Another race season ends

Well, my 2012 race season has come to an end and overall it was fairly successful, but hit and miss at the same time.

My road race season sucked big time with one crash, two DNF's and my best placing on the season 17th overall in a one day race. No top 10's or 5's...just an average season. The crash back in April screwed things up a little since I lost my Tsunami which fit really well and I was faster on. My Cannondale has been a good replacement and overall I like it a lot, but the front end has never felt quite the same as on my Tsunami since I can't get as low on the Cannondale.

My TT season however, turned out to be really good. I had 4 wins on the season, two state titles and only placed lower than 2nd in one race all season.

Going into the year I had two main goals: 1) win the TTT and 2) run sub 53:30 at the ITT championships. I was 1 for 2 in my goals with the help of some great teammates we won the TTT, but I ran a slower time than I wanted at the State Championship ITT's, partially due to a very windy day, partially due to not having my new TT bike dialed in and partially due to the front wheel rubbing on the brake for at least 5 miles of the race.

I did have my unexpected win in the Uphill ITT championships and won the inaugural TT Cup for the Masters 40+ division...So two good and unexpected wins on the season and my first solo state championship.

I was able to hit my weight goals, my power goals (with altitude adjustment I had a new 30 minute power PR at the Uphill ITT Championships with an average of 387 watts for 30 minutes) and overall feel good this season. I've taken a couple days off the bike since my last race and am going to work hard not to put weight on this winter...it's fairly normal for me to put on 30 pounds, which makes the start of the season always a pain in the butt since I have to drop the weight for the season. My goal is to not go over 200 pounds this winter and be around 195 for the first race of the season, and maybe get down to 185 for most of the season...it can be done but won't be easy.

My best placings on the year look like this for the season:

1st place finishes:

• OBRA Hill Climb Championships
• OBRA TTT Championships
• PIR TT #2
• As the Raven Flies #2

2nd place finishes:

• OBRA ITT Championhships
• PIR #1
• As the Raven Flies #1

As you can see, there are no road race placings in there...it just wasn't a good year on the road bike. Hopefully, I'll be better prepared for the road races next season and have as good or better year on the TT bike.

For now, back to base miles, get the trainer ready for lack of sunlight, start pulling out the rain gear for the winter and get my winter bike ready for some miles over the next 5 months or so.

OBRA Uphill Time Trial Championships

Last weeks OBRA TT Championships were going to be my last race of the season...however the updated TT cup standings were released and I was 1 point out of 1st place. Since I was so close I figured...what the heck, and signed up for the Uphill TT Championships hoping to beat the guy in front of me in the points.

I'm not a climber by any means considering I'm 196 pounds and stand around 5'11" tall...but I can put out good power numbers and can maintain a stead pace for 30 minutes or so. I knew the times last year and figured I'd at least be competitive.

So my wife and I drove up to Government Camp Sunday morning, I got my trainer set up, talked to some friends and got ready to climb a hill.

I got a report of the climb from another racing buddy of mine and he gave me an idea of what to expect, which also gave me a little extra confidence in the climb as it wasn't as steep as I thought it would be.

Warming up before the start I was talking to a couple others about just wanting to get to the top figuring I wouldn't be on the podium and again...my goal was to beat one guy!

My time came up and I was off...Early on I felt great. My HR was up where I wanted it and I was pushing some good power numbers without feeling it. As the ride progressed I was able to keep the pace up. At about 8 minutes into the climb I caught my 1 minute guy, at about 18 minutes I caught my 2 minute guy and at about 24 minutes I caught my 3 minute guy.

Crossing the line I was right at about 30 minutes...a good 1 - 2 minutes ahead of where I thought I'd be. I knew the winning time last year was just under 30 minutes and this time would have put me on the podium so I was pretty excited about it.

As time went on I waited for the times to be posted. They called out the names and mine was one of three called out for the podium but I didn't know if I was 3rd or 1st...as it turned out...I was 1st in the 40-44 Masters cataloger.

Who knew? I never, ever thought I'd win a hill climb, let alone a State Championship hill climb. My total time was 30:04 over 5.6 miles and around 1800 feet of climbing.

This is my first ever solo championship win...all other wins have been part of a Team Time Trial team...so I'm totally stoked about this win.

Looking at the numbers from the race, my HR was high, but my power was a little low. I'm chalking this up to the elevation...starting at 4000 feet and ending near 6000 feet.

My average power was 360 watts (adjusted for altitude it would be 387 watts, a new 30 minute PR) and my average HR was 167 BPM with a max of 173 BPM. My wattage stayed pretty steady through the race with only a few peaks and valleys and my largest power bump came during the last 3 minutes of the race. I only got out of the saddle once to accelerate around a corner, the rest of the time it was seated climbing.

My HR shows a near max effort, but my power numbers were down by about 15 watts from what I can do for that duration, again I chalk it up to the elevation. Given the amount I had left, I'm guessing I could have shaved off 20-30 seconds from my time if I had to push it. Crossing the line I was breathing hard, but still had gas left in the tank while others were on the ground just beat with exhaustion.

Overall, I'm very happy with my performance and excited about the win. I'm not sure I'll do this race again, but given my performance, if I'm in shape next year, I'll likely be back.

2012 OBRA State ITT Championships

Today was the 2012 OBRA State Championship ITT race...I've been looking forward to this race for a while now having my new bike to race on and having spent a lot of time over the last 6 weeks doing training rides up Pumpkin Ridge. 

I had a good taper heading into the race and my legs felt pretty good, though I hadn't done much riding in the last two days. Warming up went well, but due to the length of the race 40K I cut my warm up a little short. It was already mid 70's by the time I started my warm up and delays in the start time resulted in starts moving back 28 minutes...so we had to delay our warm-ups more than anticipated. 

In addition to that they did a number switch up on us by moving them to the right side instead of the left...and since I glue my numbers on I couldn't change them. Thankfully I had a second number on my lower back and the officials were OK with that.

There was also an anticipated start ramp for the race as well, but it never showed up, but we did have a holder, so starts were still good as we were able to be clipped in from the get go.

Race conditions were not as good as they were last year where we had a 3mph headwind on the way out and a tailwind on the way back. That lead to fast times last year. This year we had a 7+ mph tailwind on the way back and a 7+ mph headwind on the way back...You could see flags in peoples yards sticking straight out, so the wind was pretty hefty.

Coming out of the turnaround I got settled in and started picking up to speed...Once I was around 25-26 mph a gust came out of know where and knocked me a good 4 feet to the right and about off my bike. Freaked me out and kept me on guard for the final part of the race.

Splits were not too bad for me...24:45 on the way out and 29:37 on the way back, given the tailwind out and the headwind back I paced myself fairly well. I don't know what my power output was since I don't have power on my TT bike, but Strava put me at 385 watts, so I was probably closer to 350-360 which is right at where I figure my FTP is.

I did have a drop off in HR at around 35 minutes going from an average of 162 BPM down to 157 BPM, that happened within about a minute and wasn't gradual so I'm guessing I either hit a fatigue limit there or that was when I started getting dehydrated since I don't carry water and it was warm (86 degrees during my race).

Overall, not a bad day on the bike with a 2nd place in my class with a time of 54:22, which is about 14 seconds slower than last year (4 seconds from the official time) under much harder conditions. I'm still waiting to see what the combined times are and where I fit in there, last year I was 10th overall...so I'm interested to see where I fall in those.

My race season for 2012 is over and for the most part went well. Next year, I'm going to concentrate more on TT's (especially after crashing and having a couple close calls in road races this year) and pick up the finishing touches to buying speed with a new set of wheels (hopefully). I want to pick up a set of HED 9 front wheel and JET Disc for the rear (maybe with a Powertap). Both will be clinchers as I like those more than tubular's and for me they are just as fast and every bit as comfortable.

Next week is our team century which I'll probably ride...though I'm considering doing the hill climb championships just for the fun of it. I'll make a decision on that later this week depending on how fat I feel at the time.

New PR on Pumpkin Ridge

So with the State ITT championships coming up in a week and a half I've been spending a lot of time training on Pumpkin Ridge. It's the perfect training climb for TT work being 6.5 miles long, 1000 feet high and takes somewhere around 22-25 minutes to climb...So it's pretty easy to do 2x20's on the climb.

On Saturday during our teams group ride, the first climb was up Pumpkin Ridge so I used it to get a baseline on my fitness.

I had one person stay with me during the climb and held onto my wheel for all but about 10 seconds of the climb where he gave small pulls. Overall I set a new PR time wise, but was about 10 watts off my 20 minute power PR.

Total climb time was 22:03 which puts me 3rd overall on the climb for the STRAVA segment and I averaged 383 watts for the climb...overall, not bad and right about where I'd like to be, but the extra 10 watts from my power PR would be nice. I did finish the climb feeling pretty good though and could have kept that pace up for another 15 minutes or so which puts my FTP somewhere around 360 watts which is good heading into the ITT championships.

During my training rides doing two trips up the climb, I'm keeping it at about 92% of my FTP HR and am averaging around 350 watts for the climbs when combined/averaged...so I'm keeping my power for an extended period.

I've started to taper a little by cutting one day of riding out of my week so I'm down to 5 days a week and about 240 miles and 13.5 hours on the bike. Next week I'll taper a little more heading into the race, with a short ride on the TT bike with race wheels to make sure everything is performing correctly before the race.

Overall...I'm feeling good, now I just need to put together a good race and see what I can do this year.

My new Argon 18 E-118

At the beginning of the year I was really wanting to replace my aging Fuji Aloha 1.0 (now approximately 5 years old) with something new...especially considering I'm best at TT's and was losing time to those with nicer bikes. I know it's all about the engine but at the same time, in TT's if you have extra drag from wind resistance it costs you time.

With my crash at Kings Valley earlier in the year I had to come to the realization that getting a new TT bike wasn't going to happen since I had to replace my Tsunami. Then, my wife went to me because I was looking at purchasing a new stem...and was looking at the TT bikes in the shop and she told me to buy one. Well...I'm not one to argue with my wife so we went to a few stores and checked out a couple bikes.

I was originally looking at two bikes: The BMC TM01 and the Felt DA3. I talked with salesmen from both shops and told them a must have was changing the cranks from stock length to 170mm since I knew what worked for me. Other than that, it was a matter of finding the right size and going from there.

The shop with the Felt ticked me off...I was looking at a $5000 bike and told them my one need and he went off on how he had to check to see if it was a viable option because he had to maintain his "Margins" and needed to check with their rep to see what type of crank it had and if they could do it! Seriously??? One, you don't know what type of crank is on it? You can't just look that up in your books? Margins? It's a $5k bike, you have a lot of room for movement there.

So I moved from there knowing they didn't have my size in stock anyway and went to look at the bike I was really interested in...The BMC. At the shop they were more than willing to change out cranks for me and we had a deal ready to go, credit card pulled out...then...Oh, BMC is out of stock (nation wide) in the M/L size and all they had on the floor and shop was a small.

While I was at the shop I was looking at the Argon 18 bikes and liked them a lot. At the time I was most interested in the E-116 since it was closer to my price range. We left the shop without a bike, but I touched base with the salesman later in the week to see what the price for the E-116 would be with a different set of bars. He wrote me back with a price, but they didn't have one built up in my size...but had one there that needed to be built up.

Upon follow up...the salesman said, they couldn't get it built during the week (I e-mailed him on a Monday) because of tune-ups, fittings and other stuff. I let him know that was fine, but was a bit dumbfounded as I was sitting there ready to buy a $4k+ bike and he's wanting me to sit around and wait for them to build it up.

Well...the week passed and no communication from the salesman...During the wait period I started doing research and found an online shop that had the E-118 with full SRAM Red components for $5375 and just couldn't pass it up. So with no communication from either shop...I ordered the bike and they had it built up and to me within a week. The only problem I had with the build were these: The built it up with the bars in the upright position (so I had to reverse them) and they didn't shorten the aero extensions which had to be 2+ feet long. I had to literally cut 1 foot off of each bar to get them within acceptable reach.

So, I decided to not ride the night it came in and get to work on the bike so it would be fit correctly and ready to ride. After four hours, I had finally got all the kinks worked out and it was built up. I did end up switching saddles to my main brand of Selle San Marco Glamour Aspide (though I could see switching to a Specialized Toupe down the road).

I was able to take it out on Thursday for it's first spin. Initial impressions is that it's a much faster bike than my old Fuji. The fit is a little different as it's a little shorter than my old bike, but that's actually a good thing.

With my fit I have the bars lower than my Fuji, but the saddle in the same forward position. With the bars lower, I brought them back toward me so my elbows are closer to my knees which gives me more of a 90 degree angle between my body and upper arm and at my elbow, where as before they were stretched out a little more. It also allowed me to narrow my elbow width a little more which I wanted to do, but couldn't on my old bike.

The end result is more of a pro look...but more importantly a nice flat back, that still has a very good hip angle that allows me to produce a lot of power while in the aero bars.

The bike it's self absorbs chip seal roads well, but is a little harsh over sharper impacts. The handling is quick while in the drops, but is more stable in the aero bars. The braking is better than expected given all I've heard about TT bikes and their brakes. Even the rear brake has good lever feel, modulation and power. 

I did have to raise the saddle by nearly 1" from these pictures to get proper leg extension. So my saddle to bar drop is closer to 14cm now, which is much more than on my old Fuji.

On it's first ride, without trying I set two Strava KOM's on flat segments around here (averaging around 27 mph on the flats with no aero gear, but a 4-5 mph tailwind)...and I wasn't pushing it since it was a recovery ride. As I said...the bike is fast :)

I'm looking forward to getting some more miles on it and racing it at the State ITT Championships this year...hopefully I can improve on my 54:08 time of last year.

OBRA RR Championships Day 2...Epic Fail

Yesterday was the state Road Race Championships Day 2 here in Oregon. They split them up into two days, one for category racing and the other for age racing...yesterdays was age category racing. I race in the 40-49 category, which can be a very fast category since half the field are CAT 1/2's and regularly compete in those races. When they get to race in a masters race it's generally easier for them, and harder for everybody else because the distances are shorter for them and longer for us...and the pace is higher for those not used to racing in a 1/2 race.

Last week I was liking the forecast with temps int he mid 60's. The Day 1 race was hot with temps int he mid 80's and it took it's toll on lots of riders. As the week moved along the expected temps crept up and up with the forecast ending up being mid 80's again but higher humidity (it was in the upper 40% to low 50% which is very muggy for Oregon).

I knew this would take a toll on me as the race went on, but I figured I'd give it my best shot. I'm not much of a pack racer and like getting out on breaks as I'd rather die a hard death than sit in all day and finish mid pack...and every masters race I've been in has been won in a break.

Going into the day my legs felt OK, but not great. I was a few pounds lighter than Day 1 races, but I knew I was still going to struggle on the climbs as this course was tough with few/no flat sections, lots of small rollers and one short steeper climb and one longer shallower climb (both tougher than they looked on paper).

The race started and I tried to stay up front to watch for breaks. A few tried to get away during the first mile but were all brought back in. About 8 mile into the race there was an attack that was brought back and immediately followed by a counter attack. I followed both and the counterattack opened up a gap that allowed four of us to get away.

As we hit the climb a few miles down the road we had opened up about 1 minute on the field and were working well together. Near the top of the climb...BAM, one of the riders tires blew out so we were down to three riders. This in the end, likely hurt me because I didn't get as much rest during the rotation, but I pushed on and did my best to help the other two put distance on the field.

We stayed away from two laps before a small chase group of four caught us...but by this time the combination of high temps (my Garmin registered as high as 94 degrees several times), hard pulls and no break on the course...my legs were toast. I lost contact on the main climb and dropped back a bit, but kept the leaders in sight to the top of the climb, only losing about 20 seconds by that time.

When I got to the bottom of the downhill I knew my legs were toast. I couldn't get any power going and another 5 minutes or so down the road, the remnants of the main field caught up to me. I tried to latch onto that field to finish the last 16 miles of the race...but couldn't get enough accelerate over the small rollers and quickly dropped off. Crossing the finish line I gave my self a DNF...my first ever voluntary DNF!

In the end it was a good decision though. Looking at the results 1/2 the 40-49 group took a DNF...it was a HARD race.

Watching fields go by as I was packing up there was never a solid group of more than about 10 racers together...fields were shattered in every class. The eventual winner of my class was one of the guys I was out in a break with...2nd place was a guy that bridged the gap (Both CAT 1/2 racers).

I feel good about my effort because I was out front and at one point had nearly 2.5 minutes on the field...Hit my limit right at about 2 hours (45'ish miles), which is somewhat normal for me. If the race had only been 3 laps instead of 4, I could have pushed it and probably made it on the podium...but the extra lap put the nail in the coffin for me.

It was a good race overall and I'm happy with my effort...but am feeling it today.

Now it's time to train for the Individual Time Trial championships in August...lots of 2x20's and hill work on my TT bike. I really want to break 53 minutes over 40k if the weather is good, but my goal is to break 53:30 which will put me at an average speed around 28 mph...If only I could afford a new, much more aero TT bike than my old Fuji...but you race what you've got :)

OBRA TTT Championships 2012

Today was the State Team Trial Championships, my favorite race of the year. It's such a great racing format because you need to work as a team to win.

It's a lot of suffering because it's not a traditional time trial where you get into a rhythm and crank out steady watts. It's not like a crit because it's not all hard accelerations, but is similar in that there are a lot of VO2 max efforts and it's not like a road race where you can hide in the pack the whole time drafting off others.

It's an hour of suffering!

This year was a new course and instead of doing 3.8 laps it was a single 28.8 mile loop. So, not only did we not have to do laps, we also got to do another 1.5 miles of racing with a little hillier terrain to ride.


The race took place in Brownsville, OR and was well organized and they chose some fantastic roads to ride on. The weather was great with temps in the low 60's, winds in the 3 mph range and just a small amount of drizzle near the end of the race, but nothing that stuck to the road.

Being on a new team that's not dominated by time trialists like my old team was for a while, I didn't know what to expect out of my teammates who a mostly road racers. My teammates were Tony Coca, Shawn Cecotti and Stephan Niquet.

We all arrive, set up, warmed up and lined up to race. We didn't have a chance to practice before the race so it was all new for us as far as working as a team, strengths and weaknesses, etc. I knew my fitness was good after last weeks PIR TT and figured I could do a lot of pulling if needed.

When the race started it took a few seconds to get everybody clipped in and rolling...but once moving I quickly bumped the speed up into the 29-30 mph range and took a 2-3 minute pull. From there we went into rotations with each rider figuring out what they could do/not do. When we hit the hilly section we became separated for a short while and I had to slow down to regroup with the team.


In the corners we did fairly well given no practice, only falling apart in about 2-3 corners where we slowed down a fair amount.

In the end we pulled in a time of 1:02:33 (though OBRA scored everybody 5 minutes fast, not sure how that happened...the time gaps were accurate, but the actual times were smoking fast) over 28.8 miles for an average speed of around 27.6 mph.

We won the CAT 3 class (my 4th straight time on a TTT championship winning team) and had the 2nd fastest time on the day of all classes.

Needless to say...it was a good day :) Now I get to order Championship gear again that was redesigned this season.