride with and new inspiration. I started riding with the A19 group, but after 3 rides had moved up to the A21's where I rode the rest of the summer. This extra motivation dropped my weight to 223 pounds by the end of the riding season.

Again, winter hit and the weight went back up...Ugghhh...but I had decided it was time to start racing again after dropping down to 223 in September. However, my weight jumped to 240 over the winter and I had work to do...so back to very restrictive calorie reduction and lots of working out 12-14 hours a week. By April of 2008 I had dropped to 194 pounds....a weight I hadn't seen since the 8th grade!

At this weight I feel really good and have been able to keep it off over the past two years. I had a great racing season last year moving from CAT 5 to CAT 4 on the road and this year with more training and more power have been able to move up from CAT 4 to CAT 3. The highest weight I hit this winter was 212 pounds for a short period but spent most of the time at 202-203 pounds which was a major victory for me.

This is a life long battle for me and will always continue to be hard, but having teammates to be competitive with, racing and not wanting to get shelled every race and pride in knowing I can do it help with motivation to keep the weight off. Also knowing if I don't I have diabetes, obesity and many other health related issues to look forward to are huge motivating factors.

For those that don't think they can do it....they can and I only hope that I can provide motivation for others to do the same with their lives :)

P.I.R (Portland International Raceway)

2009-04-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

Last night was the 3rd race out at Portland International Raceway...a 1.9 mile closed automobile race course that they open up for bicycle racing on Monday and Tuesday nights during the summer. I've never raced in the road race before, but have raced short track XC out there in the past. The track is a pretty simple layout, just one really tight corner, two long straights and a couple of wide turns. The pavement is smooth and has very few objects on it that could cause flats so it's a nice venue to race on.

As wide as the track is you would think there would be enough room for people to maneuver, spread out and keep things safe for all those racing. However, there are some aggressive people that come out to race and from the looks of it could care less about their body, bike or anybody else for that matter...they want a line and they are going to take it...even in lap 2 of 12...Makes no sense at all, but some people are just JERKS regardless of whether it's on the track, in their car, at work, at home...just doesn't matter it's just in their nature. People need to rember that this is supposed to be fun and is in a family environment...my wife was videoing the race (at least the start finish) and has some guy clearly swearing at the top of his lungs because because somebody was in his way as he was spinting for a meaningless 25th place.....NICE.....there were a lot of kids right at the finish line that got to see a great showing of sportmanship there :(

Way to represent cycling there buddy!

As for the race it's self, it was very sketchy....the field size in the CAT 3/4 field was huge with 102 racers. That was probably the biggest field I've raced in to date and it was just crazy large. The nice weather brought everybody out to race tonight (temps in the upper 70's, clear skies and an east wind of around 8-10 mph).

The pace of the race was fairly steady for a lap or two, then breaks started to try and get away so the pace would pick up, then they would get caught and the breaks would shut down compressing the pack every time. Lots of wheels crossing, but thankfully the crashes were held to a minimum (just one on the 2nd to last lap). As with all races like this there were lots of people griping about people not holding their line, the pace going slow, etc....people just need to learn to shut up IMO and race. Worry about keeping your self upright and just race, quite trying to be the "Boss" of the field and race...if you don't like the way the guy in front of you is riding, move to the front, back or away from that rider....it's really a simple concept that many people just don't understand.

OK...rant over!

We had a large contingent of riders in the race (11 if I remember correctly) so we had good numbers. We met before the race started and everybody picked up rolls for the race. Some were going to chase mid race sprint points, some were going to chase breaks and we had two designated as lead out guys for the person we had set up as the final sprinter.

Going into the 2nd to last lap the pace started to pickup and the field started to stretch out just a little, but it was still an up and down pace. I started to work my way up the field as I was the primary, last lead out guy for the sprinter.

On the last lap, as always, the pace picked up to a very high pace as we crossed the start/finish line for the last time tonight. As we rounded the first corner one of my teammates jumped to the front, picked up the pace and strung out the pack keeping things a bit more sane. As I worked my way toward the front, I looked left and could see our sprinter doing the same. Down the back straight our 1st lead out guy was starting to run out of gas. I was sitting around 4th or 5th in line at this point and our sprinter was getting moved up front because nobody wanted to continue the pull at this point.

My original plan was to wait until we got to the final stretch to put on the heat and give a nice strong lead out...however with nobody willing to take over lead out duties at this point and the pack starting to bunch I decided it was better to string out the pack instead of have a mass bunch sprint...so I took the lead much farther out than I really wanted to (A little over 1K from the finish). So I put my self into lead out TT mode and dug deep around the corner and onto the straight.

Going through the corner I was holding around 35 mph which was fast enough the guys behind me were having a hard time holding their lines, but it strung the field out all the way around the corner which is what I wanted. As we hit the finishing straight we came into a nice cross wind that was hard to hold the pace up on...so I held on as long as possible. I was able to keep the lead up to about 1/3 the way down the final stretch where I had to pull off the lead.

As it turns out this worked out perfectly because our sprinter was 3 riders back from me and when I pulled off it made the guy behind me lead out for a short while until he died. The guy in front of our sprinter jumped to the inside and our guy went to the outside where he had a bit of shielding from the wind. From that point it was up to him where he threw down the power on a great sprint taking home the victory on the night by a good 3 bike lengths.

In the end it was teamwork that brought home the victory and everybody had a part to play. This is where racing on a team is great and having people that know what their role is. You may not be "The Guy" at every race, but you are part of a team that works together toward a goal of winning the race. When done correctly, it's a thing of beauty :)

So far this year...our team is 3 for 3 in the CAT 3/4 class out at P.I.R :D

Estacada TT #2...

2009-04-19T17:08:00.000-07:00

What a beautiful day for a race with temps in the low 70's, light wind, clear skies....The Sun!

The course was almost too beautiful to race on today...In a Time Trial you just don't get to see enough of it with your head tucked and pushing with everything you have to enjoy it, unlike a regular ride or even some road races.

Yesterday we had such a hard ride (for the power nerds my TSS was just a bit over 277 yesterday over 71.5 miles) I really didn't go into this race with high expectations of a fast time or placing well. I just wanted to go as hard as possible and pull in a time around 48:00 which was my fastest time last year. I'm much stronger this year but due to having dead legs...I didn't set the bar to high today.

Warming up my legs felt OK, not too bad, but not great either. My opinion of how my legs felt change rather quickly after accelerating out of the starting gate...I could feel it :(

Down the first hill an onto the first flat my HR is usually around 160-163...today...146-148 with an average heart rate of 147 for the 20 mile race. Normally I'd average around 160 BPM for a race like this...so not only were my legs feeling it, but so was my cardio system.

On the way out we had a tail wind...which is a bit of a change from normal since the Estacada TT's usually have swirling winds since the road follows a canyon...however today the wind was pretty consistent. With a tailwind out however...that meant a headwind back. I was keeping an eye on my time and distance and passed the 5 mile mark just over 11 minutes, so I was actually ahead of my pre-guessed time...probably due to the tail wind.

At the turn around point the traffic control people were not doing a great job. When I got there they had two cars stopped in my direction and two the other direction so I had to weave my way around them and ended up shooting past the turn around point by 15 yards then had to accelerate hard to get back up to speed...probably lost a good 5-10 seconds there.

Now with the head wind my legs were really feeling it...all the hard efforts put in yesterday were felt with a deep burning sensation in my legs and butt. However, with all TT's it's just a matter of pushing through the pain and churning over the pedals.

I had two pre-set markers in my mind remembered for the way back...a side parking lot that was just over 2 miles from the finish and the 1K marker. The 1K marker is both a blessing and a curse at Estacada...It means you only have 1K to go, but you have to go up a nice little hill before getting there with your legs and usually lungs burning. You want to push harder to get every second but your body just says...Ummmmm...NO!

Finally the 200m sign and things flatten out just a bit and actually start going downhill just a bit so you can really push hard that last 200 meters. The finishing stand was a very nice site today :D

In the end, with the dead legs, a low HR and all around pain left over from yesterday I turned in a time of 47:09 which was a full minute faster than my best time last year (under similar conditions). I finished 2nd place in the Men's CAT 3 class 21 seconds off the winning pace...much better than expected, especially with legs that felt like they were filled with lead.

I'm looking forward to Estacada #3 in two weeks...hopefully on some fresh legs in good conditions...If I get those two things I think I can break 46:00 for the 20 mile course, which is a very nice time at Estacada.

My team had a good day overall...I know one my teammates won the Men's CAT 4 class and another took 2nd in his age catagory. Not sure how everybody else did though...but a good day for Portland Velo today :D

Timbeeeeer!!!!

2009-04-18T14:10:00.000-07:00

Saturday group rides are always fun, but some are just more fun than others. With the weather being warm and dry the call was on...The Timber route was on...which always seems to come around on the first nice weekend of the year.

The ride is called "The Timber Route" because we leave Longbottoms Coffee and head out to the town of Timber (west side of the Oregon Coast Mountains off of HWY 6). Actually we go about 5 miles past the town of Timber to HWY 26, but it's all the same :) The route today covered (for me) just over 71 miles with about 3000 feet of climbing...the only really steep part is the actual climb up to Timber.

Everybody on the team seems to love this ride and it brought out some faces we hadn't seen in a while which is always great...of course it made for a big group today (around 30 members of the team) but that always makes for a fast ride.

The ride started out at a nice leisurely pace as we were all talking and just strolling along until Steve Brown decided it was time to pick up the pace :) We went from 21 mph to 25 mph to 27 mph in just a matter of minutes and it was on. We kept pushing the pace until we hit Hwy 6...then we started climbing and things started to break up a bit. There were a couple of new guys that were up from California (?) who were friends of Dave Haags. They were pretty strong riders and lit things up from time to time.

We held a good pace until the re-group site at the store before the turnoff to Timber...a nice "Pit Stop" since they have port-a-potties outside for relief.

From there we kept the pace sane until we hit the steep hill to Timber then all bets were off. My goal on the climb was to stay with Mr. Brown up the climb...something I haven't been able to do before. He set a fast pace up the hill and we were quickly joined by Mr. Rosier. About half way up we came up on two riders who didn't stop at the store trying to get a head start I'm guessing :) We went around them and Mr. Rosier decided to pick the pace up even further...it was a race to the summit :) That's one of the great things about group rides...you tend to push yourself farther than you will on solo rides.

As we crested the top it was Mr. Rosier, Mr. Brown then myself all together...goal accomplished...down the other side it was myself and Mr. Rosier as we made our way to Hwy 26...the turnaround point. As other riders made their way down the hill we gathered and started the way back up the hill for the fun descent and the race down the hill.

The descent is my bread and butter I guess since I love to fly downhills. I jumped up front and took off with a few in chase :) Screaming down the hill through some nice switchbacks is what I live for, after a few minutes of descending we were at the bottom...down 1st :)

From there I sat up and waited on the pack...as they caught me...the pace picked up and it was basically race pace from there back to HWY 26. It's mostly downhill rollers and a lot of fun. This section is filled by guys attacking the field trying to get away to be the first back to Hwy 6...but nobody ever really gets away and few know the road well enough to really know when to go. As we headed up the road the 1st time I made note of the finishing corners and kept an eye out for them. As we kept going I knew it was coming up then I noticed a sign and the drop off...so I sprinted out away from the pack, down the hill and kept the power on making it to the "Stop Ahead" sign first...those are our sprint lines :)

From there on we stopped at the store for a minute to re-group and head back to Longbottoms. for the most part things were a little slower on the way back, but the pace was still high, higher than usual.

I peeled off the group a little early since I live on the west side of Hillsboro and already had 68 miles on the day. At the end of the day I had 71.4 miles with an average speed around 20.5 mph. I did set two new power numbers for my self on the day...5 seconds (1391 watts) and 5 minutes (434 watts)...I guess it was a "5" day for me :)

Now I'm trying to rest my legs since I have a 20 mile Time Trial at Estacada tomorrow which is going to hurt....A Lot!!! My legs are a little toast right now, but back to back hard days followed by an easy or rest day are always good for the legs :P I'll give it my all tomorrow, but if my legs are toast...it will be a great training ride. I still think I can give a good effort tomorrow, but only tie will tell.

Overall....a great day on the bike :)

Mid month numbers...

2009-04-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

Well it's the middle of April and I was just looking at my workouts for the month and thought I'd throw some mid month numbers on my blog:

Total ride time in April: 33 hours 52 minutes 13 seconds - 614 miles ridden
Total ride time in March: 55 hours 9 minutes 19 seconds - 967.54 miles ridden

At my current rate of riding, I may end up surpassing 60 hours on the bike this month. Last week I had 16.5 hours and 295 miles on the bike, coming off of a stage race...which is why I was so tired on Monday and probably why this week has been a bit sub par training wise.

I'll have a mild taper over the next two days leading into my first long ITT of the year at Estacada on Sunday. The weather looks to be perfect with temps possibly as high as 80 degrees...does it get any better than that for April in Oregon?

As for the team, Portland Velo is off to a great start this year in the Team Competition for Best All Around Rider/Team. For the first several weeks we were leading in Oregon, then dropped down to 4th overall...this week it looks like we got a bump back up to 2nd overall. It would be great to bring that one home in only the teams 3rd season...however, there is a very long season ahead of us :)

I'm tired...

2009-04-13T10:21:00.000-07:00

Last week was a hard week on the bike for me. I totaled just a little over 16.5 hours of ride time with some good Threshold work and some VO2 Max work....this all after racing a stage race last weekend.

My legs don't feel too bad overall...but I feel like I've slept half the day away, even though it's only 10:30 in the morning (I'm usually up around 6:30 every morning).

It's days like these that are enjoyable because I can ride just to ride, no goal other than to go easy and smell the spring air. The weather today look a bit hit and miss, so I'll probably take my single speed out for a ride since it's my bad weather bike and it makes sure I don't push too hard on the day.

The rest of the week is looking great weather wise with temps in the 60's and 70's...spring is here :)

My plan for the rest of the week is to put in a good 12-14 hour week and get out on my TT bike at least 3 times this week. My first long TT of the year is coming up on Sunday at the Estacada Time Trials. This will be a 20 mile out and back TT (10 out, 10 back) along a beautiful course just outside of Estacada, OR. Usually there is a wind on the road, but it's a swirling wind so it hits you from all directions.

Last year my best time was 48:00 flat and I'd like to run in the low 47's this year. It will be a good test of where my power is at for an hour compared to last year and my first test as a CAT 3 racer.

Should be fun :)

The weather held :)

2009-04-11T19:12:00.001-07:00

Saturday is generally group ride day...unless I'm racing. However, the weather can play a role in which bike I ride (my road bike or my single speed/wet weather bike) as well as whether I actually get out and ride or stay home and ride the dreaded trainer.

The weather forecast for Saturday was hit and miss with the general consensus being showers throughout the day. Looking at the Doppler radar there wasn't a hint of showers in the area and nothing showing for at least a couple of hours...so the road bike it is...in hopes it didn't rain and I'd have to clean it yet again (yes, I'm a clean freak when it comes to my road bike).

The plan was to ride the first part of the regular Portland Velo group ride, then a group of us on the race team were going to break away for some additional miles. The route today was scheduled to head up Pumpkin Ridge, as well as a few shorter climbs before that. Pumpkin Ridge is a local hill climb that makes for a great training climb. It's 6.5 miles long (then turns into a gravel road) and averages around 3% - 3.25% grade for the climb. There are a few flatter spots along the climb, but it makes a great baseline for training since conditions are generally consistent from month to month (i.e. very low wind).

Heading into the climb I put forth some hard efforts to get the blood pumping and some VO2 max work in, before testing my fitness on Pumpkin Ridge. My previous best time up the climb was 23 minutes 45 seconds which I did earlier this year on my Time Trial bike when I first got my Powertap.

Today my legs were feeling a little tired (already had 11 hours this week on the bike and still recovering from the stage race last weekend) but not to bad. My goal today was to get in a good threshold effort to see where I'm at, then ride the rest of the ride at a tempo pace with the rest of the team. So I let everybody know I was going to go hard on the climb and if anybody wanted to go with me they could, or they could chase, or just flat kick my butt up the climb :D

I started out a bit hard on the climb but settled into my TT pace within the first 2 minutes. My pacing overall was good and I'm starting to learn the ups and downs of the road being up it 8-10 times now. I tried to keep my eye off the Power meter and just focus on my pedaling and minimizing the pain in my legs :) Watching my Powertap doesn't seem to help me much when doing threshold efforts because it jumps up and down so much and holding high power levels on the dowhill/flatter sections is always hard...so I just focus on pushing hard...it's what works for me and since I use a disc wheel in TT's I need to learn to push without reading a power meter.

Near the top of the climb I was greeted by a nice dog (there are several that reside at the top of the climb) who gave me a little motivation as he ran along side of me for a 100 meters or so before giving up and heading back down the hill for the next set of riders.

Total time for the climb today: 23 minutes and 7 seconds...a new PR for me by 38 seconds. My average power output for the climb was 372 watts (an increase of approximately 10 watts), which is good overall...but with the Team Time Trial coming up and knowing how fast my teammates are...I want more power!!! In the end though this shows I've made some good improvements over the past month or so, and can still make some significant gains before the TTT.

Overall today I was able to get in 62 miles in just over 3 hours and 20 minutes with some of my teammates. It was a great ride with some great company.

The Team Time Trial

2009-04-10T20:27:00.000-07:00

Last year this was one of the most painful experiences I had on a bicycle, yet it was one of the most enjoyable.

The Team Time Trial consists of four riders working as a team to get the best time on a closed course. You can draft other members of your team, but can not draft other teams. Teams are separated at the starting gate leaving 1 minute apart. The fastest times are when the team works together with a rotating pace line and the strongest riders taking longer pulls instead of faster pulls...the team is only as fast as it's slowest member.

This race really tests your fitness and is basically an hour at LT with mini intervals thrown in for good measure...it's a lung buster and leg burner.

Last year I was a member of the 2008 CAT 4/5 State Championship TTT team here in Oregon with my teammates: Jonny "The Rocket" Banks, Mitch Lee and Brian "B-Ratt" Ratliff. We were able to work together to win the CAT 4/5 class by approximately 4 minutes.

We are currently about 6 weeks from the 2009 State Championship TTT now...and it's time to adjust training to be ready for it since I'm now a CAT 3 cyclist and will be racing with some of the fastest guys in the state.

This means over the next six weeks I'm going to be doing lots of 20 minute threshold intervals and will probably spend a lot of time on Pumpkin Ridge since it takes just over 20 minutes to climb. There will also be several practice sessions around Sauvie's Island with the team to get used to riding in a tight pace line while in the aero bars together and Sauvie's Island is a great training ground since it's an approximate 20k loop that is very flat, but can be windy.

Part of my training will also include the Estacada Time Trials (#2 and #3) to get used to the pain of a long TT again.

I can't wait!!!

Cherry Blossom Stage Race...

2009-04-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

For my first blog post, I'm talking about my first stage race...the Cherry Blossom that was held in The Dalles, OR on April 3rd through the 5th. The race consisted of 4 races over three days: A 37 mile road race on Friday, an 8 mile Time Trial on Saturday Morning, a 30 minute criterium on Saturday night and a 56 mile road race on Sunday morning (with over 5000 feet of climbing).

I felt going into the race I had a shot at a top 5 finish in the overall general classification since I felt I could sprint fast enough to do well in the first stage, am a time trialist at heart and it's what most of my training is geared toward, If I was in the lead after the time trial I figured I could save my legs in the crit and just stay with the main pack out of trouble...then try and hold on as best as I could going into the final day's stage.

On Friday, the first stage, the temps were mild but it was very windy (steady winds in the 20 mph range with gusts over 30 mph). This made for a strange race. Speeds were very high on the front side of the course with the wind at our backs. A few breakaway attempts were tried but my teammates kept everything in control...when they got far enough out, the pace was picked up and the break brought back in. When we hit the climb, we were heading into the wind which slowed the pack down an amazing amount and kept all the climbers in check. This was actually the most dangerous part of the race as I witnessed at least 3 crashes on the climb. The pack would be holding a steady pace, then a gust would hit the guys up front slowing them down compressing the pack causing people to rub wheels and go down. Several times they went all the way across the peloton and into the other lane before crashing, taking several riders with them in the process.

On the second lap things really strung out on the front side of the course. A couple of riders from Team Oregon tried to make a break that was quickly brought back in by my teammates...however, this split the pack up big time going from 80 strong down to 37, leaving just 5 of my teammates up front with me (we had 13 racers in this race).

Over the final climb things were still together with the lead pack, but started to get a bit dicey on the way down the other side of the climb as riders started jockeying for position. With 1k to go it really bunched up...but they opened up both lanes at 1k which helped a lot (I wish they would do this for every race). Shortly after the 1k sign I could see things getting more and more bunched up, so I sent the only teammate I had who wanted to try a lead out off to string out the pack and make for a safer sprint finish.

As it turned out, this worked perfectly. The pack strung out and lined up behind him. He held on until the turn when his legs gave out and it was left to me to try and get a high placing for the team. I came around the turn in approximately 15th place, but knew it was a long way to the finish. Many riders made the mistake of starting their sprint here, where there was a small steep hill that leveled off to a mild uphill finish. I waited before turning on the heat and followed a couple of wheels for lead outs. With around 300 meters to go I decided it was time to go as there were a few riders up the road from me. Thankfully I can carry a lot of power for a long time as I was able to pick off riders one by one all the way to the finish where I missed 1st place by about 3 bike lengths.

Overall, I was very happy with day 1.

Day two started out early with the Time Trial. Since I finished 2nd in day one, I was the 2nd to last rider to leave the starting gate. I set my trainer up, parked my car and rode back to the start finish line to get ready to roll. My legs felt pretty good and my warm up went well. I knew I was going to need to go very hard to get the lead after the time trial and it being such a short TT times were going to be close.

The clock was messed up at the starting gate so I ended my warm up just a bit early so I could be near the starting gate when my time came up. I got in line with just over 30 seconds to go, set my HR monitor, set my cyclocomputer and lined up ready to go.

Countdown is on...5, 4, 3, 2, 1...and we are off. I sprinted away so hard my rear wheel was skipping on the ground knowing I had a short, steep hill right out of the gate. The first half of the race was all uphill and started with some rolling terrain. Within 3 miles I had caught my 30 second man and shortly after that my 1 minute man. By this time I had settled into a good tempo and was holding my power well.

At the turn around point I could see the guy behind me had done a good job holding his 30 seconds so I knew I had to descend like a banshee....Off I went holding nothing back. Since I love to descend fast, this was where I make up a lot of time. The descent was a little tricky with some tight corners, but not tight enough to ever get out of the aero bars. With about 1 mile to go I came up and passed my 1:30 man and then pushed with everything I had heading into the finish...I crossed the line at 35.5 mph and finished with a time of 19 minutes 38 seconds, which as it turned out was good enough to win by 8 seconds.

Victory and time to pack up, head to the hotel for a shower, food and get ready for the crit.

My whole goal at this time was to just stay with the front of the pack and stay out of trouble since this was my first crit and in the end, it wouldn't make any difference in my overall standings. One of my teammates made a great move at the end and was able to pull off a 4th place in the crit. As far as I could tell only one crash took place and it was on the last lap when some wheel rubbing took place and a guy went down into the curb...OUCH!

The plan on Sunday was to try and keep the lead pack in sight and if need be let them go on the big 5.5 mile 1600 foot climb, then try and make up time on the downhill. One of my teammates had a really good time trial (his first) and found himself in 10th overall. Knowing he was a better climber than I am, we felt it best he stay with the lead group if I got dropped on the climb and I'd try to catch up on the downhill.

The first 4 miles of the race were cold...so cold my teeth were chattering and I was violently shivering, even while riding and being shielded by the wind by the peloton. It wasn't until we hit the first climb that I warmed up and from then on...I was plenty warm.

I felt good on the first climb and 3/4 of the way up I was still with the lead pack. However, my positioning wasn't good and I was behind a few riders where the split took place and missed the break. At this point I felt it better to stay in my zone and not blow up trying to latch back on...so I plugged away on the climb with a small group of other riders.

Going over the top of the climb we had lost about 1 minute on the lead group and I really tried to heat it up on the long downhill...hitting 51.2 mph at one point. When we came to the end of the downhill and started up the next hill, we had the lead group in sight about 30 seconds out. We did everything we could do to catch them...but they were 10-15 strong and we were only 4 strong and the best we could do was hold ground.

The next descent was much more technical than the first and really suited my abilities....I was able to let lose and fly downhill...near the end of the descent I had the lead wheel car in sight and at the end was only about 10 seconds off the lead group. After a short Time Trial I had caught back up to them and was part of the lead group again.

However, I had expended a lot of energy in the chase and was tired. I tried to sit in and get my legs back under me before the climb and was able to get most of them...but not all.

The second time up the climb I stayed with them for about the first 1/4 of the climb where they started to slowly walk away from me. By the top of the climb I was down approximately 5 minutes from the front pack, but they were shelling rider after rider and were down to 8-9 riders by this time.

On the way down, I picked up a few of the shelled riders, but never had more than 4 in our group at any time. Knowing I could downhill very fast, the lead group did everything they could to keep me at bay with a rotating pace line down the hill carrying more speed than I could in my smaller group. At this time I knew I wasn't going to get a top 5 overall...but wanted to do the best I could to finish with the best possible GC placing.

Coming into the finish, my teammate was at the line waiting for me to come in. He had finished 3rd on the day and had a great race. Hist time moved him from 10th to 4th overall...my time moved me from 1st to 11th overall, which isn't to bad as I finished 15th on the day which isn't too bad for a 194 pound Time Trialist :)

Overall, The Cherry Blossom stage race was a well organized race in a great location with some beautiful scenery. I learned a lot during the race and got some great power numbers. With my 2nd place finish in day one I also am now bumped up from a CAT 4 racer to a CAT 3 racer...which I was looking for anyway.

I have to give it up to my teammates, they did everything they could to help me try and win this race, but the legs just wouldn't do it for me with such a climbing stage on the last day and a lack of wind to keep things together on the climb.

Next year :)