The Flamenco Chuckwagon

The Cross Track Project

2012-01-23T21:13:00.003-05:00

Last summer, I found an extra piece of trail nearby. There are a bunch of little trails all around, but this one's got better flow, it's longer, and it's got some pieces that work pretty well for cx training. Somebody with half a clue put it together. It's suffering from a little disuse, and it could easily be lengthened and improved. With a bit of work, it could be the main feature of a really fun and effective training loop.

The main things wrong right now are a huge tree fallen across one part, some general disarray in a few sections, a lack of length, and a dangerous interaction with MUP traffic (if one chooses to be an idiot, which someone inevitably will). I've started by addressing the first issue. There are actually two trees, one isn't a problem. It could be a feature. The problem tree is huge. Ideally a chainsaw's the right tool, but I havent got one. I started hacking away with a hatchet. A bow saw would be better, but it's a huge trunk. So big that even moving the cut pieces is going to require some serious rope tricks and mechanical advantage. Once that's done, number two is an easy high pay-off deal - just clean up some turns and it's all good. Lengthening it is mostly motivated by wanting to improve the outlet onto the MUP. I'd also like to get a few off cambers and ideally a good runup. That bit's going to be a stretch but we'll see.

The tree's the big thing. Once that's done, it's a usable course. Hopefully I can recruit some help from the people who'll benefit from it. It will be good to have a little tucked away piece of awesome close by. Now that I've given up on ever being a good road racer and am content to swell the ranks of the middle of the lower category cross ranks, a bit more practice and skeeels headed into next season would help a lot.

True Stories

2012-01-22T16:53:00.003-05:00

I've got a pretty big fetish going for these things. When I get a pair for myself, I think I'm going mango. Slowly working through a fairly enormous pile of wheels to build. Waiting on a few sets of hubs now. For the first time since I know not when, I actually had no wheels to build this afternoon.

Went pink on the bartape when I recabled the front derailleur a few days ago. In honor of J Pow, I guess. We had a few rolls left in the house from the breast cancer awareness month thing, and I was sick of black. I think it looks pretty cool.

Being left with no choice but to ride the darn trainer this weekend, I'm impressed with how unattractive this is as an option in general, yet how effective it is. I went into the lair at 11:52 and emerged at 2:14, having ridden for 2:07 and scored 160 TSS points and burned 1817 kilojoules. Freaking efficient. The first hour was full of all sorts of merriment, happy happy joy joy, and then the last hour really kind of sucked, culminating with 15' at darn near threshold. It wasn't so much that it was painful and hard, although it included both of those emotions, it just took a lot of concentration.

Total training time this week was 8:15. That doesn't seem like very much, yet the week was worth like 610 TSS points. Normally I'm not this big of a geek on training stuff. The point is, when you're only riding the trainer, it doesn't seem like you need that much in the way of hours. Coming out of cross, I had no idea what was going on with my fitness, but I definitely was more than capable of blowing the f up completely after like 1:37. So, now I can blow the f up at 2:08. Fantastic.

Layers. It's All About Layers.

2012-01-16T08:01:00.002-05:00

283 days until cross, or so sayeth Bonedeth. Maybe what, 63 days until road? That seems awfully soon to me. But it's a mere 12 days until mtb season. Snotcycle: also known as an annual reminder of what kind of desperate shit bike racers will do to scratch the itch. Of course it's going to be minus a million and snowy and awful. And fun. Junkies. Line 'em up and shoot 'em.

Spent most of the weekend chained to a wheel stand, reaffirming my preference for silver spokes over black (the threads on black spokes often bind during tensioning), affirming my lust for all things King, and generally working through a huge pile. Apparently I'm unique or at least unusual in liking to build with CX Rays. Yeah they're a bit finicky but with the gripper ring thing you can MOTOR through a build. Price went up like almost 10% on those suckers. I guess they figure DT Aerolites are still at least 1.5x the cost of CX Rays so the market has some slack for them. I don't know, they're too rich for my blood but people go nutty for them.

Pretty well pegged the clothing setups both days. Saturday, left the house in 33* headed to 36 or so during the ride window. Bibs, leg warmers, wool socks, neoprene shoe covers, silk weight base layer, long sleeve jersey, November vest, Descente polar jersey/jacket, thin hat, and Garneau Typhoon lobster gloves. The junk was a bit cold in the beginning but overall it was perfect. Vented my neck zipper a tiny bit a few times. Sunday was 28 headed to low 30's during the ride. I find the difference between say 30 and 35 to be enormous. 30 is COLD and not to be f'd with, while 35 is just garden variety pain in the butt cold. Sunday was will socks, thin overshoes, Descente neoprene shoe covers, bibs, tights, silk weight base layer, Under Armor cold gear mock t, Marmot jacket (warm!), neck gaitor, thick fleece hat, and lobster gloves with hand warmers. The hand warmers did nothing, but the rest was near perfect. Two hours of endurance slog with an LT interval to finish it off. Then back to the wheel stand.

The big issue at Snotcycle is feet. There are creek crossings. I think the answer is neoprene socks. Not much else is going to cope with that. Plus I like to have the soles exposed. Walking in overshoes gives no grip and just chews them up.

Something About Books and Covers

2012-01-09T12:17:00.001-05:00

This 'can't tell exactly what you're looking at from casual lookovers' is a recurring theme for me right now. Imagine standing in the middle of an Apple store, thinking 'am I actually in a real Apple store?'

Saturday was exactly what it looked like - an asswhipping at the hands of two guys who are vastly better than me on mountain bikes. All is not lost though, as I stayed close enough to be able to peg them back every time except for when a frisbee golf playing dog wanted to play mountain biking at the end. I love dogs. Can't help it. Also, every time we did a section twice, I proved to be a fast learner and didn't get gapped. My water will turn to wine when I can approach things for the first time with the fuego with which I re-ride them.

Sunday was the funhouse for sure. I don't even think the guy was a wolf in sheep's clothing. He was just an extremely fast sheep. You wouldn't have picked him to do anything but get dropped, and there he was straight rolling the whole time. Not even hanging on. Rolling. Didn't seem troubled at all.

Ahh. Vague. It's the new specificity.

Holy Crap Fountainhead

2012-01-02T21:12:00.003-05:00

First, how to be the bozo in just a few easy steps, as demonstrated by me on Saturday. First, do the 10am ride without having ridden on actual pavement with more than 3 other people since Lost River. Have no awareness of rhythms or anything. Occasionally ride off front for no apparent reason (related to next). Have no awareness of how many hammers are joining onto the ride, which is directly related to everyone keeping their power more than dry while I pedaled blissfully unaware up front. See Nick go. Go Nick Go! Go with Nick. Think, "if it's just Nick, he'll either mellow out or leave everyone in his dust and this will be over soon." See Nate and Tim pull through and think "hmm, where did those guys come from? so much for the afterglow, this one's going to suck the whole way in." Be going some few thousand miles an hour into the bottom of the roller before Travilah, and COMPLETELY chatch a front shift (50x11 to 34x11 is ill advised in extremis), throw chain, pedal chain back on to 50x11, lose momentum, watch group blow past, chase like a bastage, make pretty well near no headway towards getting back on, do the ride of shame the whole way back in.

Sunday was time for the secret stash mountain bike ride. It was fun.

Today's plan had been to do some work clearing some downed trees on the secret stash, which necessitated an early morning trip to the hardware store for a hatchet. Also on the docket was spoke inventory management, which meant The Container Store. Since the hardware store, which is below The Container Store, opens earlier, that was the first stop. Lesson #1 of the day: when you walk into The Container Store at 9:01 with a hatchet in your hand, you get some funny looks. Lesson #2, when your needs for cardboard tubes vastly (and I mean VASTLY) exceeds the inventory at The Container Store, you've probably got a halfway legit wheelbuilding operating underway.

In any case, while wielding axes in retail establishments, I got a text to join a Fountainhead ride. Short time later, at Fountainhead. HOLY CRAP have they hooked that place up. Before, it was good. Now, it is some orders of magnitude better. The initial drop-in off the parking lot is all big, bermed, swoopy turns where even the world's biggest sally (that'd be me) can leave the brakes at home and just RAIL it. Holy manoli. It seriously should not even be legal to have that much fun. I've done a lot of not necessarily legal stuff in the pursuit of fun, none of which was anywhere near as fun as this. The CRAZY.

Turns out, MORE (www.more-mtb.org) and Fairfax County parks have been saving their pennies for a while on this thing and IMBA did a design which some trailbuilding contractor is implementing. Talk about a fun project to manage. Good LAWD. Yeah, so, I'll be spending like every possible minute there.

Vis a vis the re-explosion of mountain biking, I'm a bit like the timekeeper who says "it'll be 12 o'clock before too long." Wait around long enough, everything that's happened will happen again and most things that haven't happened are going to happen too. But based on three conversations I've had with people, if they sold stock in mountain biking, I'd be long right now. And in a weird small way they do, and I'm long.

Here's the scene

2011-12-26T22:00:00.006-05:00

Sneaking away for some Dirty J single track was mint. Met up with Pauly D and The Situation at the trailhead and we blasted a coupla laps at Allaire. Then hit GTL. But seriously, Allaire is a pretty fun joint. It's just bermed twists for miles. Really fun. More of a steady effort, you just stay on the pedals, left right left right, the whole time. But no matter how much faster you get, there's always someone out there... I was following these two guys for a while, when the rear guy waved me through. The front guy just TURNED IT ON and it was all on to stay with him. He died pretty soon but wow the guy could ride his bike.

Trying something a bit different for a bit and going on HR for the main workouts. I need to see something. Not that that's any change for mountain biking.

In the new year, I will continue to avoid road races where people are going for upgrade points. Won't be able to completely avoid, but I think upgrade points make a lot of races suck. 1/2/3 races don't seem to fall victim. Masters races sometimes get stupid because of BAR fights (witness Jeff Cup last year - the single dopiest race ever) so you even have to be aware there. Hey look at that there's a ton of mtb races.

The wife has to get healed soon. Being broken is no fun at all. Having the person you do everything with be broken feels like missing something pretty important indeed. She's back on the trainer next week. I remember that first ride. It was awful.

Looking Forward

2011-12-23T07:25:00.002-05:00

I get a lot of songs stuck in my head lately. Yesterday, the (Jamaican) electrician was playing a bunch of reggae. I'm generally a gigantic reggae fan, have been since I was about 13, but sometimes those reggae guys do some weird stuff. Like did you know that Celine Dion is a HUGE favorite among the dance hall dj scene? Which is how you wind up with Aswad or someone who sounds like them covering Ace of Base "Don't Turn Around". I generally consider Ace of Base to be about the worst thing that's ever happened to music (apart from Celine Dion herself), but this was a pretty catchy treatment and now it's planted in my head.

Next week, I'll contribute to the awful "best of" phenomenon when I name the Brewery of the Year, but generally it's pretty remarkable how bike racers look forward. TY2012 (that's "training year") is already well underway except for the people doing CX Nats or Masters Worlds next month. I've got a bunch of notes from last spring's training, which will be really helpful since I hit some things just the way I wanted to, and missed on others. But except for a point of reference, there's no rosy afterglow, it's just onto the next.

2012 took a nasty turn already two weeks ago, when my training partner had a bad non-bike injury that will cause trainus interruptus for a few weeks. We'd planned some early season stuff that just ain't going to happen now (it's hard to race with your right arm in a sling) so you stay thankful that it wasn't worse, and adapt and move on.

November 29er test bikes coming in a few weeks. Freaking psyched. Killington's a big one again for me this year, but other than that the MASS races are what I'm most psyched for. Lots of road races too, but with the womenfolk focusing on them plus the November role to play and trying to do care and feeding of the team that slides back a bit except as buildup for Killington.

Few amusing anecdotes or pithy comments to relate, it just seemed that the news roll didn't have anything new. So I hope I've staved off some amount of boredom. The Newsletter takes most of my mojo. If you don't get that, do sign up: www.novemberbicycles.com/subscribe.

Feliz navidad y año nuevo and all the rest of what you might be celebrating or not. At least a few extra days of sleeping in and more time to ride coming up for many.

New lows of boring writing there.

Racing Different Disciplines

2011-12-18T22:31:00.002-05:00

Despite having done a lot of mountain biking in the past, I raced 3 road seasons before I did a mountain bike race. I had an okay bike - definitely not top grade but usable - and had been spending some time on the trails, although not as much as I would like. It turned out that I instantly loved it.

Was sort of "meh" on the cross thing for a long time, probably mostly because I'm a wicked contrarian and when people, en masse, won't shut up about how awesome something is I usually wind up thinking "oh go back to Jonestown you freaks". Sort of had to do it this season. Turns out its awesome. It was not the instant love that mtb racing was, probably because I was SO raw at it when I started. Both put me in over my head at first, but cross is really different from other bike racing you might do. I had to understand it a little bit, and then I fell hard for it.

Before some road races, I get excited. Before a lot of them, I honestly don't feel much. That's not a bad thing - I know it's sort of hip to be a self-loathing road racer. I'm not. It's just that Jeff Cup, Poolesville (despite that I flat there every year), Reston, and some others REALLY hit my switch, and others I do to do with the team or to get races in (although I have sucked at this more every year - my road race count goes down each year or so it seems). Before mountain bike races I just bounce off the walls. I love them. Usually, I wind up going out and trying to press my riding skills two days before the race and I flip over; that's just dumb but it's borne out of excitement. Before cross races, there's lots of I guess you might call it dread.

The scene at a cross race is fantastic. People make some part of a day of it (we made LONG days of it this year) and there's lots of fun. It's also the best spectating, and weird as it is I enjoy pitting a race per day (more than that is tough though). But the races are intense, there's no joking around during them. This year I've been lucky to be doing the 10am race which is the perfect time for me. Get there at 8, set up the tent, get the number, pre-ride after the C race, then get ready to go, race, help the lady get ready for her race, pit for Paul, then have beer and heckle the B and A races. I love the schedule.

Today I rode my mountain bike for the first time in a long time. Cross helped, for sure. I noticed that cross has helped road riding a lot, too. Road helps cross and mountain, there's just nothing that gets your motor in shape like road riding. I think mountain biking helped cross a lot, just in bike handling stuff. Can't really point to a lot of direct ways in which mtb directly helps road, other than the many times when the thought of riding faster on the mtb got me through some workout when my motivation was otherwise flagging.

If I had to choose one type of race to do I think I'd have to go with mtb, with cross making the decision really tough. But if it weren't for road I'd never be in a position to ride well (such as it is - as much as I don't suffer the delusions of others well, I do worse with my own) in the other two. So really, at this point I can't see the whole "bike racing" thing without any of the three.

I didn't forget about track, you just can't do everything.

That's It For The Other One

2011-12-04T19:11:00.004-05:00

Clean all the stuff real well one last time, it's going to be awhile before we race on this stuff again.
Put the cork back in the bottle, my first cross season is over. Apart from the fact that I'm really scraping the bottom after racing with like a thousand fold more frequency than I ever have, it was pretty much crazy fun start to finish. Te season in a nutshell:

Winchester: How do you do this? This seems very hard.
Granogue: Why am I doing this? 103 dudes want to kill me. Seems like about 87 of them have all the skills and magic they need to actually do it. This IS very hard.
DCCX: Oh, I like the C Race! Oh I don't like the B race quite so much. Starting 113th on the grid blows. BikeReg skills, please!
Kinder: I really need some BikeReg skills. But hey, look at that, I beat like kind of a lot of dudes.
Sander: Awesome. Did well.
Schooley Mill: 2nd row seeding! Harden up, man.
Vint Hill: Can I have my mountain bike, please?
Rockburn: If you ever learned how not to suck at the start you might actually be good.
Taneytown: I hate mud and flat tires.
Capital Cross: Wow, even if you do suck at the start you might actually be good. Except if you want to crash as soon as you grab onto the lead group. Then let a bunch of guys through, and need to go to the wall just to get back to close to where you were.

So I finish the season with a 9th today. A good field, with lots of guys on their A games. To be honest I wasn't, but I was pleased with how I rode. I went hard, made some mistakes, and kept at it. It sucks to have spent the back half of the season within spitting distance of the podium and never have gotten there. On the other hand, a few months ago I had absolutely no idea how well, badly, or indifferently I'd do. I didn't have a bike to ride until the day before Winchester. Not the ideal prep. I'm good with this season, and it gives me a place from which to actually plan and prepare for next year. It was also a whole lot of fun, and I met a lot of good people. Not sure I ever want to do 11 races in 10 weekends again, I'm really happy to have a break from racing,

The bad from today was Erin getting hurt. I've been right there. It sucks no two ways about it. Heal quickly. You'll be back soon.

Pfft

2011-11-28T09:27:00.003-05:00

Things to work on for next year:
1. Not sucking at the start of cross races.
2. Not having like 1/3 of my races end with flats.
3. Pit/truck wheels. ALWAYS. Even for training rides. Hell with my record even for trainER rides.
4. Embrace the mud.
5. When I've already been walking my bike for 2/3 of a lap and a dude screams at me to get out of his way, go the other way? Or do something else different? I don't even know but apparently I wrecked his race. I'm sorry I wrecked your race. I'm sorry I'm not smart enough to know where exactly in the f you wanted me to go. Your vitriol exceeded the clarity and sportsmanship of your request by about 100000x.
6. Not laugh my ass off when said guy falls over as he's still looking back to yell at me.

Taneytown was going pretty 'meh' as it was. Once again stuck in No Mans Land behind the leaders, I wound it up to try and close the gap on the paved part after the first section. The instant I started going fast - "PFFT". That piece of gravel was the perfect antidote to a functioning tire. Nothing to be done. Oh well that was fun. I figured walking to the finish was a more legit move than DNF. I don't even know. Is it? The funny thing is that even with walking about 20% of the race I probably finished higher than I did in my first race.

Congrats to the guys on the steps. They all rode well and deserved it.

Pretty excited to do some mountain biking and long boring rides. Pretty spanked on racing right now. One more event.

Vint Hill and Rockburn

2011-11-20T18:29:00.003-05:00

This cyclocross racing, she's a cruel mistress. I had a bottle of whine to go with my race at Vint Hill yesterday, a product of a couple of things including racing at 3pm (freaking hated that), the washboard surface of an otherwise really well designed and laid out course, generally shite legs, and pretty significant feelings of burnout. Never in my life have I ever raced with anything even approaching this frequency. I think it's like 10 races in 8 weekends or something crazy like that. So I came, I saw, I kind of sucked. Just a little ahead of mid fleet in 7th in a small Cat 3 field, with some guys who were quite good.

The way home was nearly a total catastrophe, but thanks to our new favorite person in the world Ron at Good Year in Manassas, tragedy averted.

Had another big glass of whine with breakfast this morning, had my poopy pants pulled up pretty high. I was just feeling really done with racing and it was shooting sparks in a bunch of different directions. Then we got there, and the nice people at registration handed me start number 12 (awesome), I pre-rode the course (awesome), rode right through the "unrideable" sand pit, I generally found myself pretty excited and ready to go. Completely botched the start despite my cushy 2nd row spot, entered the course somewhere deep in the where, and got to work. Rode the sandpit, won myself 1,000 screaming fans (that was awesome), passed a lot of people, and found myself somewhere around 15th. Absolutely nothing about any part of my physiological being felt what you would call "good," but in my very last post I'd droned on about leaving it all on the course, not racing safe, etc. That's actually one of the good things about being a fool with a blog - sometimes you put yourself out on the ledge, even if no one reads.

So I was there in like 12th or whatever after passing a few dudes, with the first 5 or so guys a bit ahead, decided that a bloody 25th was better than a clean 10th, and got to work. The group up the course was full of the usual suspects from the last season and a half, no jokers in the deck, and there were some good riders around me. I pulled the f'ing throttle as hard as I could, and dropped all but one of the guys in my little mini group. I think we were 7th and 8th, and closing in on the top 5. Early in the last lap, I made full contact with the leaders. Then sat on for like 5 seconds and attacked. And boy was that a big freaking mistake. Whoops. Well, I managed to stay with the flurry of poo flinging that my attack initiated, but eventually we got a little striated with me on the wrong side of the tracks. 5th was still to play for, and I give myself credit for trying to get there, which I almost did, but 6th was the nut. I'd just cost myself too much with being a chatch in the early part of the race.

Mission accomplished, though. When Paul showed up with his tied up wing, I was able to absolutely say that there was not a single additional effort I could have made during the race. Even if the scoreboard had said 9th or 16th, it would have been about 1000 times better than the weak sauce I served up at Schooley Mill.

I'm signed up for Taneytown, and thinking about Urban Cross. I'm either going to go with the idea of racing like today, or not go. If the season happens to have ended today, I've had a great time in my first season of cross. Getting 35th at Winchester, and feeling like I'd ridden pretty well, seems a long way ago indeed.

Schooley Mill and the Learning Curve

2011-11-14T08:34:00.002-05:00

The most important lesson from this weekend is that you take the tubulars off before you wash the drivetrain with degreaser. Wheels that had been rock solid through a zillion turns in Saturday's practice all of a sudden weren't so good after being bathed in Greased Lightning on Saturday afternoon. There was plenty of glue left everywhere it should have been, it just was no longer capable of doing a damned thing. The front, which was glued at the exact same time with the exact same technique but no Greased Lightning and that one won't come off for love or money. Few feelings in cycling are worse than ruining your wife's race through nothing other than your own idiocy. DUH!!

There was a bit of a dark cloud over the whole team as Friday's email from Paul told us that thanks to hitting a leaf covered rock on an easy road ride on Friday, his season was over. A guy with absolutely ninja bike skills having the season of a lifetime thrown to the ground and broken by something as dumb as that. That it happened to him on Veteran's Day kind of doubles the blow. Everyone was a little off without our badass in chief there to lead us along.

The problem with the learning curve is that it flattens out. From Granogue, where I was having a standoff with my bike at the top of the hill each time, through DCCX where I started to feel a tiny little bit competent, to Kinder where I saw I could put together a good race, and to Ed Sander where I had a good race, the improvements came thick and fast. My first race, Winchester, had me like half a lap behind the winner. Yesterday, I easily saw the winning group finish - because I was close behind not because I was half a lap behind in a spot where I could see them. That improvement came rather easily. Yesterday, I had a good spot on the start grid (2nd row) thanks I guess to points earned at Ed Sander. I'd expected to start in the 80s based on registration rather than 15th. It felt heavy, like I was supposed to do well, rather than fun, like lets see how many guys we can knock off here. Don't get me wrong, the race was fun as hell (this was before the women's race so I was as-yet guilt free), but it wasn't as carefree as it has been. I think some of that tension showed through in how I raced. Getting 7th from 48th on the grid feels a bit more fun than doing it from 15th.

It's less megaton bomb tactics and more hand to hand combat when your worst spot through any of the turns is like 12th. You open the throttle all the way during the (pretty darn short) power sections and you don't pass anyone, you just hold your place. Erik Leaver came ripping through and gave me some ribbing about spotting me 100 spots on the grid, which he did, and a fantastic job he did to get there from where he started. And of course I had to shoot back that I was spotting him a year of cx experience for every spot on the starting grid that he gave me. And the whole time I was thinking about Paul too, and not wasting a race being a softie when he was lying in bed, high as a kite on pain meds and unable to race. But there I was between like 10th and fifth the whole race, and it felt like not losing 7th, and keeping the string of improvement alive, was more valid than going hell for leather and getting up to the lead 4 at risk of blowing sky high. They were within reach, I just wussed. Sorry, Paul.

So I guess next week I get another cushy spot on the grid, but my race will only be measured in whether I let myself go for it all and maybe crash and burn, or if I play it safe again. For a sport that's SO much about the legs, most of cx is played between the ears.

7-0 against crossresults this year, but now it tells me that I should be doing well. Screw crossresults. I'd much rather be here next week, 7-1 against cross results and having raced like a hard guy, than keep my precious score alive and race like a wimp.

And yeah, it's going to take a pair of farm tractors to get the wife's tires off when I'm done with them.

Racing With My Head

2011-11-06T19:48:00.004-05:00

41st on the grid, rather than my normal 648th or so, was looking a bit too good so I decided to nearly miss the start. Pulled in about :30 before the whistle. Gus's timing wasn't as good. This course had a great prologue which went well for me, and then a series of turns which suited me just fine, followed by 'the big drop'. On my pre-ride, I decided that the right was the go and the far left was to be avoided at all costs. So when I got to drop and got closed out from my line I went with the extreme left line. And immediately endoed. And rode most of the hill on my head. And landed in the tape. From 41st to quite okay and back to DEEP - quick. Merde.

My team mates helped me with some great advice this week to move up aggressively like I have been, but to relax a bit and not be such a bull in a china shop and pedal stupid hard into places where I couldn't pass. Fortunately I internalized this pretty well, and after the huge adrenaline blast allowed me to re-pass a big clump of the guys who I'd let by, I got completely into the zone and just tranced through the turns. I loved the course. No need for brakes and lots of places to power past people. The long road section from the start line was great to big ring and just pound past big groups.

Before too long I could see the lead group not that far ahead and figured I was maybe in 20th? It was strung out but not crazily so, there were still packs to catch. Twist the throttle, stay on the whip and get done what I can. Someone told me I was in 11th at some point, I think with two to go. It seemed like the top 5 were in a knot pretty far ahead, probably out of reach, but there was still passing to do. Got by two guys, and then it took a long time to get the next guy. Halfway through the last lap, I got to Brian from DCMTB and passed him, whereupon he said 'you're going great, stay on it, man'. Aren't we supposed to be like clubbing each other in the head? Nice dude.

So as it turns out 7th was as good as it gets, and I'm pretty happy with it. It's only masters b but things started making a lot of sense last weekend and now the puzzle is really starting to take shape. My dumbassery cost me the chance to really be there, but I can see riding at the very front of a race like that.

Bonus point for only one guy passing me all race - Shane McCready. He had a rocket shoved up his ass. Wow. Nice pedaling man.

Everyone else on the team showed me up again. A win, a second, a third, and a fifth.

Another bonus point was that even after jinxing myself by posting about gluing tubulars, all of the many tires I glued that were used today stayed on no sweat. These included a guy who'd rolled a tire in EVERY race this year until we built him a FSWCX and I glued it, and poor Pierce who fd up his valve core somehow, so I loaned him an RFSW rear to replace it. He rolled his front (that I didnt glue). Jeebus.

I think I'm psyched for Schooley Mill next week. From what I saw as a spectator last year, I'll like it.

Stayed tuned for the photos of my endo.

Empty Hospital

2011-11-01T08:22:00.002-04:00

A wise man named Fat Albert once told a misbehaving friend that he was 'like school in the summertime - no class.'. I am sometimes like an empty hospital - no patience (sic). This manifests in a couple of ways. Micro - at the beginning of races when I tear ass to try and get to the front of races instead of steadily picking through the field. Macro is that I'm anxious to get better results. My basis for comparison is a little skewed since someone in my family is a far better empty hospital than I am. Seriously no patients (sic).

There's not enough left in the season to affect a whole lot, in terms of training and fitness, which makes things a bit anti-climactic. It's pretty much just store it away as intel for next year and get a better headstart on it. Not hard to do when you are putting your bike together the night before the third or fourth weekend of the season. I gladly take that bullet for this year, though, since we came up with a pretty exceptional bike as a result of taking the extra time.

Life on our street is like Mayberry. We gave out like 6 huge bags of candy. Kids are funny. If you give a handful of candy to one kid, and that handful happens to contain 4 pieces, and then another kid gets a handful with 3 pieces, the kid who got shorted will expect you to realize what's going on and make amends, or will just take matters into his/her hands and correct. This happened several times. Also, parents absolutely hate how much candy we were giving out. Sugar buzz 'r' us. Trying to get wheels built with the doorbell going off every 8 seconds just wasn't happening.

So back to the cross thing, I'm been struck by how basically steady a lot of people's results are despite the huge volume of variables - courses, weather, rough weeks at work, bad start positions, etc - and I think I'm starting to understand this a bit better. I've fortunately been on a generally upward trend as I figure out how the fluck to race cx races, but I expect some big variations along the learning curve. Two forward, one back. I hope I can keep it that net positive for awhile.

It seems like there's more of a rage for discs now. I think it's entirely artificial. No one's talking about the logistical pain in the ass that is having discs. Get a new disc bike and keep your old one as a pit bike? That's great but each needs totally separate wheels, and we'll see what else diverges in time (brifters, tire treads, who knows what else). If the gear is all aimed at the pro level "this is the ultimate solution" end of things, it's going to kill the average player. This is a big part of why I am generally anti pro in so many sports. Pro windsurfing killed windsurfing. Pro sailing is fuckingup sailing pretty well. I don't like the trend of these things.

Kinder, Gentler Kross

2011-10-30T21:45:00.002-04:00

Today's weather was a wonderful surprise. After yesterday, visions of BCA menaced me all night. I think we had every piece of truly warm cycling gear packed and ready. Waking up and seeing the car encased in ice didn't help, but soon enough the dial went all the way through "doesn't suck" to "sort of nice" to "beautiful fall day."

The course was another story. Mud bog after mud bog littered the serpentines early in the lap, followed by a huge mud pit after the barriers, closing with a mud pond crossing at the end of the lap. Lots of guys broke out their mountain bikes for the day, which was looking pretty attractive during the pre-ride. Whatever.

Another race, another crap spot on the grid, this time 48th - 10th or 11th row somewhere. Shocker, big crash on the pavement in the beginning, I hope everyone's okay, and then someone near the front chatched the first serpentine and we were barely on the grass before I was giving my bike a lift and running. I hate running. Somehow I managed to pass some guys, but once again the front of the race was leaving town. I don't have any clue where I was after the first lap, only that I was well past "in the red" and fully into the purple trying to get up to where the real race was happening.

There was a lot of good racing going on from like 20th forward. At one point Dr. Todd and I were moving along really well when he fell over on a root in a 180. I tried to punch it hard to further the gap to the group chasing us, but the effort of getting up into the race was starting to tell. At that point I think there were two laps left, and I think I was in 6th but maybe 5th. Good barriers, good blast through the uphill mud pit, good switchbacks, and then into the lake. A guy I was lapping got chucked sideways (in that thing, it happened), and then stopped. Right in front of me. Fortunately I landed on my feet. Unfortunately I was going zero, watching the pack that had been behind me grind away. Merde.

11th at the finish. I might have been psyched if you told me before the race that I'd be 11th. As it was, not so much. I think in going batshit crazy on the first lap of all these races in order to get out of my crapola grid spots (which are entirely my fault - I registered late for almost everything and haven't raced the same field twice so whatever points I get instantly go to waste), I'm playing too many face cards early. I find myself fading late in the races. Even without my Superfly Snuka move in the mud pond, I was leaking oil pretty bad. Partly mental, as I caught myself thinking that I liked where I was and that's a bad thing. Got to keep trying to pass. That said, it's pretty cool that I feel like I've got at least a handle on some things. My first season's going pretty well, and it's fun as hell.

The best things about cross so far are that I'm pretty positive I'm going to go way faster on the mountain bike next year, and that it's really teaching me to be a lot more aggressive and comfortable with the argy-bargy. My bars have been seen in tight places they'd never have gone into a short bit ago. It's also intense, which is good for me, and pretty much just plain fun as shit. The bad part is that holy crap does it beat the snot out of your stuff. I pretty much have to strip the family fleet and regrease bbs and headsets and all manner of stuff this week. That's kind of a pain.

My 11th turned out to be the WAY outlier bad result from the team (even my household) on the day. Pitted for Paul, and watched a really creepy set of circumstances happen. Let's just say there seem to be a lot of good sports in the masters elite, but they are not universal. D-baggery afoot. The course tape and stakes aren't just a good suggestion - they're the law.

A bunch of photos posted on the November facebook page. Nothing too stunning, I didn't really get a chance to get out onto the course.

Maybe Patapsco next weekend, and definitely Sander.

Double It

2011-10-23T21:11:00.002-04:00

Even when the race is in DC, it's an early morning when you're going to do the 8:30 C race. Cold and dark. Did some pre-riding to warm up, then went to my spot on the grid - in 85th spot. There were quite a few crashes in the prologue, which I sliced and diced and slammed on the brakes to avoid. Moving up through the first lap was certainly doable, but there's no time for recovery when there are that many guys to pass. One guy from Bike Works was really good at the running sections and we must have passed and repassed each other 20 times. My moment of the race came in the section before the pits when I took the sweeping left hander crazy fast and went through a big pack of guys. Sometime after, people in our tent told me I was in 5th. The top 3 were pretty far ahead, 4th was maybe catchable if I put on my red cape but the effort of the first lap took its toll. 80 dudes passed and fifth for the race, but I was only 6th in the "who passed the most people" challenge. I think the Bike Works guy won it - he wound up 2 behind me but had a really high number.

1/2/3/4 Masters at Granogue was just a bit harder than the C race today.

The 3/4 race was a bit harder than the 4 race. I rarely double up on races, but I need the time on the track so I did it. Some good friends were in the race and though my legs were a bit spent from the morning, I still wanted to ride well. Couple of crashes in the prologue, and generally much faster pedaling of the bicycles than in the C race. When you start in 113th place, the front of the race gets away from you a little bit. Maybe a lot. Or a ton. All of the practice makes a big difference, and though the rate of passing was way slower, it was happening. Made it from 113th on the grid to 45th, exactly mid field of the people who got scored. Not great, not bad.

2-0 vs crossresults.com predictions on the day, and a grand total of 148 kills on the day, so that was pretty cool.

Kinder Kross next.

Granogue

2011-10-17T07:02:00.011-04:00

Bonedeth guy.
The Elites took the corner out of the tower runup psychotically fast. I couldn't believe this guy kept it upright. As I was lying on the ground directly in the path, that made me very happy.

Granogue Masters 1-2-3-4 was about as hard of a race as I’ve ever done on the road or mountain biking. It was fast, the course is challenging with few spots for recovery, and I made a few unforced errors. Nothing like jumping into the deep end of the pool for your second cross race. WTF?

At the start I was pretty inspired by what I’d just seen, so decided to hold back in the melee that was going to be about 100 riders (although the results on site showed far far fewer than that - they called up every number, and at #86 on the grid I was in good position to see just exactly how many people were there) storming through the paved section prior to the finish line, and then go pretty well balls out until I finished or fell down dead.

The first two laps were okay, with my “in process” skills at getting on and off the bike tested by being in such close proximity to so many other dudes. Tons of shoulder contact with other riders, more than in any race I’ve done - road, mountain or cross. Good and bad moments, but the general trend was upward, passing people. The only turn I sucked at was the one at the top of the course, around the tower. That one usually got me, the rest were actually pretty good for me.

Usually I like to take SportLegs before a race, and yesterday I forgot. I think they help, but I’m not sure. I also like to use breathe right strips since my sinuses pretty much gurgle and try to suffocate me when I’m riding. Forgot to do both of those yesterday. I also had my second ever (apart from flats) mechanical yesterday when I inadvertently readjusted my seat’s tilt (for much much much the worse) when I landed too far aft on it on a remount. A saddle with the nose tilted skyward is far from ideal in a cross race, as most of my day was spent trying to avoid a test ride of Mr. Garrison’s personal transport machine. The old SLR seemed to develop a serious crush on me, and it's aggressive when it’s in heat like that. Of course it’s bi-polar, as when it’s not trying to penetrate you and you are just trying to have a somewhat normal cuddling session with the thing, it has no interest and is trying to dump you onto your rear wheel. I didn’t prefer this.

So I dropped a bunch of places when this happened, and then heard a noise I didn’t much like - “4 to go.” WTF? I was on my third lap. Seven laps of that shit? Seven laps?!?!? On course unforced error #2, my joie de vivre and generally buoyant mien took a severe turn upon hearing that. I had no interest in fending off the amorous advances of my saddle, hereinafter referred to as Pepe Le Pew, for four more laps. My quads and back were getting the shit kicked out of them through the whole not having a saddle thing. Excuses, everyone’s get them. The good thing was that I didn’t bail, which at one point I thought I might.

Anyhow, some guys would really crack hard and I’d pass them, but generally I was slowly letting guys go by one by one. I’d guess that at one point I was riding in 40th, which I’d have been ecstatic with as a finish, on that course in that field in my second ever cx race, starting from 86th. Ecstasy was not to be.

My last lap (I got lapped just before the pit on the leader’s final lap, so I only had to do 6 of the 7) had my best moment, although you wouldn’t think it was a “best” moment. I haven’t wiped out yet, and in fact while practicing cornering on Thursday evening I was chiding myself “why don’t you fall over every once in a while?” So through my least favorite turn around the tower, Paul lapped me. Inspired to stay with him, I regained momentum and started the chase. The next turn is a left hand sweeping off camber that tightens up on itself as you go. A hard turn, but one which could be taken with good pace if the pace was matched with skill. I had a great line and was hauling ass, catching right up to Paul. Unfortunately my ass was also sliding off the seat and into my rear tire, so it wasn’t a huge surprise that I low sided it with a big old thud. That summed it up pretty well, but I was actually wicked psyched to biff it, just not being a total puss for once.

There’s a laundry list of shit that I need to get better at if I’m ever going to crawl from the gutter at cross, summarize it by saying “pretty much everything needs to improve.” The big benefits were that I rode a race that required me to go outside of my comfort zone in terms of speed and proximity for the first several laps, and then outside of my comfort zone in terms of being shot for the last couple of laps, most of it while dealing with a pretty seriously effed up seating situation. That ought to make next week’s B masters race seem like a cake walk. Actually not but I’ll tell myself that’s the case.

I had to be at work at 2am this morning so we couldn’t stay too late, but we saw the UCI Women’s race and the first few laps of the UCI Men’s race. Women, fast. Dudes, holy effing shit. It’s like a herd of buffalo, the SOUND of that race is going to stay with me for a long time. And they wipe the hell out, often. First lap a guy overcooked the turn out of the downhill after the tower runup and slid through a stake, nearly taking out like 12 people. No big deal. Those guys have big brass ones to go the way they do. Mad respect. Just holy shit.

Apparently Mike and I are pretty good at picking frames. Paul loves his, got a sick result (6th in Masters) in a crazy talented field, first race on the bike. There was another excellent result achieved by a teammate earlier in the day, so the bikes aren’t slowing anyone down. There was another really funny thing that we found out about the bike but discretion is the better part of valor. Let me just say that paint can be expensive indeed.

Next up DCCX.

Holy Crap Am I Old

2011-10-06T12:19:00.005-04:00

Our kits are cooler than yours. (photo by Suzie Hayward)

I say that not only because I have a birthday in the not too distant future, which through the magic of "CX Racing Age" means that Willard Scott will be showing up at my doorstep with balloons and cake any minute now. No, the primary manifestation of my geriatricity is the fact that I've been stooped over and hobbling around like Methuselah himself all week. Why?

Cross practice, that's why. Have I done 100 dismounts and remounts in the last few days? Easily. Does each dismount push a little dagger into one's hip sockets and all the connector tissue and muscle and other biological type shit that's at the top of your leg? Yup. Do I have a burgeoning case of shin splints (or maybe stainless bar splints, since most of my shin is currently composed of stainless bar)in my right leg? Uh huh, I've had the sucker wrapped with Ace bandages all week. Does my lower back kill from grinding up super steep stuff in 39x26 instead of 32x32 or whatever I would do it on on my mountain bike? Sure.

Pair of Aces

To the positive, I do quite enjoy riding cross bikes. I wasn't sure I would like it this much, but I do. Love the skill aspect, love the slight stupidity aspect, love not being on the road. It's fun.

Gotta go, Willard Scott's at the door. Remind me - I need new tennis balls for my walker.

Apples

2011-10-02T22:27:00.002-04:00

Today, for the first time since July (I think - depending on when the Fair Hill mtb race was), I raced bikes.

I had a ball.

It being my first cx race, my goal was simple - that no one with a higher number than mine should beat me. But for one guy (some psycho went from 67th on the grid to 5th or something), I accomplished this. My kill total was 30 something. I was pleased.

The day was a lot of fun. Some people have REALLY fast cx bikes. I like ours a lot. Like a ton. Since I didn't have any practice to speak of except for 90' yesterday, I made myself not go too hard since I don't want to get into a bunch of bad habits. Me cross-eyed = bad habits. Except for being The Worst Out Of Everyone All Day at getting back on my bike (a product of a traumatic first go round yesterday), It wasn't bad on that score.

Cross makes your hands get real tired. Weird.

Our household laundry detergent bill became a serious consideration this weekend. Mud Everywhere.

Pond's Good For You...

2011-09-26T14:58:00.004-04:00

It's such a clean release.
Stud
Oh, so this is the finish then, huh? Damn. You sure? F.

Seriously, People...

2011-09-11T20:23:00.002-04:00

Sometimes, you're going to get passed by women. Today I did about 65 miles with two women, who between them have won about 15 races this year, had their picture on Cyclingnews.com (for a good reason, even), and won a pantload of prize money. You think maybe if any of the dudes who acted like complete twats today knew any of that, that they would still have acted the way they did?

Yup.

Getting passed by a woman means absolutely nothing. Nothing good, nothing bad, nothing indifferent. Nothing. Getting passed by a woman, and then flailing on your bicycle in order to get back in front of the group containing said women, only to get 50' in front of said group and then completely blowing up and probably ruining the rest of your ride means something. It means you're an ass.

I'm nowhere near the rider that either of the women I was with are, yet I could do 100 rides with dudes and have the same general setup as today and never once have what happened today happen. Do the same ride with chicks 100 times, and what happened today happens 100 times. Actually it happens a lot more than that, since it happened a couple of times today.

Totally stupid.

Otherwise, what a nice ride all around. Beautiful weather, smooth riding, just a great time. I wish it was always like that.

I'm going to get my ass kicked at cross. Holy crap will this not be pretty.

Dead Cat Bounce

2011-09-07T08:05:00.002-04:00

There are a couple of phrases that always crack me up. Dead cat bounce is one of them. It refers to a short term uptick in market prices during a prolonged drop. I really have no idea what's going on with the market these days. Our 401k had an incredible performance the 12 months prior to August, and has since given up maybe a third of those gains. I rebalanced a bit away from energy since it was basically exactly tracking the broader market, and went deeper into the world of PIMCO total returns. I was wildly tempted to give the whole pile to PIMCO, as if nothing else it will probably erode more slowly there than in any other paradigm where I don't have the facilities to actively manage it. That just sounded stupid on principle, though, so I didn't.

The day job has been just peachy lately. There is a phase that's ending soon, but not soon enough, it's just been a smorgasbord of hours, pressure, and stupidity that even I who've lived through many of these times struggle to wrap my head around. I thought "Labor Day" weekend wasn't supposed to be "Days of Labor" weekend, but this year it was. I have to get so much better than I am about taking days off.

We're moving down the street in a couple of weeks. Pretty excited about it. It means I am all but a lock to miss Charm City which I'd registered for and had hoped to do but since I've not yet built a cross bike up, nor ridden one, and have been scraping by on what might generously be called maintenance workouts, it's probably all for the better. If circumstances allow I'm going to take most if not all of the week of the 19th off in order to deal with moving, take a bunch of the November heat off of Mike, deal with cross stuff, generally decompress from a really stupid period of work, enjoy some mountain bike rides, and maybe learn how not to fall on my face 100% of the time when making any sort of cross moves.

That may be my personal dead cat bounce.

Season In Pictures

2011-08-20T22:45:00.013-04:00

In hindsight, road season ended at Lost River. We wanted it to end at Appalachia, but that didn't turn out. Life gets in the way. Still had a nice ride today, a really nice ride. Now we have a few more weeks of fun and games with mountain bikes and working on rebuilding base (Blue Mountain today showed just how tragic the base currently is), and learning how to ride a CX bike proper, and then into more races. Seem to be racing less and less, but focusing more and enjoying those races that I actually do ever more. Had an interesting discussion with the missus about racing goals for next year. She pulled out a goodie. Mine are hills and dirt. Dirt on bikes that you should race on dirt. Hers not. New kit these days, my first ever crack at kit design. Have to say, I'm pretty awful psyched with how it came out. Somehow the transformation that started with my mind, continued with crayons and some very South Park looking computer drawings, and culminated with the magic of Mariola at Verge, came out pretty much exactly precisely what I imagined. Unreal. I love it. You might not. In the immortal words of Smokey, "I don't give a f..."

Remember how awful last winter was? It looks beautiful in pictures. Didn't seem so beautiful when everybody had to walk like 90% of Snotcycle.

The Bike Doctors came out of the blocks with a great promotion at Black Hills, then had a ridiculous year of results. I like those guys.

Retrospectively, this was the first long pointless but pretty and fun ride of the silly season.

Lost River made it successfully through year 3. Mike Brindza makes my wall of fame for a great promotion. Still love the event. Raced it for the first time. Not as much love for that part. Shit that was painful.

If I never race again, this will have been the pinnacle of my enjoyment of the sport. Killington 2011 fucking ruled it.

We started off a little weak on our dirt program but it's ended solidly. Recently, post Patapsco. We didn't mean to be d-bags, a rain storm just popped up.

New kit.

Good Thing He Can Swim

2011-08-17T14:05:00.002-04:00

One of my best friends was on this boat. I wrote to ask if he was all right. Absolutely in character, his response was "yep, all dry and all good. Fuck me. Don’t need to do that again!"

http://www.sail-world.com/Australia/Americas-Cup-sailors-recount-Rambler-capsize-in-Rolex-Fastnet-Race/87391

Bring Out Your Dead, Again

2011-08-05T13:52:00.002-04:00

This is a cut and paste of a post I wrote on late fall/early winter of 2007. My wife and I were recently having a discussion vis a vis housing that made me think of this post. Actually it made me think of another one, but I couldn't find that one. I found this one and read it, and, well, I'll post it again today.

I feel 100% exactly the same about everything in this post, only more so about the last sentence. Back then I was riding my bike, but I wasn't riding MY bike.

Bring Out Your Dead
Slight Warning – Towards the end of today’s post I kind of went into raving lunatic mode and as such today’s language isn’t exactly G-rated.

It’s like a funeral march. The Dow lost 237 points today. It now stands solidly under 13,000. From the comments I read, people are selling on all the bad news about housing, credit, economic indicators, etc and looking for good news from retail this holiday season. Well here’s the news, kids – there’s going to be no good news from this holiday season. The retail season is going to suck because people have no money and might actually finally be getting the clue that spending every dime that you’ll earn until you are 103, assuming you get every raise and bonus that you hope for until then, just isn’t that freaking cool. They are already calling this the “trade down” year – when people are trading down one tier of stores from where they shopped last year.

The promotion around Black Friday was unbelievably thick – even if you were under a rock you couldn’t miss it. A lot of stores opened up at ridiculous hours on Friday morning and had ludicrous sales during those early hours to entice people in. There were tons of reports of foreigners coming in to buy the big bargains that our enfeebled currency provides – the highest ever recorded number of single day visits from Canada to the US was Friday, and with all of these things going on, Black Friday was good but hardly great. The general consensus among retail analysts is that there will be thin to no growth in same store sales this season over last year. And to an economy and market that prizes growth above all else (even - and sometimes especially - profitability), this is death.

And here's the real whopper of the week. This housing credit thing? It's going to seem like a sunshiny day at the park once the credit card crisis hits. How do you think people have been bankrolling themselves as we strolled along into this lovely disaster?

You may wonder why I seem to cheer on all of this mayhem and decline in the market. Am I some sort of misanthrope, who gets off on the suffering of others? I don’t think so. I might be, but I don’t think so. Here are a few things which I definitely do hate:
1. Cheap disposable crap a la pretty much everything in Wal Mart
2. People who define themselves and others by their possessions
3. Selfishness, not only in the sense of greed but also in the sense of being unaware or uncaring about the effects one’s actions will have on the greater good.
4. Lack of self awareness, specifically the thought that “the rules don’t apply to me.”
5. Lack of accountability – “it was McDonald’s fault that I got fat.”
6. People always looking for the easy way out or in.
In many ways, I think that the average American has embodied most if not all of these tendencies in the last few years. For all the talk after 9-11 and how it would change us all for the better, it’s done nothing. We are shallower, greedier and less concerned about our fellow Americans and fellow man than we have ever been. At the same time, more people expect more to be done for them than ever before. Think about the people who bought houses that they should have known they couldn’t afford. Now there’s all this talk about helping keep them in that house. I’m not heartless, I don’t want to see people on the street, but come the hell on. They were the ones that drove the housing price dial to where it was going to pop. They were the ones who added 1,000 square feet to the size of the average American house in 15 years. They were the ones who needed granite countertops and stainless appliances. And now they can’t pay their heating bill because they got the shitty insulation and windows because who cares about shitty insulation and windows, and why are we letting the price of oil get so high, anyway?

Another aspect of America that I can’t stomach lately is Wall Street. I read today that traders were really looking for the Fed to do something. Like cut interest rates. Between meetings. Don’t they realize that our currency currently has about as much value as rubles did circa 1995? Are they high? The way we’ve handled our hegemony in the world’s economy is freaking staggering and amounts to little other than unintended financial terrorism. Of course, it is a suicide bomb that we’ve launched.

Want more? Executive pay. We reward CEO’s so highly, for such poor management, that we deserve what they give us. Of course they are smart enough to deliver exactly those returns which will yield the best financial outcomes for themselves. And then when we realize that they are either unable or unwilling to bring about the results that the board WANTED instead of the ones they ENCOURAGED, they get the fattest golden parachutes that anyone could ever have imagined. And all of these arguments that these guys drive the engine of the US economy and they create all of this value in the market – bull! Look where we are now. Can I send each one of them a bill for where we are now?

Finally, on to Chuck Schumer. I hate this guy. In defending the tax scheme that allows privat equity fund operators’ income to be taxed at the capital gains rate rather than according to income tax rates, this idiot said that a) these people put so much value into the American economy and b) if they were taxed as though their income was income, it would discourage them from doing what they do. My response – great, let them quit. I don’t know too many other places where they’re going to earn $36 million dollars a year, taxed or not. Also, please make them quit – dismantling companies and sending their jobs and tax revenue overseas isn’t exactly doing great stuff for America.

In short, we as a whole deserve everything we are about to get in the next two years. Maybe you don’t, I don’t think I do, but here it comes. The one thing you can be totally sure of is that the people who deserve it the most will be bitching about it the loudest.

On a slightly brighter topic, my bike is freaking awesome. I love riding it.

The Scientific Method

2011-07-25T14:45:00.002-04:00

The demise of the front rim on my new mountain bike provides an opportunity to start with a clean slate on tubeless setup techniques. The motivation is two-fold: first, to experience the relatively maintenance and trouble free world of a properly set up tubeless wheelset, and second to develop as foolproof a protocol as I can for setting up our cross wheels tubeless. There are lots of advantages to this.

So first step was to do a shitload of reading and YouTube video watching and such. Then decide what materials to use. Then build/install said materials. Then ride and test. At then end of it all I should be a lot smarter about a bunch of the equipment involved in the whole shebang.

First, the gear:
Front Rim - Stan's NoTubes ZTR Arch 29er
Front Spokes - Sapim Race, 2.0-1.8 DB
Front Nipples - Sapim Alloy
Front Hub - Specialized Hi/Lo (stock from Stumpjumper)
Front Spoke Tension - 85kgf rotor side
Front Rimstrip - Stan's NoTubes Plus Four
Front Tire - Geax Saguaro 2.2 regular folding
Front Valve - Stan's NoTubes MTB valve
Front Tape - 21mm Yellow Tape, with substrate layer(s) of Velox as needed
Rear Wheel - DT Swiss X450 (stock from Stumpjumper)
Rear Rimstrip - Stan's NoTubes Plus Four
Rear Tire - Maxxis CrossMark 2.0 regular folding
Rear Valve - Stan's NoTubes MTB valve
Rear Tape - 21mm Yellow Tape, with substrate layer(s) of Velox as needed
Rear Spoke Tension - 85kgf drive side

All of the Stan's stuff will be coming in a bit, and it's going to take me a bit to get the wheel built. Meantime I'm scraping and scrounging and using tubes and whatever else.

My main priority is to burp-proof the tires, and get them rolling reliably down to whatever pressure seems beneficial.

Stay tuned.

Lost River, Lost Cookies, Lost Cause

2011-07-25T14:01:00.002-04:00

The first time up Jenkins Hollow, the guy next to me, who is having a pretty incredible year of results, sounds like he's in the middle of a breach birth. I'm feeling none too spectacular. Normally, when a course is hard like that, I'll sort of keep a running tab of how many of the hard parts there are left to go, and how much they are hurting, to figure out how hard I can afford to ride. Jeff Cup this year, the "hard parts" were like non-existent so it was pretty much do what you want. The first day of Killington was great like that - clearly it needed to be metered, but there was breathing room. Saturday morning was like looking seeing a highway sign that say "Next Gas 65 Miles" and the "miles to empty" thing on your dashboard says "15." Just no way, Jose.

By the time we got back to 259, the moto ref pulled along side and said "there's only 10 of you left in the group." There might have been 27 or 28 guys at the start, but entire teams had been dropped in just one lap. Crazy stuff. The next trip up Jenkins came the call I just couldn't answer. I tt'd my ass off, and got so close to back in I could taste it. I passed the follow car. Bombed the Dispanet descent, saw that 3 (oh, yeah, the 10 man race totally exploded just as I got dropped) do indeed go a lot faster than one on that but kept it very close, and then they caught the scent of blood ahead on 259 and boom smoked up ahead. I could barely see them on Jenkins the next time up. The ultimate hurt was the two man TT that caught me on 259 a while later. Blah!

Anyhow, great work NCVC and Mike B and Jay and Audrey keeping this sucker alive. Excellent party, cold cocktails, etc. Got some good pictures of stuff I saw while riding my bike out there over the weekend. Will post later.

WTF With The Flats?

2011-07-20T22:55:00.002-04:00

Final W@W this evening. I was psyched to try and go under 50:00 for the race and to generally do well. The start of that race just sucks for me, and I suck for it. Entered the single track nearly last. Passed two or three, and then a couple more on the real short fire road section. My single track riding is much improved. Then passed all save one of the group I was in the caboose of through the creekside part. Went into the next single track all psyched up, and the tire burped all the air out. JHC!! The whole race passed me back. Then Women's sport passed me. Then the Clydes. And I was last of everyone. Couldn't even see anyone. Could see that my front wheel was crazy taco'd. Great. Good thing disc brakes don't care if your wheel is true, but it is slightly unnerving in turns.

Blogs are an historically poor venue for behavior commentary, so I will make two somewhat oblique comments: courteous requests to pass are generally treated with returned courtesy as well as urgency, and when you are the guy wondering why everyone who you wanted to pass was being a jerk about it, the problem is likely not "them". Don't be a whiney twat, it generally works poorly.

I passed a lot of people but I'm sure I was last in my field. Spending 7:00 plus changing a tire'll do that. The remainder of my first lap was quite fast, my second lap was very good too. My third lap wasn't spectacular but I did spend quite a bit of time waiting to pass people, and it wasn't awful. It was almost 17:00, though, and that's not fast enough.

So I have to figure this wheel/tire issue out. The front wheel needs to be totally redone a la how I did the rear. Then get the tubeless running right. The tire's a loose fit on the rim, so I'll try a Stan's liner in it. Burping es no bueno.

Man do I hate the start of that course. Jesus. And the people racing there this weekend at Cranky Monkey get to do it every lap? Blech, no thanks.

Gone Flat

2011-07-17T21:42:00.004-04:00

For a number of reasons, some legit, some defensible, and some dumb, we* bailed on Coppi. Who knows? Still excited for Lost River. Very much so. No signs of anything to keep me from finally racing 'my' race this year. Instead of Coppi we did a few laps at Fountainhead. The last time, we tallied a broken chain, two flats, and one bad crash in just one lap. Maybe better this time?

(* a note on "we": no, i am not that guy who refers to himself as "we." instead i am lucky enough to have a wife who enjoys many of the same things that i do. normally, "we" will refer to the two of us. sometimes, as with saturday's trip to fountainhead, it will refer to more than the two of us. generally i think it's pretty crappy when you make specific references to people on a blog. sometimes i do it to promote some person's exceptional effort or accomplishment, but generally i shun it. but take saturday for example - a friend joined us at fountainhead. who am i to tell the world how he spent several hours of his saturday? so that's what's up with that.)

It didn't look good when the first flat came 5' in. Maybe sealant would deal with it? No. 5' later our first tubeless to tube transition took place. My hand pump actually did a nice job and didn't take forever, even in a high volume 29er tire. I'm going to go out on a limb and say I was riding far better than I ever have, committing to lines, leaning into turns, staying loose, all good. And then it was my turn to flat. On the front. On a rocky downhill off camber. So I wound up in a heap. S-Works sidewalls are terrible. One lasted 2 rides, one lasted about 6. Tube install #2, and it took me a good long while to get my mojo back. Malo. Then I figured out my dérailleur hanger was bent. Double malo. Got it somewhat straight to complete history's 2nd slowest Fountainhead lap.

(a note on product comments: it's hard for me to comment on products because the simple fact is that i can't be seen as impartial. in this particular case, the failure of the tires has been exceptional and noteworthy. one tire lasted less than four hours of riding before getting a sidewall cut. of those 4 hours, quite a bit less than half were spent on trails, and tire pressure was adequate. when it failed, it was being run tubeless, but it is a tubeless ready tire - it says so right on it. i realize that the s-works line is race specific and tilts heavily in favor of performance over durability, but this was a noteworthy lack of durability. that said, stuff happens, the right incident can kill any tire so i reserved judgement. the very next time at fountainhead, a trail on which i've never before had a flat, the other tire suffered a sidewall cut. this tire might have had 5 hours of on trail use. so unless you are the kind of person who is able to afford more $15 per hour per tire, and is willing to suffer the inconvenience of changing flats with astonishing regularity, my opinion is that the s-works lk is a poor choice. i'm a retail customer on this deal - i bought a specialized stumpjumper expert from a shop. yes it was a '10 closeout and i got a ridiculous deal, but a deal that anyone in the world could have gotten. my timing was good. so far it's had a sram chain that maybe lasted 3 hours (chalk it up to "shit happens" i guess), the stock tires have been a complete fail, both wheels have needed complete rebuilds since they were both built worse than any wheels i've seen - and which has been a startlingly consistent, even unanimous comment on these wheels, and the rear avid brake has been at the shop for over a week. it started leaking fluid after three rides. the shop from which i bought it has been terrible in their response to this particular issue. the best i can do is a slack-jawed "uhhh, can you like, call back later when the guy who knows about this is here?" despite all of this, i really like the bike in general. but if i didn't have the skills and inclination to repair and then change the chain, to replace both tires, to rebuild both wheels, and to take a brake from my old bike and put it on the new one, i would at this point have owned the bike for going on three weeks and been able to use it for three days. i don't care who you are, that is a totally deficient consumer experience and totally emblematic of everything that mike and i are trying to unfuck about what you have to go through to get a good bike for a reasonable price.)

The second lap was great. Fast, good, fun. Our plans for a third were scuttled by the slowness of lap 1.

The Maxxis Crossmark I now have on the rear seems great. It's done a Wakefield race, the Fair Hill race, this trip to Fountainhead, and some other trail riding. Occasionally, I find it pretty easy to spin out on steep stuff or going over water bars or whatever. A rider with better skills would have less issues with this. It's manageable, and since it is a cross country tire made for low rolling resistance, this is a tradeoff that I knew about going in. I will say that the speed of the combination of S-Works LK front and Crossmark rear has been borderline excessive. At Fair Hill, my speed advantage on less technical sections was nothing short of profound. But since my engine greatly exceeds my skills, I feel like using a more secure but perhaps slower tire would at this point be a good trade. So I will try either Maxxis Ikon or Geax Saguaro on the front. They are both xc tires, but both have pretty aggressive tread. Both S-Works tires are now internally booted (inner tube pieces glued to the inside of the tire with tubular glue) and will go on the bench to be kept as spares in case of emergency.

But those practice drills, they make a huge difference. Need to build the CX bike and get started on it.

Fair Hill Challenge

2011-07-10T16:39:00.003-04:00

Our November cx project has me thinking all about dirt. So much so that when I went out on the road bike on Friday it felt really weird. We'd done a bunch of road riding on the long weekend thanks to the rain, but then it was straight back onto the mountain bike. Friday was more of a check in on fitness, with a 1x40' interval at about 95% of what I hoped my FTP still was, and was extremely pleasantly surprised. But I'd had big plans to do tons of mtb riding and racing this year and I just went cold on it. Did the one Wakefield and was like "this is senseless on this bike" and got the new one and have been making up for lost time since. But it's well over a year since I did a non-Wakefield mtb race.

The Wakefield races have been helpful. Time on the bike, especially at speed, is great. Even though I'm still losing a lot of time in tight turns, I clear everything with aplomb and am able to go very fast whenever things open up. Plus that shit is fun.

So today was Fair Hill, 18 miles focused on my weaknesses (as per the intel). On the (freaking wicked early) ride up, I was in a great state of mind, a good sign. My newly embraced and scientifically-backed tendency to hate warmups, I love. A quick spin pre-race, that's it. I no longer feel guilty for hating warmups, which is very liberating.

Unlike Wakefield, Fair Hill had a roadie friendly start - a quick blast on a fire road. I passed a few guys straight away to be in the group of 5 that was pulling away smartly. Then the woods came and the twists and turns started and oh did they twist and turn. Mama! Well, it was a lot better than it had been, but I was slipping back to the group behind. Then a bobble in a turn and I'm back in the fray. Lots of passing and being passed (more the latter) and then an open section and brrrrrrrrrraaaaaahhhhhhppppp back to the front group. Then, seriously, an hour and 12 minutes of tight tight tight single track. At some point my mood began to sour and I was like "seriously, we need a freaking fire road right about now, bishes". Guys would pass me just by being good at leaning into the turns and then whenever it would be straight for half a second I'd be thinking "now would be a great time to pedal faster, there, guy who just passed me".

Two guys were super aggressive about passing and were pretty obnoxious about it, which in all my (4 races, 2 of them Wakefields) previous races I'd never experienced. So my goal was to beat them. It was pretty interesting, since I was always able to keep them close enough that I'd either pass them or be right behind them every time the route opened up for 2 seconds. The first not that cool guy was riding another guys bumper and smacked into a tree. He was fine so I didn't feel bad having a chuckle at that. Then we had an open climb and I actually lost time to some guys and got passed by one or two. Then the climb continued and guys blew up, which I did not. I got enough gap to give myself some comfort zone through the next tight section. I still got passed, but it was at the end of the section. We got onto a fire road and I did my standard shift to the big ring and slam it deal, passed d-bag #2, and then we made a left onto road. Road? I didn't think we were finishing yet. Lock the fork and WAIL on it. Passed a group,who knows who was in what group, and one guy comes by into the finishing chute. Wow, done already?

11th out of 50 something starters. I'll take it, mostly because I rode really darn hard and had a ball.

Things that rule:
- 29ers. Totally sold. I'm working on totally fundamental drills and once I shore up some bad turning technique severe enough to be categorized as a character flaw, it's totally game on. I can win sport races when there's any amount of rouleur-type stuff. Downhills are so darn much faster on that thing, and on fast sections it's not even fair.
- Photochromatic glasses. One time I got a full blinding shot of sunlight in the forest and almost went off course. Apart from that, the things are totally ninja. They adjust instantly. Mine are Rudy Magsters. I love them.
- Chip timing. Results within 10 minutes of finishing.
- The on course shower. The water feeds were money but fornthe price of one "yes please" you could get soaked with a cold blast at the top of a climb. Aww yeah.
- Delaware Trail Spinners. Their race promotion game is TIGHT. Thanks everyone.
- The guy who won, he pantsed second by like a minute.
- Not warming up. Totally over that farce.

So, seriously, my goal has become to win one of these things. There's plenty of low hanging fruit in just growing balls and getting technique to lean into the corners. The effort profile matches my ability perfectly - you go rather uncomfortably to quite painfully hard for awhile and then recover. It feels like riding in a break. I love it.

Now we race on the road for the next month or so.

Can't Get Right

2011-07-06T22:42:00.002-04:00

I have a staggering case of poison ivy. This is related to the extensive amount of time I've spent mountain biking lately. All over my arms. It's pretty gross and really itchy. But the new bike is sweet and it's much easier to ride fast. The rear brake started to leak fluid so the brake from the old bike is on there until the shop fixes the new one. I blew out a sidewall on Saturday, and broke a chain. I also had to rebuild both wheels - the machine build was astonishingly bad. So the list of 'not quite right' to full on 'wtf' stuff is pretty long. You buy a real nice race bike (like real nice - so nice I feel like a complete dipshit showing up on it) you don't expect that kind of stuff. Oy.

So I raced at Wakefield tonight. My starting technique is poor. The start there is kind of unique. The passing opportunities are not ample. I made life harder for myself with a super stupid bobble. Then I started passing people. A few guys who got good starts and can go fast and can turn quickly got pretty far ahead, but my second lap was really fast. The last lap I was stuck in traffic and it was slow. The really fast guys go SO fast and are so smooth in the twists.

The thing I learned tonight is that my left turns are pretty flash but my right turns suck. Like suck balls suck. I don't know why.

I finished towards the tail of a bunch. Definitely had the gas to get by but no opportunity. At least not without being a chach. And then there was a huge gap behind. I'd be pretty psyched to be able to do this race every week but it's over next week. Bleh. Fair Hill Sunday. That'll be cool.

What Followed Me Home...

2011-06-30T08:44:00.006-04:00

Bike racing is a great sport for people who like to bang their heads against a wall, metaphorically and otherwise. Reston, as always, was well run, hard raced, and a lot of fun. We failed to bring home a top placing, but we did win all the primes. With just three of us and a bunch of "jeez how many freaking guys did you have in that race" (again, 3) comments, it's fair to presume that our aggression exceeded our capacity, but you know we came to race our bikes and we did.

Jay's been banging his head against the wall for a long ass time. He still gets after it. DJ's been banging his head against the wall for a shorter time. Both of these guys break through the wall with some regularity.

I got a 29er. It's really sweet. I'm claiming it as market research (in actual fact, it is market research, and in actual fact I am claiming it as market research on my next return). After 10 years on a bike that was never intended to deal with what I used it for from day one, and was a size too small in any case, WOW. Let's say that the best I ever rode on a mountain bike was 5.5. Last night, very first ride on the 29er, doing nothing to set it up other than getting the seat about in the neighborhood of the right height, I was maybe at 7. Way faster at everything. Easily cleaning stuff that I sometimes wouldn't bother trying previously. This is going to change mountain biking for me.

For my next trick, I get this little jewel built up and start hitting it hard. Looks like I will be spending a lot less money on sunblock and a lot more on dark colored riding socks. Yeah, I'm pretty psyched.

We are SPOILED

2011-06-18T18:47:00.003-04:00

So full disclosure, we didn't do the ToWC for reasons which included those other than a visit to the in-laws at the beach. We thought the whole coercion to leave work early on Friday to fight traffic on 270 and do Hagerstown and blow a pile of money on hotels or spend ridiculous time in the car all weekend and the prologue bit and the whole thing took what had generally been a darn near perfect race and painted a moustache on it. So we bailed and planned a visit to the beach and while we were here we might as well do a race. Called the Zeppelin Criterium.

Where even to begin...

The flyer had the ultra annoying "immediately after preceding race" note on each race's start time. Which kind of f's with you when the race preceding yours is cancelled. Without any notice. No sweat we were there in time. Where are the portajohns? THE portajohn was on a far corner of the course, a hefty walk away. It was beyond beyond. I'll just leave it at... full. Full. Back to reg table, which was self-serve. Weird. No license check, nothing. I was doing the 3 and then the 35 - immediately after. Fortunately they let us pre-ride. The tight corner was indeed tight and I thought maybe a bunch of guys I didn't know might have an issue with this section - 90 degree right, 90 degree left, 150 degree right. Then before the last turn you go through an intersection that had a corner to corner mogul at each end. Nasty - like easily crashing in a straight line nasty.

The gun goes and I go to the front to set up for the corner, and take it at pace. Some guy in the field bites it - a scene which would repeat itself many many times. In fact I was batting .10000, so I decided that my last lap strategy would be to lead through that corner, fast, and see what happened. It was too far too hold under normal circumstances, but the way people were cornering, who knows? Long story short I made my plan happen and wouldn't you know it no one went down. I got swarmed badly, fought back some, and got a reasonably lame finish. The big moral of the story from this race was that when you are the guy from out of town, you don't want to show any strength early. People were letting ANYTHING go, except anything that I was a part of. Got a couple of laps out of it with three guys once, until one went down in the corner (the other guy from that break would also DNF, bleeding, from that corner), but the race situation was weird. A kid from UMD won, good for him, he raced well.

Immediately, we lined up for 35+. I was a bit tired so decided to hang in a bit. No one crashed in the first lap so hooray! Next lap, the guy in front of me freaks himself out so bad in the corner that he coasts instead of sprints out of it. I get up beside him to be like "you let that HUGE gap open, now go close it.". He looks at me with dinner plate sized eyes and says "go on ahead.". WTF? The front of the field is in full cry, like 6 seconds ahead. I close the gap way down and give the wag to the guy behind. Nothing. And again. Nothing. So I loom back and say "come on, guy.". So he goes full attack and I'm on my own once again. He gets to the group soon enough but is exploded and pulls out. I hit the crazy crossing at Mach and ride a full scary nose wheelie kind of a long way and come down with a thud. Good thing I did a good glue job on the old tires, but I lose a step in the experience. The field is hauling. I'm catching slowly but it's not good. I close a lot through the zig zag, and am so nearly there when WHAM the stupid intersection gets me again. My rear wheel was about two feet in the air and even with my bars. I landed and bailed. I don't think I've ever dnf'd a crit before. Uggh.

The whiff lines up for the W123 and is riding great through a bunch of laps. There's one team with 5 ladies and another with 2. The rest is singles, so the race dynamic is WEIRD. Maybe 15 laps in, I'm near the critical corner watching, and boom a crash I can't see. A girl near the front overcooked the turn, the Mrs jumped onto the curb to miss it (pretty hot move, right?) and then jumps back onto the road. Her wheels must rule to take all that guff. But her front tire explodes so she drifts left with her hand up (she's like 2' from the curb to start) and a girl plows into her bars from behind. Down she goes. 2 seconds later I'm there and she's picking herself up. At first she thinks she's done but soon decides to take my front wheel and jump back in. Despite there still being two laps before free lap is over, they don't let her back in. She took too long. I've never taken a free lap so search me what the normal deal is but this seemed BS to me.

So after all was said and done we were thinking how lucky we are to race in MABRA with the racers, teams, officials, and promoters that we know and love. We all love to bitch and moan now and again, but we've got it so so good.

And Reston next week. Awww yeah. I f'ing love that race.

Clarendon Weekend

2011-06-13T11:52:00.003-04:00

So that was the famous Clarendon course. Based on years of hearing about it, well, it's not that I thought it wasn't a hard course, and I thought it was fun as shit, but I don't know I kind of expected maybe some psycho craziness. The filter that you should read that through is that I missed the break that had literally nearly every significant threat in it, that went on lap 3 or 4. I was picking daisies somewhere in about 50th when that went.

At about the time the break went, I started to figure out where and how to conserve energy and pick my spots. Turn 3 (the right hander) was key, just kill that turn and get right straight out of the turn, then roll the outside of turns 4 and 5, then take as many wheels as you wanted out of turn 5. You had to be a little aggressive prior to turn 1 but nothing that ever caused an issue. So it probably took me what like ten laps to get where I wanted to be, so at that point we had maybe 30 left? At some point I became aware that there were a lot fewer dudes in the race than there had been. Since there were two large teams that, thanks to the break, were gunning for a best case scenario of 9th or 10th, I figured if I put my oar in the water and showed that I still wanted to race for first, that they might work with that. Two - maybe three - things became immediately clear when I did that. I remember having the front of the chase through turn 5 but I think I took the lead through turn 3. In any case, I pounded it really hard up the finish straight, and that thing a break does when you're catching it - you know, getting closer? Yeah, that wasn't happening. So I took a quick look at the speedo - 28.6. Okay maybe I can go faster. Wow they still aren't getting any closer and how fast are we going now? An even 30. Okay we down to sticks and seeds here but what else can we throw on the fire? 31.2, at which point I saw them go through the turn 1 so fast that they nearly ALL wiped out. So it sure looked like we were racing for 10th at that point, but maybe someone else wants to keep this thing going, so I did the elbow wag out of turn 1. Nothing. Okay. Whatever. I've got a couple of shots left to take on this one, and I'd a heck of a lot rather finish in a small group fighting it out for low teens than sticking in the pack the whole time. I missed the break, shame on me for that, but let's make some lemonade out of this. I tried a couple of times solo and I followed Mike from Harley on one jump where I thought "that's the one," only it wasn't. Now that we seemed to be racing for 10th, everyone seemed really intent on racing for 10th.

Around then, Bryan from Haymarket made a great jump, paid the toll to get clear, and poured gas on the fire until it was going. It never really looked like he was going to get across, but he was making an excellent case for himself. He lasted a good few laps and if I'd made it up to him as anything better than a complete corpse and given him some tiny modicum of help... Coulda shoulda woulda. Missing the first break was pretty lame but not trying to get to Bryan will be my regret of this race. I don't know why I didn't. Lame.

Spent the rest of the day drinking all the beers I didn't drink in the runup to Killington, so now I've got to go back on the wagon. Had a lovely ride yesterday out in the hills. They were alive with the sound of music, and my head was alive with the sound of "wish I hadn't had 5 metric 40s yesterday." Pretty much suffered like a dog for every pedal stroke the entire day.

Killington Photos

2011-06-08T21:00:00.007-04:00

The Women's 3-4 kind of hammering on the road up to Plymouth. The Bonedeth guy put it best, when speaking of the P-1-2 race, an exchange with a team mate that went something like "uhhh, my computer's lying or something." "oh yea, why's that?" "it says we're going 28." "we are." "aren't we going uphill?" "we are." "well then this is going to suck." This road was all big ring, and fast, but it hurt. The break that I was in really established itself up this hill, and nearly disintegrated every time through the KOM spot. Actually, the last lap it did disintegrate at the KOM spot, much to my benefit.

What you can't see in this photo is the Long Trail Brewery, behind the tents. How badly I wanted to stop there so many times. On Saturday's course, you came down this section (but the wind was blowing uphill, against you). On Sunday's TT, you went up this section, but for my group (I was the 6th to last starter of the day), the wind was blowing downhill, against you. On Monday, we rode up it again, again into the wind. The 6 man break I was in at this point was going slightly faster than I'd done it in the TT, but it was awful. One guy wasn't doing much, one was doing nothing, and we were getting ever closer to a nasty ass finish climb.

A cool section, this is the right hand turn we made at Long Trail on Saturday, which dumped you onto a one lane bridge. I think this is the tail end of the main field of 4s.

Killington Peak. Monday's finish was pretty far up there, at the base of the K-1 chair.

Someday I will own this house. At the head of an awesome pond. Notice that the table is set. Future VT headquarters of November Bicycles.

Another view of the house. Their boathouse is in the foreground.

Vanquishing KLS

2011-06-05T19:34:00.002-04:00

Three of us caught absolutely raging cases of KLS (Killington Leg Syndrome) following last weekend's festivities. Symptoms include an inability to climb stairs, hold the mellowest of wheels, or walk. My symptoms reached a zenith on Thursday evening, when I thought it would be a wonderful idea to do the goon ride. What an f'd up experience that was. You've got some guys who are stupid strong, and the rest are not, so you wind up with 4 or 5 guys going bat shit crazy, and the rest feverishly avoiding pulls, struggling to stay on. What I was looking for was not on offer there, so I lined things out as well as I could before the hill and bugged.

Dusted off the mountain bike on Friday for a ride. It was nice to combine physical infirmity with technical incompetence. Really felt great after that.

The three KLS sufferers reconvened on Friday night for dinner. One of us was scheduled to race in a BIG race today. When I say BIG I mean BIG. REALLY BIG. Not a good time to have KLS. Well, you can read in far more significant media outlets than this how well she shook off her symptoms. BOOM goes the dynamite. Of course I take all the credit. Very inspirational speech.

The other two sufferers did not race against any world champions today, but we had a nice ride and seemed to be recovering nicely as well.

Killington Stage 3 - Redemption Song

2011-05-31T07:12:00.002-04:00

Stage 3 is a 60 mile loop featuring about a bazillion and sixty two feet of climbing, finishing at the base of the K-1 lift. The road up is a MONSTAH - it's not the main road, it's a far steeper side road.

New England guys are funny. Bonds and grudges are deep. Everyone knows everyone. It was fun to be the anonymous guy. In MABRA races, I sometimes get hung up knowing the certain people are really good, and feeling like I'll never get on terms with competing with some of these guys. If there was one solid takeaway from this weekend, it's that it of course pays to know who's strong and get the team dynamic, but otherwise just race people, not their palmares. I don't know the plural of palmares.

The race started and climb 1 started shortly afterward. This was a leg opener more than anything else. We'd ridden it on Friday at close to threshold and I was in a bigger cog (raced w/o powertap all weekend) yesterday. But it was quick. My cadence is usually higher in races than otherwise. So the field strings out, I'm not in trouble, and then we go downhill for a long time. Lots of small bumps, all taken at Mach speed. Two notables on this section - first time I've ever peed in a race and did the best, longest bridge I've ever done, only to discover that gc leader's team then wanted to shut it down. First look back - huge gap. Second look back - huge gap. Third look back - Rabobank-looking steam train bearing down on me. I went back into the field, peed, and then some guy says to me in the most New England way possible 'so guy, is it safe fa me ta get a drink a wawta now or ah ya gunna go back up theah and drill it again?' That wasfunny.

A break went up the road shortly thereafter. I was not in it. We got to climb two, the first real climb, about 2'40 down to the break. The break went fast and the field relaxed. The climb was a bitch. 4 steep pitches to start and thank God I moved toward the front before it because there was some anchor dropping going on there. The last few miles (yes you read that right) up to the KOM spot were less steep but aforementioned NE grudges were being played out which meant we were HAULING. The break was at 50" over the top. Then a FAST and long descent after the fabulous Ruth gave me the best bottle feed I've ever gotten. Thank you!

I'd forgotten (probably mentally blocked) the upcoming gravel section. It was by a large smooth but I'd hit one thing so hard that my back brake got out of alignment and started rubbing. That was distressing until I figured it out, because it was REALLY hard to go fast for a minute there. Opening the brake solved it right away. Whew. And we caught the break, which either meant we were going to a) chill out b) go bat shit crazy or c) go spasmodic as a bunch of tired old dudes tried to get themselves clear. We chose c.

Back on Route 4, about maybe 12 miles from the base of the climb, the games really began. I forced myself to be up front but didn't launch anything. Then all of a sudden I was on the front. Then off the front. Then not off the front. Then not on the front. Then two guys had the same cycle, but when they were still off the front I rode up to them and said let's go. Anyone who had the will to be up there at that point was probably good to go. Soon, three dudes joined and we were off to the races. Two guys started skipping pulls right away, one of whom has more credentials than most will ever know. I wonder if he's earned them all that way because the guy was a douche. Seriously, you have stars and stripes shit on your kit and you're skipping turns from me? Yes I know race smart and all but take the f'ing stars and stripes crap off if that's the sauce you bring. Weak. Then when a guy called him out on it he tried to start a fight. Rhymes with Lloyd Page, maybe?

We soldier on, balancing the equation of how much we are screwing ourselves to the wall with how big of a gap we can manage to build before the climb. One guy and I snuck off for a bit to punish the non-workers but shocker they had plenty to come back to us. Then we got to the climb. No one ever gave us a time split, which sucked.

The finish climb, withe two count 'em two KOM's, is like the backside of the Lost River Barn climb only 40' long instead of 25' or whatever. It's long. It starts of STEEP, and four guys from our six really hit it hard. The guy in the KoM jersey (excellent excellent guy, a treat to race with) and I say f that noise and go a manageable tempo. Two of the four, and the KOM guy, blow sky high and wind up WAY back on the stage. Mr No Pulls and another guy who took plenty of pulls are now about 150' in front of me, and I'm not allowing myself to think about any result other than another turn of the pedals. Before too long, one of the favorites from the field blows by. Then the GC leader along with a small group. Then some more. We sort of formed a blob, and despite beyond so damn dead I couldn't believe I force an acceleration to stay with these guys. An upcoming false summit means speedy downhills and rollers that will suck nuts to do alone. We turned onto the main access road for the final k, and I look behind and see absolutely nothing. We'd been passing large sections of preceeding fields so it was tough to know where I was in the field (plus, math skills had disappeared some time ago) so the game was purely to stick it with this group as long as possible.

I wound up 15th on the stage, nearly 2' down to the GC leader and the first guy from the field who went by. People were spread out in 3 to 5 second gaps from there. My gap was bigger, I was cooked. The guy behind me must have been a minute back and the guy behind him might have been 4' behind me. What I later learned was that we had gotten a pretty big gap, and the GC guy's team killed it to bring us to a less threatening gap. This demolished the field.

I moved back up to 16th on GC. Given the way I raced Saturday and Monday, I'm pleased with it. The field was tough and it was fun as all. Obviously a bit morose about the time trial. Just being mediocre there instead of awful means top ten GC. Oh well. I felt like, aside from that, my training and prep were very well done. I also feel like I became a better racer this weekend, mostly through just racing so much but also from being at the pointy end when it mattered. You don't learn too much when you're sitting in the middle of the field. Last, I've always had the suspicion that the longer and the harder the race, the better chance I'd have, and that proved true.

That was really really a fun weekend.

Killington Day 2 - Woof

2011-05-29T20:28:00.002-04:00

Could have done without the headwind. Basically everything about the TT today was, for me, not good. The headwind was the worst, but none of it was good. Puking Gatorade onto myself - not good. Never getting breathing even close to under control - not good. Being really blown out from yesterday - not good. But yeah, having to crank like mad to go 24.5 on what should have been the wicked fast part thanks to our dear friend the headwind, that was the worst. Lots of dudes who started near me dealt with it lots better than I did.

I hold out hope for tomorrow's climbing fest.

And I'd still take the bargain of paying back today for how yesterday went. So there.

Killington Day 1 - Holy Schnikies!!

2011-05-28T18:20:00.003-04:00

Reporting live on the Blind Squirrel network... Stage 1 is a 52 mile affair full of big ring climbs, fast ass descents, painful rollers and miracle headwinds.

Watched the morning races, took some cool photos which I can't post until I get home, and watched the whiff come out of sick bay to do just fine thanks. Have been flirting with sort of a sore throat/sinus situation but it seems to have decided to go elsewhere. Felt awesome riding last night so we'll see how it goes.

Lap 1 was kind of a snoozer. The most downhill section had a big headwind, the climb also had a headwind, and no one wanted to do too much with a race that "never" breaks up when there's still a TT and a big queen stage to come. We go through the sprint point at the finish and I take the front (of course I got no sprint points) and scare the crap out of myself with how fast I take turn 1. It's a perfectly idiotic time to attack, so I do. Some guy with DEEP ass wheels (he became Johnny Deep to me) rolls through and we coerce 10 other guys to come with. Pretty quickly we're out to a 30" gap, as we turn onto climbing road. One guy with a GJ bottle (nice!) is keeping me from doing dumb shit, and there are a few guys who I suss out as the guys.

We get through the KOM spot and stay together for the bomber descent. We were a smaller group after that, no idea how. GJ bottle guy's warnings that we'd need the big dudes who sucked on the climb proved prescient. That section before the sprint point/finish was a power section and the big dudes earned their missed pulls back there.

So we've been away for a lap. I haven't missed a pull and feel good, but I'm not anxious to solve this riddle all alone. A small chase caught us and we are now like 18 dudes. Time to definitely not do a ton. Turns out I probably did too much, oh well. We get to climbing road and dudes are definitely olé-ing their pulls. I tell GJ bottle guy f it I'm just attacking every pull I take. So I do. And we thin the herd to maybe 12 guys. Still too many. Rabobank-looking kit team guy just f'ing KILLS it for like 3k to just before the KoM spot and all hell breaks loose. Some guys totally shoot their wads, who the heck knows. Our gap is 40" to a field of unknown size, and I'd told myself that if we had 40" over the top, that we'd be good to go. So we have a little rise, one guy hammers it, I get on his wheel with all I've got left, and go to the front for the bomber descent. 54.8mph, I swear most of which I held through the turn at the bottom. Big gap behind me so I just sort of roll it out. There's about 6 or 7 miles left, and I'm not winning this thing from there. The good story is that it caused a split. I think there were 6 dudes from there on out.

The section before the finish was the one I'd hated all day. Normally I'm better at these but I seriously was the only guy who was left who took all his pulls except Rabobank looking (and riding like) dude. I'd been all in on this break for like 40 miles. I'm too shot even to see what's happening behind, I rotate through a few times and it seems like we're six of us but it's full time chewing on the bars and who knows what the fuck is really happening. At one point, I'm dropped. 100% dropped. That was the only time I looked back, and there was only a motorbike somewhere behind us. What kind of a useless hunk of crap would I be to get dropped now and get no result out of this? I went mad crazy hard from somewhere and caught back on, and sat there. Screw it, I started the break, I'm staying in it. With 1k to go, I'm actually thinking about winning. With 500m to go I jump too early and get 6th. I don't know how far back it was to the group and no idea how many were in that group, but my ass was 6th. And that was cool as hizzell.

Tomorrow's TT is going to suck nuts. At this point I'm in a GC position that I didn't imagine. We will see. Even if it comes to nothing, today was a mint day on the bike, and is adequate reward for the substantial amount of focus I put into this race. I've never in my life felt like I did today. For just that one day, I knew what it was like to pretty much not suck at all.

The GJ bottle guy, even though he got dropped from the lead group, is my hero for preventing me from being stupid until it was time to be.

Worth it.

Killington, Day -1

2011-05-26T09:27:00.004-04:00

Never been this excited for a race before. I hate myself. I can't believe I'm actually excited for a bike race. I can't believe I'm taking vacation days to race bikes. I can't believe I'm driving this far for a race. Uggh. I hate myself. (That was an inside joke with a very small audience. Very small.)

Here is a view from the prep ride we did last weekend. Probably won't have too many chances to get panoramic vistas like this this weekend so here you go.

The furthest I've ever gone for a race is PA. Maybe NJ. But the NJ races are visits to in-laws disguised as races. Maybe vice-versa. Who knows.

Prep is pretty good, I feel pretty good about that. I'm not one to set the world on fire but I should be able to make a good accounting for myself. The last race type effort was last night at Greenbelt, which I hadn't done in almost two years, and had never done the A race before. Pretty darn mellow. I'm racing alone this weekend so I tried to hit the major points last night - chase, bridge, break. Did all three, with varying degrees of success. The banner part was that in previous races with the varsity kids, I've been sort of a spectator with good seats. Last night I really raced, quite a bit. Didn't quite finish that well, but after one last late chase followed by a (pretty feeble and short lived, but extent nonetheless) attack on the next lap, I thought I'd be totally punched for the finale. I wasn't. There was the usual crowd of guys who made their first appearance at 300m to go, and a bunch of them went by. There were the three guys who raced as hard probably harder than me all race and were 1-2-3, which was great for them and well done. But I was just after that, so, you know, hooray.

However, illness lurks. Actually it's doing a hell of a lot more than lurking right now. I sure as hell hope it misses me.

Oil change, pack the car, off we go.

Seriously Chicked

2011-05-22T17:39:00.003-04:00

So often what happens is a woman rides with some guys, and she's fast. She can hang. So the guys inevitably give the great advice to the lady that she's strong enough to just ride off the front of a ladies race. HAH!! I myself figured that this was sage advice at one point, and gave it. It was not good advice then and it is not now. There are PLENTY of fast ladies out there.

Saturday we did Mass/Sky with some people who are going to Killington with us, 4 people total. One is a very fast lady. We left the gate maybe a bit hotter than planned, and 90 minutes later we were 34 miles in, at the base of the Mass climb. I punched it, hard. This ride had my 'race type efforts' for the weekend. So yeah I was going fast. And I'm getting followed, like on my wheel. Finally, after the u-turn I hear 'i'm dropping back here,' to which I respond with a wave. Because I couldn't talk. A small gap to the first long hair, and a slightly longer gap back to the other. To make me feel better, long hair one tells me she was imagining me as a lady pro at Killington and she was just clinging to my wheel. It must be my demure backside that made me so convincing in this role, but pro woman by proxy is a role I relish for sure.

Then we stop for lunch in Luray and pick up a fifth. A good rider, Cat 2. He's got an accent.

Despite severe gastric distress from too much turkey sandwich on the run-in, I hold to the plan to take Thornton Gap hard, so I take to the front and set a good tempo. I'm no Joe D (that clanging you just heard was me winning the prize for understatement of the year) so Thonton is still more than a 20' effort, but not by much. I think it was like 20:35 to the overpass. It was like nearly 4.4 watts/kg not astonishing but for that point in the ride not bad. And it might have been 20:50 for Speedy McXchromasome. And not much more for the other mujere.

Elk Wallow, time to go again. This is like a 15:00 climb? Thinking the KoM spot is closer than it is, I dump the tank and get a nice gap, only to learn I've gone too early. Barely keep my shit together to finish just behind the interloper, and once again just in front of Speedy. We've literally been throwing flaming bags of dog shit at each other on this climb, so we figure it will be a while until the other hey who's that holy shit she's here already.

At that last climb, I'd been leading the downhill for a long time, pushing big watts, hearing the buzz of 4 freewheels behind me. And I figure I'm just going to mail the last climb in. Except the interloper says yeah me too and then blasts off. Speedy sort of goes on instinct and then sits up. I figure f it and go, telling Speedy to get on my wheel which she does. It's one of those false flats like the one on Esworthy on the 10am where if you kill it you go fast and if you less than kill it you creep. So we are flying up to the interloper and get there, and I motion for Speedy to get off my wheel and onto his. I'm questionable at best at this point so eat drink and be merry because tomorrow we die (which was sort of a global risk yesterday right?) I take off. And we get to the overlook where the KoM should only it's not that one it's the next one. KAPOW I turn into confetti and those two blow by. Two seconds of licking my wounds and here comes the other chick. Aww Jesus WTF????

So the two of us haul ass down the descent from Dickey Ridge and she's clearly going to try and punk me at the line. Calling upon the spirit of my mentor, I unleash a thundering 'NOT TODAY!!!!' and 82 miles into a hard as shit ride I somehow manage to pull an 1100 watt sprint out of my ass and just barely beat her.

So the next time you're riding with some lady and she seems fast and game, do her a favor and shut up about how she should just ride off the front, mkay??

I'm Contagious

2011-05-16T07:20:00.002-04:00

Another Poolesville, another flat. It happened ahead of schedule this year, on lap 2. Actually it wasn't supposed to happen this year - I flat on even numbered years and generally do okay on odd years. My bad juju even extended to Paul, who got stuck in a crash about 1 mile into the race. Someone ran over his front wheel. Looks like it was a bigger dude, too. Fire up the means of production I have to build him a new front.

Thanks to Jim W for droppoing me off at the tube tent, and thanks to the Spokes Etc guys for hooking me up. Those guys were BUSY. Lots o' flats.

Fortunately the bad vibe did not extend to the rest of the household, so we were able to afford lunch.

Paul and I banged out 45 or so at warp speed (he has just the one speed) after we got sorted out. The biggest bummer of the wholeflat thing was that I wanted to get the full race worth of hard mileage in, but still got about 65 in for the day, and honestly riding with Paul is kind of harder than pack surfing a 1-2-3. Sure there are those moments when you think you are going to die (I sprinted harder out of turn 1 in lap 1 than I normally ever do, in any circumstance), but the first two laps were pretty mellow - with the huge asterix of "so long as you were surfing the pack and not trying to get in the break or chase the break. The most nervous I was all race was riding through and out of the dirt next to Joe D. As with a lot of other people, I REALLY don't want to be the dude who crashes him out.

Sunday was endurance day. 70 miles in the sunniest, driest, calmest thunderstorm I've ever ridden through.

Officially registered for K-town. Masters. It was a tough call but unlike Poolesville I'd actually like to be an integral part of the race and feel like I've got a shot at that if I do masters. So the next two weeks is either going batshit hard or super mellow easy. We'll see how well I manage a taper.

Go Fast Not Hard

2011-05-12T08:03:00.000-04:00

Lately I've spent a lot of time being that dink on a TT bike. Chairman May was kind enough to shove his TT bike at me for indefinite usage, so with potentially* a bunch of races with TTs coming up, I decided to try and figure out how to make good use of the thing.

The point of a TT bike is position. Yes the bike itself is supposed to be more aero than a typical bike but the huge majority of form drag still comes from the rider. Put the rider in a position that alleviates that and you should go faster. Of course if the shape you adopt means you can't push the pedals hard, you don't get the benefit you should. On that end, I've got what seems (based on the highly scientifical 'how fast do I cost down known hills' test) to be a decently fast position. I can't quite match the awesomely mediocre wattage in this position that I can on a road bike, but I definitely go faster. Significantly so on a flat road - like 2 mph a lot of the time.

There's both a training and a practice aspect to working on TTs. Training is getting physiological adaptations to be able to produce more power in the TT position. My ass muscles are pretty wrecked when I come back from a session on the pain box. Last night was 2x30' at 85% LT, which demolished the ass meat. The other training piece is teaching your body to hold the position for a long time. I drop my head A LOT when I ride, which we all know is slow as hell in a TT helmet. Can't do that. Thanks to my lovely sinus passages, I need to clear my nostrils quite frequently, so I've learned to do that without breaking form (although I am turning the cockpit of Mike's bike into a SuperFund site as a result). Shit like that.

Practice comes out to getting better at shifting to maintain optimal cadence, and finding optimal cadence in the first place. I've found I'm much faster when I focus on fast feet instead of forceful legs. Not TT related, but I noticed from VO2 hill repeats on Tuesday night that I am decidedly faster when I spin hard for as long as possible, and then stand and hammer out the end. Accelerate standing, sit down until just before the moment of raging burn, then stand for the final push. Not only is speed per watt better while doing that, there is a carryover benefit to the next repeat. It might be different for you. But that's something that's more practice than training to me.

There are also a lot of tricks that seem to get you free or nearly free speed. Dosing out a very short blast to keep momentum high is a huge one. I noticed how elites that I saw doing the Ephrata TT would pound it over the crest of hills, and be up to Mach + as soon as their front wheels pointed down. A dose of pain but with big payoff. There seem to be a lot of those kind of deals where you are trying to keep the flow going. It's like catching a good wave and staying on it, and doing whatever it takes to stay on it. It takes a lot to catch that wave and it will take just as much to catch the next, but staying on the one you've caught will carry you further, faster and at less cost.

I'm not saying I'll ever not suck at TTs. Grayson from DVR was out going a LOT faster than me last night (although I think my intervals were way longer). But you know, if I didn't try while I've got the chance that'd make me an idiot.

*So Killington is going to happen despite some bumps in the road. The one I question is Washington County. With the prologue added, you now have to stay over Friday night or wake up at like 430 on Saturday morning to get there on time. There's no way I'll be anything but a corpse on Sunday if I do the Friday night race so that ain't happening. So ToWC goes from being a pretty mellow thing to a full on weekend of hotel rooms, expense, and life on hold. And if that's the cost, we're thinking why not drive a bit further and go do the stage race in Asheville in July instead. Or a destination MTB race, or something. Green Mountain. We could go to the beach and visit the in-laws and do a fun crit on ToWC weekend, which is an attractive alternate. I know there are those who are feeling all pro about how rhe race is structured but I'm not one of them. So that's the asterix.

Now to figure out how to survive Saturday's impending Poolesville massacre. Sweet.

Up Against It Again

2011-05-09T09:07:00.002-04:00

Paul and I lined up for Jeff Cup masters knowing that we were decidedly up against it. He's just off a silly but painful crash at Bunny Hop and, well, I'm really just not that good. But we'd try.

The field was smallish (50? - Mother's Day takes a toll on the masters crowd) but full of heat. Like massive heat. At first I was worried about Blenheim, but it turns out we went up it fast enough that it didn't even hurt. Maybe more accurately, it hurt a little but it was over really quickly. And that section personifies my argument for the compact crank - I used everything from 50x21 to 50x18 on it. I think I hit the 17 once or twice. Never a front shift required to go from sit and spin to stand and hammer.

What we didn't understand until later was that the race within the race was for BAR points. In hindsight, that explains a lot of what we saw out there. LOTS of negative racing, even if things were moving along mas rapido (avg speed, per Garmin, was 24, which is quick for a 60 mile road race that was pretty tactical and surge-y). We tried our asses off and I give us good marks for racing hard. Whole Foods raced really hard and the guy in the Mongoose bibs raced REALLY hard. The Bike Doctors also put in a good show and did well (their guy stayed away at the end, right?). I wasn't too hip on how another team raced.

At one point, Paul and I wound up off the front together. That wasn't an ideal tactic. A couple of guys bridged and we thought it was on, we were going like bats out of hell. Of course the team that didn't want what was going on to go on chased it down, and that was the closest I've come to getting dropped in a while. As I sifted back I was sort of doing the headcount to make sure I was ready to tag onto the back when all of a sudden I was off the back. Whoops.

I totally chundered the last bit and left Paul alone up front from way too far out, and totally spent myself making this mistake. I can kind of tell that I'm getting into shape because after a short bit I recovered and was able to hitch a ride with some guys who were contesting the field sprint.

Pack finish but not at all pack fill, on a day when the last guy with an "S.T." was probably well inside the top 20. Not nearly as cool as last year for me but I will take it. Also, if I'd just ticked the other box and raced as old as I could have, I think I would have gotten my pain on pretty well. Ah, c'est la guerre.

Tune in again next week to see what kind of bloody stump is left of me after the Poolesville 1-2-3!

Up Against It

2011-05-02T08:53:00.002-04:00

Ephrata. What a good fun weekend. The last time I did it, also in the 3/4 field, I raced theroad race as hungover as I've ever been. That went poorly. This time, I felt somewhat better prepared. I'll spare you the blow by blow but I was happy with how I rode, if disappointed in the placing. One big positive is that I now have the snap needed to get off the front and settle into the nasty pace. Why the dude who came with me, and who I dragged 1/2 the way across the 20" gap to the solo early break, would not take a pull I might never learn, but I wasn't giving him a free ride all the way across. F that. His deal seemed endlessly stupid to me but what can you do? There was a group of about 40 (of 70?) left at the end. The left side of the home stretch was the upwind side, and I knew it was hideously low percentage but I went for it early anyway, starting from somewhere around 25th (following the obligatory gigantic yellow line cross and move up by a big group just prior to the last turn). I got to about 5th by 200 meters to go but hit the wall hard and coasted in out of the points. The benefit of maybe getting 8th versus 28th in a situation like that is irrelevant to me. A nice fun race where I'm happy with how I rode is all the same to me at this point. This is why I will always choose to race Masters when it is a viable substitute (the masters field at Ephrata was competitive but small, and my needs for the race were only going to be met with a bigger field).

Anyone who says anything about this race without saying what a freaking pair of gigantic brass ones Sexy Tony is bringing to the races these days is misguided in extremis.

Highlights of the day were seeing a set of wheels I'd built get piloted across the finish for a big win in the Women's race and another thing that I can't talk about.

For the TT, I had a goal of going under 25:30, both because it would beat a friend's time from the last edition and because it was good for top ten last time. I rolled a 25:26 and was pretty close to a top ten time, but well outside on placing. I chose not to use the TT bike I brought. Given the chance to do it over, I would have used it for sure.

The thing I can't talk about went pretty well in the morning.

I was nervous as hizzell before the crit. I'd DNF'd this thing on nerves last time, but really needed to conquer that. I also knew that I'd be taxed by the race - it's a hard one where you need to absolutely pound it out of two of four corners. Great medicine for what I need if it didn't kill me first. The first laps were crazy fast, and then Sexy Tony was back at it. Kid eats BBQ'd babies for breakfast or something, holy shit. For a time I got to a relevant position and then picked a total loser of a line in turn 2 that put me deep for a bunch of laps. Callum, who was doing great on GC, was back with me and that wasn't ideal. This was at about 7 to go. Callum got a good line through 2 and killed it up the left and got ino the holy land. I planned for the same move next lap, but was foiled by a body surfing through the turn. Dead stop to full sprint just to get back on. Uggh. By this point it was starting to get really fast and it looked like all the cheap tickets to relevance were sold out. I made up some ground here and there, but never the kind that buys you any stability, so was fighting tooth and nail. I just wanted to be able to floor it for Callum once. I fucking hated watching him have to do it all himself. 3 crashes in the final 1.5 laps, all of which were just far ahead enough for me to respond to but close enough to cause me to stop or darn close to it, meant that I would be no help at all to Callum. Fortunately he is a stud and placed just fine thanks without squat from me. There was like no one left at the end so the detritusi I rolled in with wasn't even that deep.

The good bit was that I left the race with 1000x more comfort than I went into it with. There are some crit courses - Reston and ToWC stand out - where the course makes it clearly that if you are stupid it will cancel your hall pass. People tend to behave differently on these courses and I tend to be able to ride them effectively. The Ephrata course has some teeth on display but there's so much reward on offer if you can scam turn 2. That was where the 2 worst crashes happened and untold numbers of near crashes happened too. But I'm happy first that it seemed no one was badly hurt and that I came away much more hardened to what happens out there.

The thing I can't talk about went really, really well yesterday afternoon, even with a whole team marking it. That was pretty mack.

So it seems like the level of play keeps going up, and I keep bumping up against it. Excited for upcoming races. It wil always be a fun and rewarding challenge, and a great game to play.

Crap I Hate

2011-04-26T15:05:00.002-04:00

So normally I'm pretty Mary Sunshine on this here blog, and that's both because I'm conditioned not to get too down in the mouth about much and also because I'm sort of terminally able to see the bright side of things. But here's a bit of a dump.

1. I hate rest weeks. Nothing illustrates the Sysyphean madness of bike racing better than a rest week. You spend three or four weeks building up and seeing the fruit start to blossom, and then it starts to smell a little toasty around your legs so you ease back for a week. Congratulations, you suck at the radsport all over again.
2. I hate time trials. The clock is a shitty bunny for this dog to chase. I started last week with the chopsticks bars and am going to steal Mike's tt bike to try and stanch the bleeding at Killington and Washington County this year. I should really not suck at time trials, and yet I really do.
3. I hate the first couple of minutes of crits. I've never been a fast starter.
4. I hate the last half lap of most races. I've never been a fast finisher.
5. I guess by default I do love the middle of races because I always want to race again.
6. I hate that there is seemingly more genetic inequality in this sport than perhaps any other. Except for some of the others. Actually a lot of the others. Genetically speaking, I was made to race windsurfers. Good thing that found me. Oh the joy to actually f-ing be really good at something.
7. I don't hate building aluminum wheels, but I really prefer building carbon ones.

Call me Tom because that's a pretty damn petty list.

One thing I love is rides like we did this Sunday. Out in the great outdoors, in beautiful surroundings and beautiful weather. It's funny as hell when the two of us ride and we see dudes I race against. They can't possibly know that I can ride as hard as I want/am able to and she'll stay glued there all freaking day. They probably think we're better off on a recumbent with a nice orange flag. So Sunday was mint. And despite two absolutely miserable "I should just quit the effing radsport" workouts on Friday and Saturday, I was burning good fuel on Sunday. Blue Mountain was my bitch. Mount Weather roughed me up a tiny little bit, I was looking for more out of that one. But in general, yeah, great. That loop in 3:50? I'll take it.

Nothing Like Racing

2011-04-18T09:27:00.002-04:00

There's nothing like racing to smack you in the face with it. I raced both Chantilly and Dolan in the masters field. Solo on Saturday, one teammate Sunday. The weekend was an exercise in reintroduction to acceleration skills and other things that are generally important to racing well. If I could do that without racing like a sheep, great.

Saturday was better in that regard. I was a huge puss in turn 1 the first couple of laps, a lingering effect of a rainy slide out a few months ago. Then that improved. All told, Saturday was pretty okay. Sunday was not. I had to remind myself not to be a sheep, and was constantly moiving up on the outside, in the wind. My sense of when I needed to be up front was great, my technique for getting there sucked. With about three to go I had just done a great big move up and three or four guys launched, followed by two more. I was gassed from a poorly executed move up but jumped across. Missed all the free rides but made it. Once there, it was embarrassing how spanked I was. Pulled through once, nearly died. Let a gap open before the downhill. No one behind me screamed at me to close it, which they had every right to do, so I think maybe everyone there was a bit shot, but these were good racers. Hmmm. I farking screamed through the downhill turn to close the gap and sat on up to the start finish. The break was clearly falling apart so I went left in a sort of 'the stupidest thing I could possibly do here is to ride hard, so let's do that' sort of a deal. A big gust came and nearly made me go backwards and that was the end of that.

I've never before gotten into a break and thought 'Jesus God I hope this thing gets caught right now I don't want to get dropped from this thing and if we are out here for any amount of time I will get dropped from this thing'. That was a terrible feeling. That whole thing that happens in the summer when I takes all of about three seconds to recover from a majeure effort? That seems decades away right now.

One or two of you who have a clue who I am are probably wondering why I didn't mention the other things that happened this weekend. The person that made those other things happen would smack me in the head if I did. So I never will, that's why. But if there was ever cause to, there was this weekend. Wow. Cracking stuff.

First time we've seen a bunch of Novembers in the wild. Some people just did such a nice job with their builds. Incredible. Lots and lots of very positive feedback and even some good results for the stuff. Nice.

On Donna Dixon

2011-04-14T10:52:00.002-04:00

Bosom Buddies launched a pretty funny array of careers. Tom Hanks, Donna Dixon, and the lady who played Tom Hanks' boss and was a cougar. A role she is still playing some 30 years hence. Then you had Peter Scolari and that cliche landmine friend of the hot chick.

The best bike food I've ever had was Whole Foods croissant bread pudding cake. Definitely only appropriate to less intense rides since while it is a 10 on the delicious scale it does not score as well on any other metric. The food that you are supposed to eat on rides all bores me and I do it only out of necessity. Clif Blocks are the least objectionable. Honey Stingers give me a mandatory and immediate trip to the outhouse.

One thing I don't get about some people who do bike fits is that they don't place the saddle height/setback/cleat position first. I've heard a lot of comments that post set back is related to reach or bike size. It is absolutely not. I don't understand why someone would recommend I stalling a zero setback post if the problem was too long of a reach.

My parents have sold my childhood home. We went up last weekend for a last visit there. I'm a particularly (many have said peculiarly) unemotional person but the place where I grew up has always been a very important part of my life. If the micro region of where I was reared didnt happen to be part of the macro region of the shitshow that is Long Island, I might happily live there now. It's really nice there, but man does it have downsides. I guess every place does - pick your poison. When I lived there, I rode a bit (I got my first road bike senior year of HS and the the cycling equivalent of jogging for a long time) so I know a lot of nice places to ride and we had a nice final tour of my favorite roads. Now my parents are off to RI, a state which I colonized for my family but where I am the only current non-resident among my family. Weird.

Training is training. I don't know what the heck to do with the schedule, like a lot of other people I've got precisely one hour of racing in my legs this year so far. The last group ride I did was in January. I will probably get absolutely motored this weekend, especially since I plan on doing just Masters and 1-2-3 races. We're fortunate to need to spend a lot of time working on the business. I think I've had a breakthrough in my lacing and intermediate steps in wheel builds because the final tensioning and truing steps have gotten a lot quicker recently. Same end result but less time to get there. So that's good

Bullet Points

2011-04-08T13:24:00.002-04:00

1. Apparently I peaked for Jeff Cup. Unfortunately, there was no Jeff Cup.
2. Rest weeks are dangerous. They always threaten to be 'miraculously and near instantly turn Dave into a profoundly bad cyclist, rather than the perfectly mediocre thank you cyclist that he is' weeks.
3. Last night I finally felt slightly better than terrible after said rest week.
4. Many competent people frantically looking for work and the appliances sub sends this pack of complete muppets to do the job?
5. Strange things afoot at the Circle K
6. You win some, you lose some.
7. I wonder how THAT ONE is going to turn out. Ugly's my bet!
8. Beef really is what's for dinner.
9. I can ride my bike with no handlebars. No handlebars.
10. Cake, next Thursday at the 9:30. Uhh huh.
11. Bike forums.
12. Mailbox shop drawings.
13. Millwork shops, too.
So as you can see it's a busy time here. We appreciate your support.

GamJams Reviews: Gloves

2011-03-31T08:35:00.002-04:00

These are pretty excellent. They work from "just cold enough to wear gloves" to "cold enough to wear serious gloves." So they are complemented by a pair of Louis Garneau Typhoon gloves, which is Garneau's take on the classic lobster glove. Unfortunately I got a lot of use out of the lobster gloves this winter. It was cold a lot.

When it's not cold, I don't wear gloves except when racing closed courses or mountain biking. In those cases, I wear Louis Garneau's Moab Lite gloves. They are full fingered MTB-oriented gloves with some sort of leather/pleather palm and basically zero padding. I don't like a lot of padding. I've gone mountain biking in the November gloves and they suited me well for that too. I can see both them and the Moabs getting a lot of use when I start doing a lot of riding on cross bikes, which will happen soon.

Gloves to me are mostly a thermal or crash/abrasion prevention thing and not a padding deal.

Friendly. It's The New Black.

2011-03-29T20:01:00.002-04:00

It's a light week this week. Previous blocks were 4 on 1 off. This one was more intense and it's 3 on 1 off. This week is off. Today is the only time I'll be too much out of breath (at least on the bike) this week. Randomly run into Chris C and we're doing some laps around Beach/Ross/Ridge, "Mario Karts" style as he calls it - reverse of the Goon Ride way.

There were plenty of people doing it the other way, some groups from teams and stuff and a bunch of just people. We knew some, we just waved to others. As we're headed up Beach toward the cop shop, we get a big old friendly wave from pretty much the fastest guy in MABRA. We're two random jamokes in anonymous black kit (I happen to be on an absolute stunner of a bike, but he can't really see that as we blow by each other. Then Chris and I finish our game of cat and mouse at Ross/Ridge (I couldn't get the little mother f-er off my freaking wheel so he came around me - and there we learn that a solid spanking is actually a really excellent leadout in disguise), I'm coughing out keeper-sized pieces of lung, and here comes pretty much the fastest guy in MABRA again, with a "how you guys doing?"

So for all the "cooler than thou" that goes on out there (and we've probably all been guilty from time to time), we got a big taste of "faster than thou" meets "friendlier than thou."

And I'm going to ride that little mother f-er off my wheel next time, you'll see.

Peak Procrastination

2011-03-28T07:47:00.003-04:00

First off, to Ruth S, thanks for having the stones to make the tough call. I'm sure yesterday's nice weather was like chalk in your throat, but you did the right thing. Hopefully everyone understands that you now get to re-do about 50% of the work that went into the thing in the first place, and everyone leaves their whiney pants in the drawer and realizes that however inconvenient it is/was for THEM, it was/will be a lot more inconvenient for YOU.

This season, for me, is wrapped around doing well at Killington. What is "well?" To borrow an oft-used phrase, I can't define it but I'll know it when I see it. That's a tough part about setting goals in cycling. Who knows who's going to show up? If I race master's, I might be racing against that whole former pro cyclocross mafia. It's a well known fact that Boston tough guys don't actually reach full strength until the age of 46. On the other hand, if I race in the 3s, there's bound to be a group of guys who were 5s three weeks ago, 4s two weeks ago, and will be 1s in July. What am I going to do against that? Nothing. Nothing is what I'm going to do against that. So the goal is to show up confident and in great shape, race like I mean it, and come away satisfied with my preparation and execution. It's all I can do.

To this end, I've tried as hard as I know how to stay in "base and build" mode as long as I can. As anyone who's ever used 580 of their finest watts to come around and drop me at any town line sprint (and that's on my good days) knows, I have significant gaps in my game. That's part of the goal selection process - I ain't trying to win on the Champs Elysees, you know? Time trialing and climbing are the things I need to improve in order to feel like I'm ready to rumble. A hard block of training those skills came to an end yesterday, but peaked on Saturday. About 20 minutes into a 70 mile ride going over Mount Weather and Blue Mountain, a team mate wasn't in love with the pace I was setting and came up to say "hey, let's be realistic, have you got 70 miles of this in your legs?" With no doubt or hesitation, in fact I was almost eager to say it, I said "yup!" And I absolutely did have it. The best I felt on a day when I never felt less than very good was in the final rolling 15 miles, where I was just caning it on the front, having a ball. Just before this, we'd climbed Blue Mountain, which I was able to climb at a little over 90% of threshold (an output which I would have called my threshold a year ago) without feeling like I was going deep at all.

So the puzzle before me is how to get another month of improvement out of "baking the cake" before I spend the last month putting the icing on? Yesterday's ride, which was 2 solo hours of "ok, I just got clear of the group, how long can I stay away?," tells me that I've physiologically adapted to hard miles. By the way, that's a fun game - you do 20 minutes of warm up and then try to make your ride's average wattage continually tick up for the remainder of 2 hours. It's hard as shit (you spend a LOT of time in the 11 on anything that's even remotely down hill), but it gives you a good carrot to chase. I did crack while trying to do the last 15 minutes at 100% of threshold. I was cooked. But is adding another half cup each of "painful" and "not short" in the next block going to cause the sauce to thicken brilliantly, will it cause the pot to boil over, or will it turn it into a hot mess?

The other part of the equation is confidence. I can train and train and train and I often hit the start line with a self-defeating mindset. That may be the harder thing to work on. Quitting beers has me a couple of pounds down (4 of 8 left to go) but also helps me know that I'm not sabotaging my efforts with stupid crap. A post-ride turkey sandwich instead of bacon cheeseburger, fries, and a beer makes a big difference in the mind as well as the body. When you burn off 3200 calories of "whatever the crap was that you ate before" and replace it with something quite a bit better than whatever the crap was that you ate before, every aspect gets a benefit. It's funny how related nutrition is to confidence for me, but I do think they are really closely tied. It's the area where I've done least well in the past, even if I generally eat way better than the average bear. "Hard weekend ride" does not equal "deserves a huge cheeseburger and 5 Leffes."

Next weekend is Morgantown, which if you haven't already signed up for, you should. There are a few guys who we know are going to be psycho fast. Fortunately, one of them wears the same pretty shirt that I do. Figuring out how to help stack the deck in his favor is the question for the week. Hopefully a recovery week this week will put me in a position to be a big help to him but sometimes I come out of lighter weeks stale as anything. We'll see.

In totally other news, we're working on our race. The later part of this season is looking like it's going to be an action packed barrel of monkeys.

I know this whole post has been self important, introspective, quasi-whining dross. What part of that weren't you expecting when you clicked the button to come here? So there.

Go Race At Morgantown

2011-03-24T07:05:00.002-04:00

Unfortunately, the Harwood race has had to be rescheduled. These things happen. Fortunately, ABRA - promoters of the Tour of Tucker County - are all set to go with the Morgantown Road Race on April 2nd.

Like other ABRA races, the Morgantown Course is one big loop. It makes a big difference in the feel of the race, all to the good. There are 5 significant climbs. From my read of the profile only one of them is really steep. The rest seem like long burns at enough grade to separate the contenders from the pretenders

Sure, it's a pretty far ride, but it's not that far. Car pool. Make an adventure out of it. One of my favorite days of last year was the Appalachia Visited race, which ABRA also puts on. JR and the ABRA people do a great job promoting and they're into it just so we have fun. They won't try to scam you for free pants or anything dopey like that. They have the big picture in mind - put on great races and people will want to keep coming back. As much as I've like Walkersville in years past, several team mates and I had planned on doing Morgantown even when Harwood was on. We went last year and couldn't wait to come back.

F THE GREEN KNIGHT!!

2011-03-21T08:34:00.003-04:00

Crazy week. Wednesday night I had to call in to see if I needed to go in to jury duty on Thursday. I always get the letter but have never had to go. That string is now broken. And now I’m 1 for 1 on getting picked for the jury, too. Funny, because you always hear people saying how to avoid being on a jury. Well, I had zero opportunity to influence the outcome except perhaps by looking differently than I do. VERY VERY long story short, that experience ended on Friday evening at around 7, after we had rendered a guilty verdict. It was an experience I’m glad to have had, and one that I hope not to have again for a long time.

Hustled home to get a few minutes on the trainer for an opener workout and prep some November stuff for Saturday, build a wheel, and then dinner and bed.

The missus raced the early race so we got to Black Hills a little after 9, and it was butt cold. Apart from that, what a great facility and course. Huge kudos to Bike Doctor and Robb H for getting that whole deal together. That might actually be the perfect course anywhere to have the first race of the year (I know that for a lot of people it wasn’t the first race but probably for most it was). One funny note is that the trial I sat for was all about an incident that had happened at the Montgomery County Corrections Facility. Said facility is all of about a mile from Black Hills, and we passed it on the way in. Weird. Only issue with the whole day was that there were 36 or 37 parking lots so coordinating wheel deliveries turned out to be less fantastic than I’d planned.
I’d only gotten in to the master’s race because we thought we weren’t going to be able to make it to this race (and I didn’t sack up for the master’s/1-2-3 double up). This season started out precisely like last year, with a guy whose first name started with “Jo-“ stone cold riding away from my field. A bit depressing, that. Having not raced since August and having been on maybe three group rides (probably fewer) since then, it was going to take a few minutes to get my feet back under me. Unfortunately I didn’t have those few minutes available, and wound up further back than I’d have liked. The speed was pretty darn high, and moving around/up wasn’t coming easy to me for a while. After a few laps I got my act together and got where I wanted to be, only to see a good looking break form about 4 or 5 seconds up the road. I bridged across after using the hill to get to the front, and made it there just at the first left hand turn, but as I was wheezing and trying to recover, the break fell apart and was soon caught. As we went up the finish hill that lap, I went first up the hill and gave it a ton of gas, really hoping to cause a split or draw some people with me. I drew a lot of people with me. Everybody, in fact. Shortly after that, the REAL break (ignoring Josh who was getting ever closer to lapping us) went up the road and I missed out. It was the right mix of guys with team mates at the front of the field, and by the time I had any chance to respond they were too far for me to bridge to. I’d also proven to be lacking in the kind of snap that allows one to reliably do such things as avoid dragging everyone along for the ride.

The race stayed fast, quite fast, for the next several laps, and I started to hear a whole lot of gasping and wheezing. Figuring that this was as good a chance as I’d get to form “chase 2,” I once again put what I had into the hill, to the same unfortunate result as the prior time. Uggh. What are these guys eating for breakfast? I finished in the main field. But what a great race all around. For a frame of reference, my normalized power for the 56 or so minutes of the race was over 4.4 watts/kg. That involved several very hard but very fruitless efforts, so it’s certainly higher than what was absolutely necessito in the race, but it speaks to a pretty darn hard race. And there was a guy who came pretty darn close to lapping that race. WTF?

The team rode the bejesus out of the 3-4 race and came away with a win and a couple of other high finishes. I’ve spoken frequently of Paul’s freakish abilities, and he didn’t disappoint in displaying them on Saturday. Fortunately I will be racing with team mates next weekend, including Paul. That is going to be a fun time.

Saturday night was a friend’s birthday. Total debauchery. Played one of the few hall passes I’ll give myself before Killington, and well played it was. I was actually very excited to get back on the wagon yesterday. “F—K THE GREEN KNIGHT!”

Charming ride yesterday afternoon.

Bartape During Wartime

2011-03-17T09:02:00.003-04:00

I've lived in a brownstone, I've lived in a ghetto, I've live all over this town...

Seriously, I've tried pretty much all the bar tapes out there. At the end of it all, I wind up not really being too finicky about it. I think I like the faux cork kinds the best, like the SRAM that's on my bike now.

The issue, of course, is that the bar tape pictured above, which was gleaming white when the picture was taken in October, is now skankier than Charlie Sheen's last date. One should probably change one's bar tape a little more frequently than I do. My need to have a bike that's "display ready" is at odds with the "cobbler's child" syndrome that befalls my bike (the work we are doing to get customer bikes ready takes precedence - me of two years ago would experience holy rapture upon entering my house with all the swanky carbon wheels and fancy bits presently afoot, but me of today just sees wheels that need final QC and packaging, delivery logistics, etc).

The white bar tape/white saddle deal is a look I've gone with for a while. Because black looks more presentable in the state of nonchalant bliss in which my bike usually finds itself, I think I might give it a go this year. So I'm thinking black stock saddle (I actually really like our stock saddle, the white one will go on the mountain bike), black stock tape (SRAM faux cork), and non-stock braided stainless Jagwire cable housings. You have to have some pop somewhere.

Bonus review for today is the Descente Stretch Velum Wind Vest. This is the greatest vest ever, supplanting the very very good Voler vest as the top. The material has a perfect amount of stretch, yet is otherwise the same as the rip stop nylon of the Voler. The fit is sublime. Descente fully commits to the concept of skinny people with thickish legs in an actual racing position for their fit. The collar is lined with a very thin soft material. It adds a soupcon of warmth and comfort but doesn't get cloying when you're at the top of the temp range for the vest. The trim details are great, with that little elastic piping on the armholes and hem. The zipper would be a little cooler if it were two way, but it is flawless in zipping up with one hand and has the flashy lock pull so when it's unlocked you open just by pulling the vest in a generally "open the zipper" direction. Rear pockets mostly obviate the need for a two way zipper (under most circumstances if I could have one or the other I would gladly take the pockets) and the thing is weightless. It has great style with tremendous subtlety and it has good reflective stuff on the back in an effective but unobtrusive way. Descente is a partner of November so I am biased in my abject love for everything of theirs that I've tried, but all their stuff is so freaking good. The only thing that will make these vests better is after they are embroidered with our super pimp logo.

The Out There is Pretty Cool Out There

2011-03-14T07:18:00.008-04:00

My picture phone has secretly been downing all the beer I haven't been downing.

A pretty cool office this guy's got for himself.

We got a lot closer than this but didn't go up.

I wish to convert one of these into a house. It would give our kids a leg up on the world when they are asked "what, were you raised in a barn?"

The old grey mare just ain't what she used to be.

Had fun at work all day Saturday but got a chance to get a trainer session in late in the day. You know how enjoyable it is to do 90' worth of tempo/threshold criss-cross in a job site trailer with no fan? I didn't know whether I was going to asphyxiate or drown in a pool of my own sweat first - they were both in the break and taking mad pulls. Fortunately the clock had men on the front the whole time and pulled them back just before the line.

Sunday was a great ride. I saw a very scary and unholy alliance that made me fear for the sanity of masters races this year. As we were rolling out MacArthur, two of the fastest geezers made the turn off of Persimmon Tree. "Holy F" thinks I, "if those two are working together this year, that ain't good for anyone. Especially me." That might have added a bit of impetus to what I was doing.

Someone needs to invent a way to hide ponytails. If you ride with a mujere, especially a very fast one, you CAN NOT make it through a ride without some cock jockey doing some asshatted thing to spare his ego. We were going up Angler's at a steady pace, the kind of steady pace that we wanted to keep for three plus hours, so we were actually reined way the f in from where you would normally go up Angler's. About halfway up, we passed three dudes pretty decisively, giving friendly greetings in hope of avoiding the inevitable as we did. The reason that the inevitable is called the inevitable is because it is assuredly not evitable, and not a minute later there were these three guys standing and hammering it past us, only to barely get around and then completely drop anchor. So the three of us have to move left into the road in order to keep our pace. We're rolling on by them at the top and maintain the same effort as we get onto Falls, so of course we accelerate quite a bit. Hoping against hope that they hadn't decided that the world was their group ride, I maintained our moderately uncomfortable pace and didn't try to slam it to gap them or anything. Sure enough, two minutes later, two of them come past, standing and hammering, get in the front and pull the f-ing handbrakes. This time, they had the grace to drop their other guy in doing this. We all get stuck in the light at River, and the ringleader of their circus tells me "hey - nice pull!" What are you going to do? Tell him that it wasn't a pull, that it's the effort we intend on keeping basically to Sugarloaf and back? I can't f-ing stand this crap. "Thanks." Fortunately they pull off into the parking lot of that new Big Wheel Bikes on Falls. I know I sound like the worst stereotypical roadie fascist douchebag saying that shit, but I can't understand why people must do this shit and why oh why does it never happen when it's just dudes on the ride? The girl we were riding with would knock you down and beat you with a cane like you were a misbehaving adolescent on vacation in Malaysia, bitches.

The rest of the ride was really nice.

Sneak preview. These are freaking hot.

Tough Sayin'...

2011-03-11T07:54:00.003-05:00

You pretty much have to love Maine, and Maine'ers. I don't know of any state with a bettah accent or more useful sayings. To wit: "tough sayin', 'thout knowin'." "'Thout" is Maine for "without." The principle being "I don't want to look like an ass by making some baseless conjecture like you warm staters would probably jump at the chance to do. If I don't know it, I ain't saying it."

So then, MABRA racing starts next week at Black Hills. Plenty of people have pinned one on already, probably many more haven't. I haven't. There are plenty of guys signed up for the Masters race who are complete and utter gamers, so it should be an interesting day.

"My goals are later in the year."
"Courses like this don't really suit me."
"I put in a huge week this week, I'm just doing this for some speed work."
"I haven't worked on any short efforts yet this year."

An interesting day in the sense that I'm likely to get that nice metallic taste in the back of my mouth, question my entire purpose in spending the time training, become certain that I'll never be top ten in another race ever again, etc.

So yeah, unless I happen to randomly be leading the race with about 1/2 lap to go and everyone behind me slides out on an oily spot, the magical 8 ball isn't giving a lot of "signs point to yes" when I ask it if I'm going to come home from Black Hills with a little brass in pocket, but it's still a race. You go to races to race. I plan to get my money's worth.

Farewell, Dear Friends

2011-03-06T20:03:00.002-05:00

I really like beer. Good beer is fun to open and pour, and smell, and taste. Big fan. It's got some downsides too, though. It's painfully expensive to get the good stuff. It's not really very good for you. And it makes you fat.

Training, as it turns out, has been going well. I did a test yesterday and it was very good. Even better because I tested on MacArthur rather than on a hill like I usually do, but it was still a best for me. Even though I missed my admittedly ambitious goal by a couple of ticks, I'm really pleased. The goal mark is easily going down next time I hit a big hill with any freshness.

We're making the trip to Killington later this spring. I'm looking forward to it, mostly because I've never been to a "big" race before. No unrealistic expectations, but I'd like to be able to play the game, and with the way training's going, that's doable. But there are a few hills in VT, and I'm darn sure I don't want to be lugging 8 or 9 pounds of hefeweisen or dubbel up said hills. So the severe curtailment of beer enjoyment begins today. It could easily be a free half pound of weight loss per week.

It's time to get a little serious. I'm psyched.

The business is going really well. You'll see a bunch of November wheels at Black Hills and Jeff Cup. Frames shortly thereafter.

GamJams Reviews: Race Tires

2011-03-03T07:39:00.004-05:00

Of all of the parts and pieces of paraphernalia that a bike racer has, tires might be the most difficult thing to manage. The management breaks down along a few lines: buying, usage, and replacement.

Since I've become a partner in a bike-related venture, buying has become a lot different than it used to be. Oddly enough, I am WAY more organized about what I buy. It's normal that planning your purchases saves you a lot of money from just walking into a shop and paying whatever for what you need. It also gives you a lot more direction than if you were to walk into a store and try whatever's on sale. Most teams have shop sponsors, and these sponsors typically let you order stuff at attractive discount. My advice in this regard is to find out what you like, and order enough of it to cover a season. With race tires, for most people, this will be at least 3 tires a year if you are only using them for racing. Stuff like the tacks incident(s)at Leonardtown happen. I got a terrible sidewall cut while riding to a race a couple of years ago. Take tire, throw tire in trash.

The trainer throws another wrench into this pile. Trainers wreck tires. If you use a Power Tap, chances are that you will want to use it to race in at least some early season races. This means that your Power Tap wheel will see use on the trainer, on the road for training, and in races. I'll train on the road on a wheel that's been used on a trainer, but I won't race on one. The trainer makes the tires really slick, I think it hardens the compound. So the end of the winter (still regularly using the trainer, riding outside sometimes, beginning to do some races) is one period when I'll tolerate switching tires. Other than that, I hate switching tires. To which there is an interesting solution this year...

My bike and wheels are sort of a rolling show room. If you see me on a ride and you want to try my wheels, ask. Unless I've got 30 minutes of sunlight left to do my last 20 minute interval and get home, have at it. And there's no way to hide a wheel set's wonderfulness like unspectacular tires. So I'm generally on pretty darn nice tires full time these days, across a few sets of wheels. With one exception (38 carbon clincher rear - which has a Vittoria Diamante (not a bad tire at all)), I've made a wholesale switch to Vredestein*. For top race tires, the TriComp slicks are where it's at. They are AWESOME. Grippy as hizzell. My only gripe is that they don't come in 25c.

Apart from that, I'm also on Vredestein DuoComps. These come in 25c, roll pretty nicely, and are great in corners SO LONG AS THE ROAD IS DRY. I don't love them at all in moist or worse road conditions - but the tires actually come with the caveat that they are bad in wet. They say it. It doesn't make great sense to me that a training/racing crossover tire would have such an Achilles heel like that on wet roads, but they do. So I try to avoid using them in the rain.

As we get towards spring and the trainer becomes a race day warm up machine and stops being a regular feature of my misery, I'm going TriComp on everything, clincher and tubular.

I've gotten durability that's about as good as unexceptional out of any number of top race tires. ProRace 3's, Conti 4k's, Vittoria Evo CX... And I've had to throw a way too young one of each in the trash. I guess the TriComp slicks are now at the point where their durability has to be considered pretty okay. I think we have 4 installed on the fleet right now, and they're all in good shape. None of them has seen super heavy use yet though,, so I can't get too hot and heavy about them in that respect. The compound on race tires is soft, and it's really susceptible to cuts. You can pretty well chart an inverse relationship between how nice a tire feels and how sticky it is to how long it will last. So while durability is of course nice, performance is the big priority.

When a race tire gets a noticeable nick, off it comes. I'm not risking wasting a day, an opportunity to race, and a day of race expenses on a marginal tire - never mind the risk of taking a lot of dudes out because my tire blew up. Not playing that game.

I have less experience with tubulars, but I know two things absolutely: I would do any race, any time, in any condition (except pave or dirt) on Vittoria EVO CX or Vredestein TriComp tubulars. I've ridden each of these a lot, and they are fantastic. And however it works out, they both seem pretty cut resistant - more so than their clincher brethren. I will inevitably spend significant time training on tubulars this year (see "rolling show room" comment above), and it will be on Vredesteins primarily*, with a Vittoria as a money go to back up. I also have a Vittoria Rally. I will keep this with me as a spare. For $30 retail, it is a fantastic spare tubular to get you home. Once you are home, glue up either an EVO CX or a TriComp and fold the Rally back up for your spare.

*Vredesteins are imported by VeltecUSA, which is one of our favorite partners. It's easy for me to get all gooey about their tires because I like them very much. Tires are maybe the most important thing on your bike, and my pretty well exclusive use of their tires except as noted where I have pre-existing other stuff that still has life left in it that I'm too cheap to forego, should speak to me fundamental belief in their stuff. We have access to pretty much every other brand at good pricing, so my bias would be tempered by that. But as much as I try to play all of these things with an absolutely open hand, I don't pay retail for tires and we have a good relationship with Vredestein, so at least on some level I am predisposed to liking them.

Bueno y Malo

2011-02-28T08:08:00.008-05:00

And thus ended my second base period of the year…

Last week was a good one for training, with a mellow week at job 1, things going fairly smoothly if thankfully rather actively at job 2 (the fun one), and no other major crises of note. All indoor sessions went well, hitting each day’s fairly ambitious goals. The enthusiasm-o-meter was high all week, as will happen when you’re in a phase where the improvements are coming thick and fast. Friday evening’s round was particularly gratifying. It was one of those where you go into VO2 zone for a couple of minutes and then spend 10 at the low end of threshold, then back up to VO2 and back down to threshold for 10. 2 sets of that with some other fancy tricks thrown in. That one felt good, but I was skeptical about what kind of frayed rope it would leave me to hang onto for Saturday’s planned “Kill in the Hills™.”

The laughing assassin.

We started Saturday morning just a tiny little bit hot. The early part of the route is like an Ardennes classic, where your front derailleur is getting the biggest workout of all. Yeah, we were kind of flying along there. As we agreed that we were all being idiots about how we were riding, the terrain matched our intent and we basically pacelined for like 20 miles or something on flat to rolling roads. In the back of my mind I knew I wanted to do a good 20’ test on Mount Weather (from the Route 50 side), but it was nice out, the pace was good, we were having fun, and Naked Mountain would be a chance to see just how deficient I’d prove to be when the intensity fairy paid us a visit. Well, we freaking hammered up Naked Mountain. Then we sort of hammered the descent. This left me about 5’ to recover before Mount Weather. Great planning, hot shot.

Keeping my breakfast in (barely) after Naked Mountain.

Psycho 1 and Psycho 2 took the f off just a few minutes into the climb, right when we turned off of Route 50. Blowing up 12’ into the thing would have been even more useless than I seemed to be trying to make things. Settle down but go hard. Psycho 3 and Psycho 4 didn’t get very far up the road at all, and eventually one dropped off while the other was good company for the rest of the effort. Psychos 1 and 2, despite getting really wobbly looking and getting really close a couple of times, managed to stay deep in the pain cave and gut it out. A great effort by them. The big problem was that this isn’t a 20’ climb, it’s a little over 17’. So the test yielded about 17:30 of an effort that I would have been really happy with for 20’, which I’m certain (certainty’s easy when there’s no way to prove it, eh?) I could have held to the end of 20.

You should try to learn something new on every ride.

You’d think we would have been mellow after that but you’d be really wrong. The youngster was peppy as shit and wouldn’t give it a rest. Every rise became a full pitched battle. 270 watts NP for four and a half hours.

The responsible thing to do after an effort like that is chuck a cheeseburger in your face, then drink your dinner and stay out until 1, right? Of course it is.
A little later start than we’d planned on Sunday, so we took the “most ambitious” plan off the table and simplified it to an out and back on Skyline as far as we were into doing. I decided that another test would be appropriate and doubled back after a few minutes and started from the bottom. As it turns out, the Front Royal gate to Dickey Ridge isn’t 20’ anymore either, but it’s really close. The number was good, particularly over the last half. I’m pretty certain that after a recovery week and without quite so much blood in the alcohol stream, I can hit what I’d thought would be a really ambitious mark.

Sweet jersey, eh? This is a prototype.

There weren't all that many people out yesterday. I thought there would be more.

So the good news is that, at least as far as getting to proxy post #1 of building a better base than I have before, it looks like success. The bad news is two-fold: first, impressive charts and graphs? That and a nickel leave you five cents short of a dime in terms of what you’ve proven for races. Second, all of those nice intervals that I was doing just got moved up one peg on the ladder. I’m sure that’s going to feel great.

Our team newsletter is better than yours. We have a beer of the week. I told Gus (who drinks wine coolers exclusively) that if he wins ToWC, that this rack will be the "beers" of the weeks following that victory, so long as it takes to get through it.

A Stream In Maine

2011-02-24T12:51:00.002-05:00

I can't look at any more door submittal crap without going bats--t crazy. Brief interlude. The bathroom wall in the fraternity was an instructional place. Generally in a funny way, not a dirty way. It was a pretty off center cast of characters when I joined, but at some point someone had written "mainstream is infiltrating the house" on the wall. To which someone has responded "I piss on your main stream," which some clever fellow had followed up with "I once pissed in a stream in Maine." But alas, the original poster was right, and by the time I graduated we had become the lacrosse house. Oh well. Nothing against lacrosse, I just enjoyed the weirdos.

My latest fraternity-esque organization (that'd be the bike racing team) is a pretty eclectic cast. We lost a few to upgrades, repatriation to old teams, and the cruel realities of real life. On the other had, we have an equal (I think) number of new guys, all strong. It's a good group. Last year, there were a lot of races where we had a lot of guys. On the one hand it's not that big of a deal because I think (I think) that we almost always did a good job of racing the races how they should have been raced and didn’t do stupid crap. On the other hand, balance among teams is more fun. But there are plenty of teams that will have plenty of relevant guys, and let’s face it we are 3s, which means that there are going to be plenty of new guys rolling through Cat 3 for a visit and tearing us all a new one while they are there.

This week will finish up a big training block. I let the tiger off the leash a little bit last night during some 2x20 intervals. I think that I was often guilty of “going for the big number” last year instead of sticking to the right zones more diligently, where this year I’ve stuck to the right number. What I think I wound up doing was training to do 20’ intervals well, but that takes a funny fuel mix – some anaerobic and some aerobic. By keeping it more purely aerobic this year, I’ve developed the ability to go kind of (from my perspective, versus what I could do before) “holy shit” hard for an hour or more – sometimes way more. But last night I wanted to see what it would taste like to go one notch harder. It was fine. Next week is a scale back week and then next weekend I’ll get a really good test (haven’t done a proper test in just shy of forever) and reset the levels.

In any case, because of my absolute lack of visits to the pain cave this year, I feel totally unprepared for the first few races. I’ll probably get dropped at Black Hills, and don’t have much hope for Jeff Cup which bums me out because I had a great (if hypothermic) race there last year. Then out to hillbilly country for the Morgantown Road Race. That ought to be a fun one, but shit some of those guys are really fast.

Base

2011-02-21T07:30:00.007-05:00

Getting plenty of rides in with team mates.

The family road fleet.

Fun

A thorny start to the '11 MTB campaign.

We may or may not have given ourselves a sneak preview of this. It may or may not be awesome.

Heavy miles lately. This zone 2 that people like to do, I don't know too much about that. Lately the weekends have been about "go hard for 3 or 4 hours and come back exhausted." I feel like it's been hugely beneficial. Saturday was interesting in that 1) we almost got blown off the road and into Oz several times and 2) we were about to climb Blue Mountain but were stopped and turned around by firemen racing to the scene of a brush fire up the hill. That must have been pretty horrorshow to manage that situation for them. Hope it turned out okay.

I got a pretty good test on Mount Weather, even though the Route 7 side is a bit short to do a good test (I was hoping Blue Mountain would be the really good test). I think that staying a quarter step down from what I've previously done in "threshold" efforts has worked well. In 20 minutes, you can actually add a big anaerobic component to what's supposed to be a purely aerobic thing, and I think my physiology is good at doing that. Result is that I believe the classic "your LT is 95% of what you can do for 20 minutes" overstates the level below which I can stay purely aerobic. I'm more comfortable with what I've been doing now, but of course Saturday showed me that my level needs to be set about 5% higher than what I've been using so it won't hurt any less I'll just go faster.

The 2011 mountain bike campaign started yesterday (the wife's foray at Snotcycle notwithstanding) at Fountainhead. HUGE props to the people from The Bike Lane for doing a ton of trail work. We need to lend a hand with that this year. Last year we were all talk about it. Anyhow, we started off at the speed our legs could go and quickly wound up frustrated and bouncing all over the place. Once we recalibrated to focus more on getting our skills back underneath us, we had a much better time. It's going to take an ass ton of skills work to get where we both want to be on the trails this year.

And in other news, you can actually get drunk on meat. We went to Fogo de Chao last night. That shit is good, but I seriously was getting delirious.

My 2011 Secret Weapon

2011-02-16T07:19:00.006-05:00

I think we're doing a review of "secret weapons" for the upcoming season - some new piece of equipment or something that will make 2011 profoundly better than years before.

I don't have one.

My bike and wheels (this is actually my bike, with my wheels on it) are certainly nicer than anything I've raced on before, which is nice. But they aren't going to transform me as a rider. They'll be good for a few percent I hope, but really it's about having nice, reliable equipment that fits me and is well suited for the riding and racing I do. Plus, we've sort of been shouting about this stuff for a long time. Not a secret weapon.

Being a charter member of my team's "old guys who creak" contingent, a bunch of us have become devotees of the fish oil. I haven't done the double blind studies to prove its effectiveness, but I'm of the considered belief that it improves recovery and reduces the feeling of being spanked after riding. For example, after Saturday's huge ride, I expected my back to be pretty wailed on. Normally, after a ride like that, I would be doing the zombie hunch for a good few minutes (hours?) after getting off the bike. Not so recently, I just get off and stand up straight and walk around like a normal person.

We got a new trainer since there are two of us using the Cycleops Magneto Pro that's now in its fourth winter of discontent. The new one is pretty fancy, it's like the Fluid Jet Master Ninja 5000. Hasn't arrived yet. The old one's going to get used at races and during the somewhat regularly occurring times when both of us want to be on the trainer at the same time. But, not a secret weapon.

In complete honesty, I don't expect to do much winning. I have the occasional good race, sure, but let's face it if I go to a big race like Killington, my choice is to race as a 3 or as a master. Race against guys who are headed toward being great or against guys who were (and still are in a lot of cases) great. The most I'm hoping for out of that is to be part of the action, push myself hard, and be part of something really fun. The same goes for races around here, as well. If I can race well enough consistently enough to score a bunch of points in the Masters BAR, great. That's pay off.

The bigger pay off this year will have to do with my team mates, one of whom I may never get to race with this year. We have a few people on the team who have far more talent than I do (ok let's face everyone on the team has me ambushed in that department, my gifts all came in the looks and charm department), who are really getting after it this winter. I can't wait to race with Paul. Coppi last year was one of the most fun races I've ever done, even though my batteries ran dead too early (which was probably intimately linked to my coming down with strep throat like 13 hours after the race ended). Paul and I raced that race really hard, and he made a psycho hard guy move to win it. We have some new guys on the team who are already in fighting trim and are ready to get after it. We have some old (both ways) guys who are out for it too. Riding and racing with them keeps me enthusiastic about coming back for more.

My real secret weapon is having a wife who's all psyched up on racing. You can't buy a secret weapon like that.

Team Rides

2011-02-14T08:29:00.002-05:00

"Ride with others, train alone." No matter what training philosophy you're hearing from, this one is pretty universal. I've definitely wasted thousands of miles on rides where people had varying and competing training styles, or often no particular training style at all. Usually this winds up in some variation of the "sometimes ride hard enough to blow your wad and be unable to do much more than roll junk miles the rest of the time" failure mode. Actually, it almost always winds up there. Someone feels great and goes chasing bunny rabbits. In the best case, the problem contains itself to that person and he/she becomes your only "off the front or off the back" issue. Too often, the thing goes viral and you want nothing more than to take a left turn and leave people to their own devices.

This weekend, I went on two team rides that defied every problem that I have with trying to train in groups. It was awesome.

Saturday, we had a small cast for the previously described "suffer fest out west." A lot of the credit for that might have to go to the wind, but it was also a disciplined group with the common goal of four hours of constant pressure.

Sunday, we had a slightly larger group that rolled out for our somewhat regular "Savory Sunday" team ride. We started with six, one of whom had to turn back early, so we did most of it with five. The two of us who'd done Saturday were in sort of a weird way early on Sunday, both of us I guess still being numb from the day before and rolling out hard. We wound up gradually rolling off the front a few times and needed to recalibrate a bit, both of us also realizing that what we were feeling (or not feeling) could change at a moment's notice and we'd better keep a lid on it. Once we stopped being the problem, it was another case of a few hours of just good, constant pressure. A couple of challenges at times, but completely lacking in the whole "look at me, look at me!!!" asshattery that too often ruins a ride.

One particular instance came when we were inbound on River, on the downhill that precedes the big WSSC facility on the right. The guy in the lead kept enough pressure on the pedals that it was easy to manage the gap and not coast through him. Each of us stretched out behind the person in front enough so that when we hit the uphill, the guy in front started pedaling slightly earlier than the guy in second, and so on, and we all stayed perfectly in line, and we all got the work of the hill that followed. Except for a few 10am rides where some psycho is pressing the pace so hard at the front that what's left of the entire ride is strung out chewing the bars just to stay on through that section, I've never ever gone through that part like that. To that point, the ride had been similarly disciplined, but that particular instant was really tight. Following that, the rest of the ride was more of the same. The unusual experience of a headwind coming in on MacArthur had us hooking up a really tight paceline that was really fun.

The accumulated effort of the weekend's riding hit me sometime about 30 minutes after I got home. I was shot.

An outstanding weekend of riding, thanks to all who shared it with me. Hopefully some more nice(ish) weather this coming weekend.

Hours and Hours of Fun

2011-02-12T18:42:00.002-05:00

I've developed an inability to walk. I'm not sure, but the most likely cause is today's ride. We welcomed a new team mate into the fold, and he immediately invited us for a ride from his house. Mother father that was a stout ride. We just f'ing crushed it for 70 and change. The headwind didn't hurt - we were into the teeth of a gale until the big hills took their pound of flesh. And take it they did. I'm pretty certain I've never seen 260w normalized power for 4+ hours.

Descending and trying to maintain straight lines were something of a challenge. A big challenge, actually. But the last few miles in were fun with the tailwind. Going 30 never felt so good. I'm on a mission to get pictures but no dice between the gloves and the hurricane. No chance.

This winter's training definitely has me in a different spot than previous years. Hopefully better all told. I'll leave it there. You pay your Monet and you take your choice.

The iPad did the Monet thing but I like it.

Team Ride Dynamics

2011-02-06T21:59:00.004-05:00

Fergie sucks, that 'Sweet Child of Mine' rendition was embarrassing to watch. I feel bad for having seen it. Who gets famous as an entertainer is random. Anyhow, in one minute of play time I think Drew W will be ecstatic and LP will be pissed.

We had an interesting group today for a "miles" ride. (update DW is indeed happy - take the knee it's over). Three 3s - one who's on his way to Masters Pro, one who's in fair shape and one (me) who was in very good 'base' shape before a big bout with serious flu that ended Friday. Three 4s - one who hasn't gotten to train much lately but is usually a tempo monster on a ride like this, one who's becoming a monster and who reasonably intends to be a 2 by season's end, and one who's well along the long road back from serious health issues.

My favorite way to do these is on the double pace line, which we were able to do for a short while today. For some reason, it didn't hold up. Mostly just the need to single up so much I think. It was a pretty awesome day, though, so happy to be feeling healthy-ish again. But when you get a group in a zone and there's always someone who wants to drive it, it can't be beat. I'm not a big talker on rides. My sinuses are too f'd up so it gets hard for me, and I like to enjoy the scenery and the work. Sometimes a quick word will get someone to take it for a while and keep the rhythm alive. Often it's just a 'hup!,' which sounds more obnoxious to write than it works out being. I love that zone where the thing is just going. It's hypnotic.

P has become so strong, he's almost hard to ride with, apart from his being my favorite person (except the other) to ride with. I don't think he feels it any more, he just does the demon plow horse and eventually everyone has to fall away. I was psyched to more or less be able to go stride for stride today, although I was often breathing harder than he was. He pantsed me at the top of Mass, coming up from Goldsboro. 15's a pretty good clip up that stretch, but it didn't fray him at all. No one else had it to give at that point, it was just the two of us on a pace, and I buckled about 50 yards from the top. 60 miles in on the first ride back after most of a week blacked out in fevered delirium, not awful, but he could have done it for ten more minutes. Wow.

Strange and scary cool to see some of our product in the wild, even if it was a proto/demo frame we'd loaned out and it was on a car, headed to a ride. People freak over the RFSCs when they see them. They're just really good looking. They build so nicely, too. I like them a lot.

The rule on digi-cam video is WIDE focus when you're riding. So jumpy otherwise. Need to get better at on-ride photography. Took some shots today, none were that good. Tried to get one leaving Poolesville, with Leesburg across the river in the far background. It didn't come out. We were going fast then.

The coffee shop in the gym in Poolesville is open and it's super cyclist friendly. Great refuel spot. The guy loves the cycling traffic, and their bathrooms are sweet and they have hair dryers so you can dry and heat your gloves. All good.

Ahh, The Flu

2011-02-03T11:41:00.002-05:00

After the SnotCycle fun and games wrapped up, I got home and turned in my second pretty serious trainer workout in as many days. I've been doing well with the trainer. Much fun was had that evening with roasted swine and other delectables. Sunday, we thought a ride outside would be good and came home looking like broom wagon victims at Paris-Roubaix.

Following the ride, I took a few minutes to compare some work from last year to this year. Despite longer weekend rides last year (as weather allowed), the weekly TSS has been consistently higher this year. It's really too easy to glorify what you've done in years past. The actual, surprising fact is that this year's work has been quite good. There are two significant changes I'm going to make in the next blocks. My strengths are okay but my weaknesses devastating. The technique of getting that work done will be key.

The Burns Supper was awesome. Quality haggis. I mean seriously good. Thanks to all who put that together.

Monday was first day at the new site, getting the lay of the land and catching the flu. By 10pm I was in the full achy chills. Tuesday I couldn't peel myself off the bed. Wednesday was the same. Went to the doctor this morning, and made it official. 5 days of Tamiflu. I wonder if that's on the WADA list?

The funny thing was, having eaten a grand total of 4 pieces of toast and 1 orange in the past 3 days, I look all sorts of leaned out. I weighed 163 in pants, belt and shirt at the doctor's. I guess being cut down by malady has it's upside.

So now this week's become an unscheduled rest, and I'm guessing it's going to take a little bit next week just to get my feet back under me. It's screwing with my equations, I tell you.

Okay that's it back to sleep.

SnotCycle Photos

2011-01-30T09:08:00.006-05:00

The grounds crew had a heck of a job on their hands. This should have led to a heck of a lot more bad outcomes than it did. They did an incredible job with snow management.

There was pretty much no way this dude was losing this race. Talk about a gun to a knife fight!

Before the field even hit the woods, it was strung out in a long, long line of "oh my God is it going to be like this the whole way?"

"Yes, yes it is going to be like this the whole way (at least on the top half of the course)."

It was more like SnotWalk for most people. What was a really fast, big ring course just one week ago turned into a slog that could only be ridden in brief sections for yesterday's race.

Mercifully, the officials chopped the Cat 2 fields down to one lap from two. The winning time for the men's Cat 2 was nearly 1:40, with the top Cat 2 women coming in at around 1:52. For those of you keeping score at home, that's almost 4 times as long as a fast elite lap time from HotCycle. The first half of the course was about 95% walking. The last half was more rideable.

The Cat 1 fields had to do two laps. Not many were super happy about that and overall there was more attrition than any race I've ever seen. There was a bunch of whinging to be heard but most people took the whole deal in stride. It's January. It's a great venue and a great concept, but you take what comes. If the race had been just one week earlier, it would have been (save for the wicked cold), ideal conditions. What are you going to do?

I have a bunch more pictures that I'll get posted up sometime soon.

Totally Epic Ride

2011-01-27T17:15:00.007-05:00

Dude the conditions were so gnarl-sesh, I've got to be the most hardest hard guy ever. Actually, my hands got completely frozen in lobster gloves (and not the hand that I kept exposing to use the camera, either), my butt got soaked, and my feet were cold at the end. Surprisingly, the bike isn't too slaughter messy. I did NOT use the RFSCs today. The wife stole 'em from me, and while I would have stolen 'em back to go ride outside normally, that would have been a little stupid today. The normal FSWs were just fine today.
how many lt intervals will start right here this year?
roads become like tunnels when you pour white concrete on the trees

can you see the forest?
we'll see lots of this road this year

Moving Right Along...

2011-01-26T21:26:00.002-05:00

Celebrated a huge win over Arlington County. The guys want to open their freaking gym, already. First, they got hosed by something the building owner left undone, then they were just getting smacked by the County. I got the job of dealing with the woman who administers a critical bit of paperwork. She's the absolute archetype of every negative stereotype of a municipal employee (except she's actually sort of hot which is weird). Other than the not unattractiveness, she's pretty much Patty and Selma. But I won, and happily took that paper over to the fellas so they could open.

I'm pretty darn apolitical in general, but Michelle Bachman raging about how expensive gas is a political issue sure got me pissed off. Our foreign policy is pretty well dominated by the quest for secure oil sources. Let's get over this, people. Energy-wise, we've been out on a solo, early, doomed tv-time break. We're going to blow up, hard, and miss the time cut. I'm becoming more and more of a hippie by the hour.

Who else rode outside yesterday? We had a pretty darn short to-do list yesterday and I rolled from the site by 230 and was on the road by 330. Mike and I have been working on a bunch of stuff, there's a lot of job stuff in my head (I'm making great progress with one very attractive opportunity and am working along on another), and basically I had mental constipation. Banged out some good work on the road and it had the exact effect I needed on my brain. Things are moving again.

Feeling like training is going okay. Nothing too crazy. Rode with some people this weekend who could definitely hit the jets hard, and I certainly can not, but I think that in years past I've been a little bit of a February hero. I get psyched and go bat shit hard and then while my enthusiasm stays really strong, my focus and body start to wear out. This year I've got the hours and hours of sub-threshold shit happening. Going to do some more of that this weekend. Hopefully finally hit the hills.

The new Cake record is just excellent. Federal Funding and the one about sick of you, sick of me.

Thawed, Part Duh

2011-01-23T17:26:00.003-05:00

So I guess we were all wrong about where we live. It's not DC, it's MN. I hear the summers are beautiful.

Through some magical thing that one of our team mates did, the missus was able to register for Snotcycle, so we went and pre-rode yesterday. Neat course. Fast. Very fast. Our first lap, we generally went fast but did a lot of stopping to look at lines and such. We also hadn't used our mountain bikes since about forever, so there was some time spent screwing around with the bikes. The second lap, we rolled a nice tempo with a couple of brief stops (very brief) and we rolled in with about a 42:00 lap. We weren't hauling ass by any stretch, in fact it was rather a comfy pace, but we later learned that elites have done sub-30:00 laps at Hotcycle. That's quick. I was thinking that I might be able to pedal that fast, but I'd wind up wearing a tree as a bow tie if I did.

Anyway, the course is really fun, there's not much technical stuff to it. Just two fun rock things (take the left line on both), a bunch of logs to roll over, none of which are challenging, and a really fun drop off near the end of the lap. I'm bummed I won't be racing. Oh well.

Today we did kind of a more social ride. It was cold. I woke up after Haymarket had started. Driving an hour to freeze my ass off and learn what I already know wasn't in the cards there. My dressing for success plan worked real well, though. And I had a good roll up Mass from Goldsboro at the end.

After quite a while of trying to figure out where my professional life is going, stuff's moving. It's awesome. Sort of lots of stuff. Sweet. Finished that project, mellow week at work, going to do some huge rides, got some meetings. All good. I'm in a better mood these days.

2011-01-14T15:11:00.002-05:00

I don't even really know what to do with myself right now (although a big hint of what I'm GOING to do with myself in the very very near future is pictured here). Tomorrow's weather might actually be better than "full suck" and for the first time since I don't know when I don't have to work on Saturday. I'm almost doing the damn happy dance here.

There's a thing in construction that must be analogous to what good time trial riders do - just zip up the suit and don't consider that there could be such thing as "having a life" or "not feeling like your chest is going to explode." Since all things good and bad eventually come to an end, this too shall pass. Also, you give a pretty hard effort that, in order for you to get the most out of what you're doing, needs to be sustainable. And then at the end you ramp up with whatever gas is left in the tank and just get to the line. But being at the end of one of those periods, I find myself nearly deliriously relieved. The original build out schedule for this thing was 9 weeks, and pretty tight at that. Permits didn't get issued until 11/23. Between then and now we've also had a few holidays in the schedule. So do the math. It's been a bit of a five alarm fire. If you go back and watch the 2009 World's TT and see Cancellara at the end of it, that's a bit like how I feel right now, only all of the excitement is just relief, not excitement.

On the other hand, I've build 3% of the area's 100 best places to eat, as curated by Washingtonian. That's pretty cool, actually, and while it's something that I can't be proud of (that would be a grotesquely unwarranted glory grab), I am nonetheless psyched about it.

If I had a point when I started this thing, I've long since lost it. Have a great weekend. Don't crash your bike.

Thawed

2011-01-09T17:47:00.002-05:00

Man it was cold out today. I should check the Garmin to see what the temp was whilenriding, but I was dressed about as extensively as I can, and that was just enough. How cold must it have been on the Haymarket ride? I waited until 11. When the Haymarket ride left at 8 it must have been in the low 20's. Zoinks.

Yesterday was a big trainer sesh when I got home from work. I'm a bit sick of using that phrase "when I got home from work" regarding Saturdays and other days on which I should not really have to work. Haven't had a non-holiday Saturday off in a long f'ing time. Anyhow, did about 90 minutes on the trainer, which was a great workout and very productive, but it made riding outside today more attractive than it would otherwise have been given the cold.

This fall, I rode up to the Schooley Mill CX race and there are some really nice roads up there. The problem is that you have to ride on some uninspiring roads to get there. So like today I did about 3 hours, but I only got about an hour on the roads that I went there for. Need to figure out a good route up there, since it's a very good alternative to going west on River.

The project at work is headed to completion which is great. So fast, this thing has gotten done. Looking like it's going to be crazy right away on the new project. Really? I'm a bit over everything being full press all day every day. Working on some things to alleviate that.

Sort of a little bit concerned about where the numbers aren't right now. They're okay, but nothing special. I have to kick it up.

Haymarket next week. Psyched for that.

Sliding Into This Year

2011-01-02T18:30:00.002-05:00

Got stuck at the salt mine most of the day Friday, but got to sneak out for a few quality hours. While the carpet guys lay carpet, there ain't much I can add to the equation. A nice ride in strange lands. How freaking big is Fort Belvoir? Freaking HUGE! In any case it was nice to a) ride outside which I hadn't done in too long and b) enjoy pretty nice weather.

Really was tempted to build my weekend around the Haymarket thing but factors made it not make sense this weekend. My better half surprised me with a New Year's Eve board of fare not to be surpassed easily. Moules mariniere for starters, then Cornish game hens for the main, finished with a lovely sorbet, berries and cookie thing. Aww yeah. Anyhow, having been up at weekday hours and putting in a pretty big ride, plus the missus being sick with the same cold as everyone else has, we didn't exactly paint the town red. I prefer that scene for New Year's by a lot anyhow.

Made a grand debut in 2011 on the 10am. Those are pretty fun rides. I was leading tempo for a while, and some good riders had come onto the ride, and then I see a guy up ahead who you can just tell is wicked fast just from how he sits on his bike. Getting closer, I see the shiny purple hubs of pain. Sweet. So he and Mike 1 get proceedings fully lit up, and people are trading turns, and then 4 of us, with Mike 2 as the 4th, have got a little gap. PHoP pulls off, Mike 1 pulls through, and Mike 2 pulls over behind PHoP, leaving me to close the gap to the front and then pull through. Totally over dramatically, as is my wont, I look at Mike 2 and bitch "ahh, Mike you're God Damn KILLIN' me!". He shrugs and gives a smile, but I think Mike 1 (who I really don't know at all, while I know Mike 2 pretty well) got weirded out because when I pulled through from him he gave me a "dude, calm down". Funny stuff.

Five minutes later I hit a greasy patch and went down like a chicken head. It was a weird, f'd up thing, I heard someone going down behind me, and was like "jeez, that's probably going to happen to me too," and then my front wheel started going sideways and that was all she wrote. Minor bruising and road rash. The group was long gone when we got all dusted off, but it was a good ride in from there. Had some good company, etc.

Absolutely foul conditions today. Flahute for sure.

Chasing Back On

2010-12-27T09:37:00.002-05:00

I just finished reading "The Paradox of Choice." It's a good read with an interesting premise and a couple of revealing anecdotes. Nothing earth shattering but I'm glad to have read it. The basic premise is that the world we live in gives us too much choice, which generally makes us less happy and not more. This being a pretty concise premise which doesn't necessarily support a couple of hundred pages of material, the author drags a few related concepts in. The most interesting of these, to me, is the hazard of constantly comparing yourself to others. Competitive athletes, of course, have the comparison to others as one of the central tenets of their lives.

Superficially, athletic competition is far more transparent than other venues in which we compare ourselves to others. I have no idea what other guys who do what I do for the people for whom I do it earn, for example. I have no idea how far into debt my neighbors went to buy their sporty new car, or if they are about to go into foreclosure, or if they are complete trustafarians and that's how they're able to afford their rock and roll lifestyle (these are entirely conceptual neighbors, btw - not based on actual persons). I haven't studied up my 10 Commandments lately but I seem to remember something about covetousness in there somewhere, and as it turns out not coveting thy neighbor, or his wife, or his Range Rover or stainless and granite kitchen is a good way to play it. If you like what you've got, enjoy it and don't malign it for what it isn't.

Back to athletics and transparency... It gets a little more convoluted. The race will compare each of us to one another, but will not provide anything like the kind of transparency that we think it might. I might beat you but spend orders of magnitude more time training, and be spending all my money on equipment and coaching and traveling and general stuff I wouldn't be doing if it weren't for racing. I might be falling behind at work, or falling terminally behind in my family life. I might be on the juice. Unless you are a pro or are headed that way, and it is your job and your obligation to do what it (legally and ethically) takes to win the race, the comparison will never be a simple one. And, as we've learned, the whole legal and ethical sidebar convolutes even that.

I'm finding it hard to keep this in mind right now as much as it should. I'm seeing other people improve by leaps and bounds, while I'm plodding along, trying to be some margin more effective than I was last year. Riding with friends provides ample evidence that some are going to be way better than they were last year. Do your training, stick to the plan, do what you think is right, keep it all in perspective with regard to the big picture, and enjoy it. And suffer your ass off and push yourself to improve, and try to plan better so that you have more time to train and rest, and encourage yourself to pay better attention to nutrition and the many other things that will help you get more out of yourself.

This sport could drive you nuts.

We're Not So Different

2010-12-20T08:25:00.002-05:00

Europe is going through this big old debt crisis right now, right? And one of the big things that's going on is that the wealthy states are bailing out, through some degree of gritted teeth varying from the extreme to the "Tyler Hamilton finishing the Giro with a broken collar bone" degree. The cause of common currency necessitates this - Germany's currency is unfeasible if Greece, Ireland and Spain are in default using the same currency.

The US is basically in the same situation right now, with many of the several states (I love that expression, there's a lot of great verbiage in our founding documents) avoiding default only through massive stimulus from the central government. If these states were left to their own devices, they'd be exposed for being as broke as they are.

I didn't watch the 60 Minutes last night, but from what I hear Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) was pretty straightforward in his "we're completely f'd unless we strip out massive layers of our obligations and get rid of mountains of debt." The painful thing is of course that no one wants to be on the receiving end of a stripped out obligation. I don't. Fortunately for me, the only obligations I'm owed are the massive piles we send to Social Security, which I've never for a minute thought we'd ever see a penny of in return, and the bonds that Bill Gross and the fine folks at PIMCO buy on our behalf. It's personally heartening to see that they are venturing into preferred stock from the perspective of "they do a good job managing my money" but frightful for their vote of no confidence in the bonds which have been their bread and butter for so long.

The retrenchment from the way we've been living is barely underway, says I. We may not see widespread calamity in the next decade or in our lifetimes, but I'm fully confident that our ways of doing business are going to be profoundly different. I don't know a whole lot about him, but bravo to Gov. Christie for at least having the balls to state that there is no painless escape from the situation in which we've placed ourselves. Would that other elected officials would do the same, but they won't.

One of the things which shows me how bad the situation has become is the "they're lucky to have jobs at this point" situation. The tall hat developers and project executives all pretty much assume themselves to be in a position to demand anything from the guys doing the actual work. This includes but is not limited to working extended hours without the normal benefits afforded to extended work. There was a time when people seemed really hungry for work and were willing (if not exactly happy) to do whatever it took to prove that they were worth keeping around. That time is over. Line guys are of the decided mindset of "if that's the way this job is, I'm not so lucky to have it, so why don't you go ahead and fuck off?" Of course I work for the project executives and direct the line guys, so I'm the monkey in the middle of this deal. A wonderful place to be. My sympathies are more with the line guys. I understand that financing sucks to get and that margins are thinned and capital risk is greater, but when you're taking guys who are getting by in the best of times and pretty much not getting by now, you aren't going to get ideal outcomes. No easy solutions.

Work for me has been pretty crazy. The gym build out has been going fast. It's all about speed on this one, which unfortunately means long days, lots of stress and little sleep. The first thing that happens when I get stressed out is that I stop sleeping well. Of course this is a self-defeating cycle, but I prefer not to become an Ambien junkie. I find that I'm able to float through several days of good training on a skeleton crew's worth of shut-eye, but eventually it catches up. Saturday did me in completely - up at 545 to go to work, and then a busy day (in which I was able to get some good 'other stuff' done while the cleaning crew was cleaning and the carpenters were carpenting and the tilers were tiling - I've turned the corner on my ability to build wheels with aluminum rims), got home around 4, got about 20 minutes worth of nap, and then off to the Missus' office Christmas party. As opposed to the round of drinks at a sports bar on Tuesday that my company will be hosting (general morale in our ranks is pretty terrible - not that anyone is looking for an elaborate holiday bender, but I even wonder how many people will bother to show - I think we'd all rather just skip it and get the extra 90 minutes of personal life), they do a nice deal at this "home restaurant." That was good, and then we went out to some hipster bar in Adams Morgan until all hours. Finally got to bed at 4, or 22 and change hours after I'd gotten up. Up at 830 for the team ride, and I was a mess. I was barely able to fake my way through the thing, and of course since it was so butt cold there were only three of us hard core enough to go, so there wasn't a lot of opportunity to hide in the bunch.

My new Descente Element shoe covers are the tits. Although they flirted with being cold at times early on before the world and I had warmed up a little bit, my feet were pretty toasty for almost the whole ride.

A Horrifying Discovery

2010-12-13T08:18:00.002-05:00

Mike and I had one of our occasional get togethers to discuss some ongoing pressing issues, which of course derailed itself into a conversation about some of the finer things. Like beer and food. Whereupon Mike, in the space of just a few crisp sentences, destroyed my 2011 season.

Hand grenade #1: Chevy Chase Wine and Spirits. How it is that I've lived within a mile and a half of this place for about 6 years and never learned about it, I can't say. I think of it as a fortuitous stay of execution, both for my status as a mostly sober person and for my bank account. I've never seen a place that even remotely shared the same orbit as Chevy Chase Wine. It would be nearly impossible even to guess at how many selections they have. The prices are fine (once you realize that you aren't buying 30 packs of swill from the 7-Eleven - real beer usually isn't cheap), but holy crow the selection. It's just ridiculous. So much so that I wouldn't even consider going there without some sort of an idea about what I was looking for - otherwise it's just totally overwhelming. Get yourself a free account at Beer Advocate and do some leg work before you shop.

Hand Grenade #2: The Epicurious App. I'll be needing to switch to the SOB build for pretty much everything, including pants. We made risotto with peas and bacon on Saturday night, it was ridiculous (paired with a fairly dry merlot that had been picked out for us by the French wine rep guy at Chevy Chase, which was a great choice). It was so good that we had it again on Sunday night, even though it takes the better part of an hour of full on dedication to bring to fruition. On Sunday, we paired it with Dogfish Head's Bitches Brew, which gained fame in the first episode of Brew Masters on Discovery. A really good beer, but not something I'd necessarily swim the Nile to have on a regular basis. I'm glad to have had it, but it's basically a unique stout, and I've had several stouts (Rasputin, Brooklyn Chocolate, Samuel Smith's Oatmeal) that I prefer for the way they do stout. But it's an interesting beer for sure.

I did get some nice riding in on Saturday. We had a small group that we were trying to keep small because it's hard to maintain training value with a big group and I wanted to spend a lot of time talking to Chris and Paul about cross equipment. The group expanded a bit, but we were still small when we rolled out of the Broad Branch gates in time for the 10am not to think we were the 10am. Except that they did think we were the 10am. So our 6 person ride became a 60 person ride. No problemo, we pretty much sat on the front and rolled tempo until our planned turnoff at Travilah to head out to Turkey Foot (which I insist on calling Turkey Leg). As Paul and I pulled off the front over to the ragged "glass and dirt" part of the gutter approaching Travilah, a couple of very sweaty-faced guys lambasted us for not pulling through blah blah blah. Humorous. But a good long slog of never slowing down (57 miles and either a 19.8 or 21.3 average speed depending on whether you ask the Garmin or the software - I think the software is taking out the 5 or 8 minute stop we made on the way home), which is exactly what we were looking for. The pace line session on Clara Barton was a good final nail in the coffin. That is until Paul and I decided to gut check each other going up Mass from Goldsboro (he schooled me). Great ride.

It appears that almost every team in the area is in a state of complete flux, self-destruction, assemblage of the elements of utter domination, or some other bit of high drama. Except us, we're boring as sin. The tide goes out, the tide comes in. I like boring.

Really psyched for those Haymarket "crush your soul and steal your wallet" rides in January.

All The Boring Training

2010-12-08T09:20:00.003-05:00

It may be a little bit obtuse (okay, maybe endlessly obtuse) but most of the time when I do a post title it references some at least quasi-recognizable piece of literature. In this case it is sung to the tune of "All The Pretty Horses," a book which I have not read.

There is an evil consortium of diet book publishers and cycling coaches behind the cyclical shifts of fad diets and fad training programs. It predates and far exceeds the reach of the infamous "Pentaverate." Colonel Sanders tried many times to infiltrate this consortium, but endorsing mass-scale fried chicken, mashed potato and gravy-based gluttony was a credibility stretch even for the diet/coach alliance, so he was always shunned. 7 herbs and spices be damned.

So the consortium had a pretty good run on the time-compressed training schedules, and sold a whole lot of books and coaching plans. Chuck Norris, Chris Carmichael, and the "YOU CAN DO IT" troll with the pony tail made a fortune on this swing. Jake "Body By Jake" Steinfeld suffered a long fallow period, the start of which roughly coincided with his star turn in "Coming To America." But a new day is dawning for Jake, as the pendulum reaches the inevitable end of its arc and begins its swing back.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. It's time for training to be brutal, long and intrusive. Senselessly long, hard rides (even on the trainer) all winter long, slogging it out with no regard for mental state or physical frailty. None of this "20 minutes 3 times a week crap," we're talking 6 days a week, 2 hours a day on weekdays and at least 4 a day on the weekends. Otherwise it's just not worth it, you aren't getting anywhere.

In all seriousness (or at least as much as I can muster), it's the time of the year when everyone pays his money and makes his choice on which training philosophy to go on. In the grand scheme, I'm fortunate to have enough time to train as long as I'm smart about it. No kids yet, and I'm fortunate in many ways with my spouse. First, she's of an athletic inclination so she suffers me this bike racing thing. Second, she actually enjoys riding bikes. It isn't often we get to ride together, but a cycling spouse is more amenable for your own cycling than a non-cycling spouse, of that I'm quite sure. So while I have this time and opportunity in the continuum, I'm going to use it.

The schedule roughly works out to Monday light spin, Tuesday short-ish intense-ish intervals for about 90 minutes on the trainer, Wednesday long-ish threshold-ish intervals for about 90 minutes on the trainer, Thursday off, Friday see Wednesday, Saturday try to beat living hell out of myself for several hours assuming no work but if work see also Wednesday, Sunday either a team ride or a cruise with friends or something. It's generally of the 10 to 12 hours a week variety, which is in the "a lot" bracket but it's not a ton. I don't thrive on shorter efforts. Last fall when I had a really weird but generally very mellow work schedule I would just go for these long ass mountain bike rides and I got in whiz bang shape. Unfortunately I paid for that with a suck work schedule all spring so I was better earlier than I was later.

I'm getting to a spot in work where our clients want me to run their interiors and amenity spaces, which is cool. One because my stuff is always the feature of the places and where the money gets spent so I get to do the coolest work. Two because I pretty much work exclusively inside. Big machines and all that shit is cool but I don't prefer it. The one buzz kill is that my stuff generally happens late in the project, and is necessito for selling the project, so it's always under a lot of scrutiny and schedule pressure. I can take that for the time being. Once I get done with this gym (and we put the paint on the walls today - my selections because they don't seem to want to make with the selections - design by default) I go off to spend 8 months building the marketing brochure for this big property, and then do the next few phases. Ought to be okay. I bitch a lot about work, but it's okay. Not ideal. What is?

Being able to hook people up with great bike stuff for great deals is a wonderful thing. Some of the deals that get thrown your way as the agent of hooking people up with great bike stuff? Oh my God. You have to be disciplined and it isn't every day, but we just got a deal from one of our suppliers on a "for personal use only" thing and wow. I'm like the movie vamp who gets all dressed to the nines and when some dude comments she's like "oh, this old thing?" Except for me, it's kind of true. The hard goods are all either what we sell and why would I ride anything else, or prototypes that we're putting mileage on. I was actually told quite forcefully by my partner in crime that I was not ever again to roll out on any janky ass cobbled together hooptie rides that got built out of my toolbox. Gotta be fresh.

Off to our board meeting. I think we have the best board meetings of perhaps any company ever.

Middle Ground

2010-12-05T16:02:00.003-05:00

It's hard to wrap one's head around a lot of what goes on these days. The FBI insider trading stuff seems to be mostly under the radar right now, shoved aside by WikiLeaks and whatever other pages the 24 hour news cycle has turned to. A very credible source has told me that easily a third of this sector is guilty. The technical aspects of who's likely dirty make it really easy to pursue. The henhouse has been left open for so long that it's been super easy to cheat - to the point where it's kind of been "why wouldn't you do it?". It's the freaking douche bag ass hats who need to have this ongoing circle jerk dick measuring party and do absafuckinglutely nothing to benefit the economy (when they fuck up the whole "efficient allocation of capital thing", well that pretty much closes the door on anything good that they might do) and who are trying to perpetuate their totally undeserved positions of wealth and priviledge at the expense of everything else that totally bone what should be a really good system. Just be ethical, and when you fuck up or get beat, take it. But they can't. And the Fed ensures that they don't have to. Ugggh.

On the other hand I watched "Capitalism: A Love Story" recently, that fat ass Michael Moore has his head completely and utterly wedged up his own fat ass. Not everyone deserves everything. Populism assumes that everyone's got an equal contribution that he's willing and able to make, while deregulationists (which is almost completely the opposite of what they actually are - they want 100% regulatory guarantee that their way will be THE way) assume that they and their select brethren are the only ones worth shit. I realize I'm oversimplifying the living hell out of it, but that's what I do.

Lobster finger gloves - tremendous win. I suppose I could check the old Garmin file to see what the temp was, but to oversimplify once more it was f-ing cold and f-ing windy today. But good ride anyway.

A shiny new donkey for the person who can accurately predict CX participation trends over the next 5 years. It seems to be an archetypical candidate to be victimized by it's own success. I also think that the legalization of disc brakes will have consequences that are far more profound than what's been popularly considered. Including but not limited to a high risk of obliteration of the sport. There are many layers to that onion.

I love building wheels with carbon rims and hate building wheels with aluminum rims. It's not that I prefer the one over the other, it's that I actually whole-heartedly enjoy and find one interesting, while the other usually makes me want to throw things.

After a few good weeks ofngetting miles in, I feel like I'm starting to regain some strength. Despite the wheezing, hacking, chortling, snorting and otherworldly amount of expectorating that I do (my bike comes home from rides just freaking COVERED in biology, as I fear do many of my ride mates), breathing is not my issue. It's my legs.

Asked to express the sentiment of my last sentence, many to most bike racers would write "it's THE legs.". "The legs felt good today.". I always foundnthat to be odd.

Witenagemot is what an iPad types when you start of typing "write" but leave out the r. Because, you know, witenagemot is a word I've used daily since 1981 at least.

I lost a beer on Friday. A Fin du Monde. Had to be one of those and not a PBR right? I got a 4 of Fin du Monde and a 6 of Two Hearted (it was on sale - you always stock that shot when it's on sale) at Rodmans on the way home Friday night. Get home, put the Two Hearted in the fridge and go to put 1-2-3... ? Where's the 4th Fin du Monde? Since it was supposed to be well below freezing Friday night and exploded Tripel is a smell that no car prefers (and because I'm a desperate alcoholic) I go immediately out to the car to retrieve said beer which must have fallen out in the car. Nein. Huh? I must have picked up a 4 with only 3 in it. If I go back and explain it to Rodmans do you think they'd give me a free one?

A few months ago, after a long and fun ride, while enjoying Fosters Grill and beers with people who'd been on the ride, I said that if I could make it a year without beer or M&Ms I could probably go pro. Maybe a slight exaggeration, but I probably would be a lot less slow.

I have no idea what to get the Mrs for Christmas. Fortunately her birthday is just after Christmas so I get stumped twice for the price of one. She already gets to spend each day with me, what more could she want?

To find out how picky people can be, offer them carbon wheels for sale. To find out the opposite, do the same. The world is strange like that.

Savory Sundays

2010-12-02T10:09:00.002-05:00

Anyone who is looking for a team to ride with or just wants to avoid the thrill of getting in a couple of hours of base mileage alone in the cold is welcome to join the GamJams team for our Savory Sundays ride this Sunday at 930am. Departure point is from Whole Foods on Willard Ave in Chevy Chase (not the Tenlytown one in DC, not the one on River Road in Bethesda - Whole Foods locations around here are getting to be like Dunkin Donuts in Rhode Island).

Route map is here. Blogger seems to be inconsistent with link success so it the link doesn't work here's the URL - http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=4147931

Pace is steady at endurance tempo. We don't soft pedal along but we aren't looking to replicate the 830 ride or the 10am. If you're looking for that kind of action, please go to those rides.

Please be prepared with at least a spare tube and a means to fill it.

Precipitation or very high chance thereof cancels. Cold temps do not.

See you there.

Retreading Water

2010-11-29T14:11:00.002-05:00

I’ve become completely countercyclical. Cross season ended for most people this weekend, so of course I'm thinking about getting onto some cross frames. Cross is a funny market made funnier for next year by the legalization of disc brakes. I’ve got a series of posts on the hows and whys of disc brakes in cross planned on the place where I spend all my time and effort lately. It’s a complicated issue.

Training for next year continues afoot. I have a few ambitious goals in mind. Mostly what I realize about my training is that I need miles, and lots of them. Fortunately, having been supplanted as the fastest cyclist in our household of 2, circumstances sometimes work in my favor on that end. Some days I'm supposed to ride fast, some days I'm supposed to ride strong, some days I'm supposed to ride long. One day per week I am supposed to do all of the above, in a workout which I lovingly refer to as "the dog's breakfast."

Entrepreneurship is really the best thing that's happened to me, professionally. I'd love to get rid of that nagging day job but I don't think it's going to happen soon. We're off to a fantastic start but... There are some "out there" plans we're looking at, but for the time being they're "out there."

On the trainer, I can't deal with having no power meter. I know that sounds chicken shit, but my perception of effort on the trainer is totally out of whack. On the road, it's nearly astonishingly in whack. It's still nice to be able to go back and say "gee, I really felt like puking there, what was happening then?" and be able to see what was going on. And I currently have a power meter laced to this insanely mack rim (hey, product testing never sleeps, you know?) so it's a pretty nice wheel to ride, but our other power tap is on vacation at a friend's house so when the better rider in our household decides to go slumming and ride with me, she gets the power tap and I'm left with a normal wheel.

I've been doing a bit of riding at night lately. My honest-to-goodness cycling light is on vacation at a different friend's house, so that sucks, but I've got a passable rig set up otherwise. It's good enough to get me to Hains and back. When you're there, you barely need a light. Forestalling dependence on the trainer for as long as possible is critical.

Cross Technique

2010-11-15T07:51:00.003-05:00

When you read this bear in mind that I've ridden on a cross bike exactly once. That was on Saturday at Vint Hill, when I did a pre-ride lap wearing a pair of tennis shoes. Tennis shoes and Eggbeater Candy pedals go together like peanut butter and relish, which is to say they don't go together at all, and I usually had some of at least one foot on the pedals. Couple that with a 2" long by 3/4" deep gash on my right instep from stepping on an oyster sheel while on vacation, which I definitely should have gotten stitched but that would have meant staying out of the water and that obviously wasn't going to happen. Every time my right foot slipped forward, which was every few moments, a pain burning with the heat of at least a very warm summer afternoon coursed through my soul. That's my CX experience.

On the other hand, I have watched quite a bit of CX racing this year and I usually watch things from the perspective of having been a pretty successful sailing coach for a while. This means I'm somewhat good at identifying critical differences.

We were set up right by the (very tight) zig zag turns at Vint Hill, and I knew that we'd see this section approached with a lot of different styles throughout the day. The more novice categories did them about how you'd expect - tentatively, with more enthusiasm and effort than discernable technical prowess. I say that not to criticize - everyone who raced did it better than I did when I did it. There were some riders who did them rather smoothly and quickly, but I thought we'd see much different technique later in the day. The A masters and elite women went through more quickly and smoothly than any previous fields had done, but still I thought we'd see something very much different out of the elite men.

It turns out we didn't. I'd half expected the elite men to do some sort of tail whip thing, which I would have expected to see in a mtb race. They didn't. Maybe cx brakes are so woefully underpowered (they definitely are not powerful) that this is an untenable technique, maybe I'm on crack for expecting to see it.

There was, however, one clear technique difference that distinguished Joe D, who won the men's elite race pretty easily (**Jared if you read this and are offended by it I'll explain below), from everyone else. This section was preceeded by a momentum downhill, and making the first turn required braking. The exit of each turn pointed down, while the entry to each turn was on a rise. I closely watched what gearing people were using, figuring that this would be a key differentiator. To simplify the discussion I'm only going to talk about the elite men, but the difference is relevant to every group I watched once I started looking for this.

Joe, like all the elite men in the lead group, was on the big ring every time through this section. I think Patrick Blair was on a 1x front setup so we have to eliminate him as a data point. Going through a section like this, my instinct would be to be in a gear that would give me something to pedal against when my back was gaining momentum out of the turns and pointing down. Most people did this, and were on the big ring and like 3 to 4 down on the cassette. EVERY TIME I watched Joe go through, he was fully cross chained to his largest cog. EVERY TIME I watched him he took a pedal stroke or two through the apex of the turn, and then backpedaled, ratcheting his crank into desired position for pedaling out of the bottom of the transition between the turns, and then quickly took a couple of pedal strokes into the turn. Most of the time, these pedal strokes were into his brakes, such that the bike was always ready to accelerate by his just easing off on the brakes.

In addition to offering what seemed to be greater speed and acceleration control, Joe's technique seemed to offer handling advantages. Other riders, pedaling into harder gears out of the bottom of the transitions and into the turns, got stood up and pushed forward as they tried to get on top of the bigger gear. Weight high and forward into a hard, tricky turn is not way to go through life. Joe, by constrast, stayed low and aft on his bike, and was more easily able to steer through the turns. I saw two riders do the "crumple" fall through these turns, pretty much definitely because they were really high up and weight forward.

There are a few caveats to these observations. One is that Joe was always in the lead. Jared was always close on Joe's wheel into the section, and I can't yet net out what affect Jared's relative position would have had on his technique. Other racers were unaffected by traffic through the section. Also, my observations are based on watching starting a few laps in - the lines were learned by that point, and didn't seem to change too too much as the race progressed. So whether consciously or not, everyone was using a chosen technique - not random.

To be able to execute this technique, your gear has to be very very dialed in. To be able to back pedal (quickly) while fully cross chained on very bumpy terrain without throwing your chain requires a really dialed drive train. Props to Joe's mechanic. Second, Joe is able to accelerate his legs REALLY quickly, so that he's accelerating his bike through rapid leg speed rather than torque. Not everyone has the leg speed to pull this off, but it's something that everyone can train.

It's not like Joe gained a huge amount each time through doing this, but he gained a few bike lengths each time. Perhaps more importantly, he was able to negotiate the section without relying on physiologically expensive torque to do it. I think it cost him less to go through this section using his technique than it did anyone else using the other technique.

Another observation is the Greg Lemond was right - it doesn't get any easier, you just go faster. It was exceedingly obvious that Joe was working REALLY hard for it, the whole race through.

**Finally to my explanation of how I come to call maybe a one second gap at the line an easy win. Joe led the entire race. Jared stuck to his wheel the entire race, which no one else came too close to doing, so enormous credit for that. But I could see the entire bottom straight and the entire top straight, and did not ever see Joe in any position other than driving the bus. Apologies if this observation is in error.

Apart from that, I'm significantly invested in learning all I can about cx frames. There is about an order of magnitude more variance between different cx frames than there is between road frames - BB heights, head tube angles, fork rakes, head tube lengths (some of these head tubes are WICKED short), cable routing, brake set up... It's sort of the wild, wild west.

Last for today, a grammar lesson from my mom about capitalization - capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse, and helping your uncle jack off a horse.

Have a good week, maybe some pictures later. We took tons.

Coupla Things

2010-11-12T18:33:00.002-05:00

1. I actually got out for a nice long(ish) ride this afternoon. I feel like I stole something. Awesome. Yesterday too. Big win.
2. Anyone interested should please feel free to join the GJ team for 45 miles of not fast leaving from Whole Foods in Friendship Heights at 930 on Sunday morning. Just don't ride like a donkey. If you do, I'll give you crap about it. Be on time, too, okay?
3. We have the coolest business cards, ever.
4. A freaking bike company. Whodathunkit? It's actually working really well. Sun shines on a dog's ass some days I guess. Mint.
5. Going now to a friend's birthday party. God some people are young. God am I not young. Fail.
6. Vint Hill for demos tomorrow. Rockburn(?) next Saturday. But if you want in then it's pretty much swipe the card then and there. The 11th hour will have passed. We aren't holding the order open, because we are Damn Sure not delivering late. Nosiree.
Have a good weekend. Dress warmer than I did today.

Vacation's Better

2010-11-09T10:41:00.003-05:00

Friday evening we were looking at this, drinks in hand. Saturday, we were driving north while the next wave of knuckleheads was driving south to enjoy what's been a really windy few weeks. Sunday, I had a great time at Tacchino, sending people out for test rides and hanging out with friends. Monday I was back at the salt mine, readjusting. There was plenty going on when I got back, including some interesting things having to do with permits. I'd rather be on vacation than caught between developers and municipalities. I'd rather do almost anything than be stuck between developers and municipalities.

I'm pretty psyched to get back on my bike. When I got on the rollers last night, it was the first time in almost two weeks that I'd clipped in. It's a good thing that Jim still has the other bike, which has my Power Tap wheel. I have no interest in seeing what meager efforts the hamster in my wheel is capable of producing right now. It's just nice to get my legs moving again - as nice and as necessary as a break is, coming out of one is a good feeling.

In other news, I've blown straight past Movember and into Novembeard (tm). It's pretty scraggly - I'm not exactly the most hirsute of people. Except on the top of my head. For this I can be thankful.

Hatteras

2010-11-04T10:59:00.004-04:00

Saturday, we left DC on the way to Hatteras. It's been a long ass time since we've been on a real vacation (more than a day off) and man did we need it.

Why go to Hatteras in November? Windsurfing. As we drove over the Oregon Inlet bridge, there was almost no wind but by the time we'd unpacked the car it was plenty to get a quick sail in before sundown. That was on a 6.5 and the big board. The big board isn't as fast, fun, nimble, or capable of jumping, but when the wind's a bit lighter, it gets you on the water.

Sunday was great. It was really windy when we woke up and I got out on a 5.0 and the smallest board. As the day wore on, the breeze died down quite a bit but we got a lot of time on the water.

Monday was another windy day, as was Tuesday. Wednesday had nothing, so it was a good day for reading. If the fog ever lifts today, it's going to get windy. Good stuff.

I think I'm about 8 pounds up, way too many beers and too much good food. I also stepped on an oyster shell and cut the living piss out of my foot. Trying to keep it clean but I might get some macking infection out of that. Sweet.

Bicycle Jones

2010-10-28T14:16:00.003-04:00

I call her "Sammi Sweetheart"

It's not that often I get to pull out a Cheech and Chong reference these days. I'm getting old, they've long since gotten old. But Basketball Jones was a funny thing, and it pops up in "Being There," which is seriously one of the greatest movies of all time. Peter Sellers was an extaordinary talent.

Okay so where was I going with all of this? I miss my bike. I gave it to Jim on Monday so he could pound on it for a while. He gets my janked up Fred Sanford personal build, which is the result of some of the most discriminating eBay sales and dumpster dives that the world has ever known. Mike gives me shit for my sporty red brake pad holders, but I think they look cool. Not so much with the yellow Swissstop pads, which make it look like Ronald McDonald's bike. Meg S from Coppi just rode by. Hi Meg. Jim's on Coppi too. Small world, huh? Anyway, I've got white cables which I think look pimp, but next to our Perkins builds, yes, my bike looks like a garage sale. But in the what couple of weeks I've had this frame, the thing's grown on me, bad. I never really fit this year's frame that well. This one fits awesome, and it's fun to ride.

All the "it's not about the bike" stuff I wrote for our site, and here I am feeling like this. Never fall in love at the Jersey Shore, there, Ronny. Damn.

Big move for the day was preventing the developer's lack of dealing with some critical paperwork from turning into the work stoppage it would have been. I was more lucky than good on that one, but in dealing with Arlington inspections I've definitely learned that no phone call "just to be sure" is ever wasted. The call that initiated this whole thing certainly wasn't.

Pray for wind next week.

Yup

2010-10-26T22:37:00.003-04:00

So I even got to ride my bike yesterday. That was really fun. Especially since it was on my November, which fits like a glove and is really fun to ride. Then today I gave it away to undergo some very specific stress testing. So I rode another one on the trainer. Ritchey bars are subtly wider than FSA bars. Also, this was my first time actually using SRAM. I've now done a half a ton of SRAM builds, but first time using it. On the trainer so it only half counts. I also broke a new low - carbon tubulars on the trainer. Had no other wheels available. What are you going to do? Now I have no road bikes at all once again. Nor wheels.

The restaurant got open. A few hiccups and such, but I could have told you there would be months ago. It's part of their process, and at the end of it all you have a fantastic restaurant. Now I'm building a gym.

People get really drunk at CX races, huh? That was a pretty fun time on Sunday. Hopefully you stopped by and got some gloves and a bottle. My mechanic skills were fully taxed by needing to fix a friend's completely recalcitrant front brake shortly before her race. Somehow I pulled it out of my ass and she made it through the race with an operative brake. We'll be at Tacchino next, at which I may even ride. My wife finagled a friend's bike to use, and my knees don't quite hit the handlebars so maybe I'll give it a go. But I promise, I will be terrible, and coming off of a weeklong bender, so if you want to see a complete fiasco, yeah, you'll want to watch that.

Between now and Tacchino I go on vacation to Hatteras. Windsurfing, hanging out, fishing, surfing, waking up late, drinking beer, maybe learning to kite, etc. First vacation in a long ass time. Really need it, really looking forward to it.

Spam

2010-10-19T20:42:00.007-04:00

My bike even goes to the bar. Really cool bars, that aren't even open yet. But at which I will be eating and drinking on the house on Saturday. I'm still there now, staring at a large and empty keg fridge, waiting for the last of the door hardware that the building inspector decided to require at the 11th hour, so you know, standard 15 hour day no big deal. But Saturday, we dine.
Come to the Great November Ride. Sunday, I swing my cowbell.

2010-10-18T18:14:00.006-04:00

It's been a busy weekI took the wheels out for a day at the photographer's
Then we unpacked all the demo frames and good stuff.
Went riding with some friends and stopped for a snack
And learned that we have big gigantic freak me out snakes here. On MacArthur, even.

In and among all of this good stuff, I took a whole pile of photos, planned a big event, glued on a whole pantload of tubulars, installed more cassettes than I ever have before, built up a frame and put about 6 hours on it, cut 4 forks to size without screwing one up, installed 4 headsets, logo'd 4 bikes, got about a dozen final inspection on the work project, and made a reservation for the test seating at the new joint, where I will get as drunk as I can without making an ass out of myself.

Come to Rock Creek Park on Saturday at 1030. The parking lot immediately downhill of where the 10am ride starts. If you plan to do the 10am, we'll be set up by around 930. Have a coffee and a donut, and check out our bikes. If you can do the ride with us, awesome. We'll have swag - good swag, worth getting. If you can come by after, we'll be grilling food. The weather is going to be good.

Three Coals

2010-10-12T13:36:00.002-04:00

Following a slightly psychotic work week in which we got a whole bunch of final inspections out of the way (more to come), way way way too much time working plus with the added fun of head/chest infection (dust and whatever mold allergies came out in nature last week), we did the Trois Cols ride on Sunday.

Getting to the ride was a bit interesting. I’d long ago promised my god daughter that I would watch her slaughter all comers at a sailboat race on the Eastern Shore on Saturday, so we went over and did that. Great day on the water, absolutely perfect conditions. I miss being on boats all the time. Then we got home at like 930 and I had to build up a bike to use. My Kazane was delivered to its new owner last week, and the Novembers we are going to use as demos don’t come in until later this week. My option was an old Fuji Team, which I’d last used in 2007. The derailleur hanger was a bit janked, and I remembered having tapped and rethreaded it so that the shifting wouldn’t be quite so conceptual. I got it all sorted in about 90 minutes, using all sorts of toolbox scraps and various other “make it up” parts. The adapter sleeve that I used for the front derailleur clamp is interesting. But except for my perfect record of installing the Wipperman connect link backwards (it’s decidedly directional), the thing worked perfectly. My position was close to what it should be, my wife even commented that my back looked less tweaked on the Fuji than it did on the Kazane. The ride was a bit industrial. I don’t think I’ve ever done a ride even close to that ambitious on that frame before.

Starting from Exit 6 on 66, we went over Chester Gap along some really scenic and pretty roads, and then along more scenic roads to Marshall. In Marshall, I confirmed something that a ride in Lost River made me suspect - Honey Stinger products are an ABSOLUTELY INSTANT laxative for me. I mean, I open the package and I'm in a full sprint to the john. FULL. SPRINT.

From Marshall, we followed the standard route to Airmont and Bluemont to Mount Weather. Rectortown Road, a lovely thoroughfare, seems to have had a case of acne or something lately. I double flatted on a surprise pothole, which was just exactly what I wanted to do. Good thing I’d just emptied the tanks with the Honey Stinger incident, or else I definitely would have emptied them then. Then another of our group flatted about three or four miles later. WTF??? Mount Weather is an interesting beast. It's just on that hairy edge where you can take it a little mellow if you want or need to, but you cross that line just a little bit and it's on like donkey kong. I had done plenty of bus driving to that point, plus the hill came about 30 miles later in the route than it normally does, so I had a little bit of that not so fresh feeling. Plus, with my Honey Stinger discovery, I think I'd ejected some much needed nutrients, and wasn't eating enough anyhow. So I went up pretty quickly but not near to what I'd done when I'd climbed it really quickly about a month ago. I had a rabbit to chase this time, as a guy was going up a good clip about a minute in front of me. Nice guy, holy shit could he go down hill.

From the Mount Weather, we went to Naked Mountain. Mt. Nudity is thankfully quite short, although rather steep at the end. By this time, it was painfully obvious that I’d been negligent in my eating and wolfed a Clif Bar as soon as I got over the top. I would have eaten three if I’d had them. As we got down by 66, we stopped to eat. I had some Clif blocks, which are great. Then came the dilemma – a package of Pomegranate Passion Honey Stingers beckoned. Hmmm. I really wanted to eat them. So I did. And then I started to gurgle. Dammit. With 70 something miles in the rearview and less than an hour of riding left to go, I really didn’t want to fight that war. I really really didn’t want to LOSE that war, but I wasn’t hip to fight it either. I chugged a half a bottle of water, and that did some kind of magic.
The last 18 or so miles was a bit of a death march, but once we smelled the barn, things got a bit more lively and we the last mile was typically animated. From there, it was a direct line to Foster’s Grill. Aww yeah. Love that charburger.

Bikeless

2010-10-05T13:21:00.003-04:00

How is it that a partner in a start up bike company finds himself bikeless? The old cobbler's shoes bit, I guess. Our limited edition November frames arrive in the very near future, but my signature edition team bike from this year was the first one sold from the service course. I take it as an article of faith that this sale was motivated primarily because it was MY bike and the fact that I ride the world's most popular size was secondary. I still have a mountain bike.

Said startup bike company will be hosting a ride from Rock Creek out to the environs on 10/23. This will be known as The Great November Ride. So if you want to see the wheels and frames live and direct like, and get some ultimate free swag, mark that date down. Everyone's welcome.

Trying to get a place finaled. Busy as sin.

Fustercluck

2010-09-27T09:45:00.002-04:00

Excellent mountain bike ride on Saturday with the missus and a friend of ours. He's being drawn toward all mountain or whatever you call it type of riding by some dudes he rides with. That's cool, and his skills are pretty freaking good, especially when you consider that he has just the one gear. My preference is xc style riding, go fast, don't stop. Our lack of stops may have killed him, but he claimed to have had a great time.

We went to Patapsco again, which is awesome. We went through this section that I had been through once but could never find again. It's all ferns and this total ripper downhill, except when you do it the way we did it. Twice. Uggh. But glad to know where it is.

At one point I was third wheel going over a big log feature. #1 bobbled but cleaned it. #2 bobbled worse being held up by #1's bobble. I got totally gummed up and barely made it onto the log. Didn't hurry back onto the bike and they were GONE. I guess it was drop me time. Absolutely flew to catch back on, and did. Definitely had a few "this will end poorly" moments but all was well until I hit a sharp rock way way way too fast and demo'd my rear tire. Gooey mess, boot patches, tubes, all sorts of fun. And back at it. All told we did 18 miles but it didn't seem like that much. I'm at the point now where I'm way better than I was in say June - like way better - but I want to keep making gains.

Now that racing season is over I'm really flat on road riding around here. I'll go do the big rides out west gladly, but River Riad just ain't doing it for me right now. If there were races I'd still be into it, but there aren't any. But man do I want to go ride the mtb. I love it.

Sunday, was dealing with November stuff (our carbon tubies are 1370g, awesome) and got a work related call. Nothing good. Sometimes these hands of cards that one must play are just nuts. Can't go into it. But just holy shit is all I have to say.

That's it.

Baby Steps

2010-09-23T10:22:00.002-04:00

I used to run. I was never very good at it and never did any competing beyond a fee corporate challenge type things and one sprint tri a long time ago before I knew any better (in which I spent the entire run getting passed - I got out of the water way close to the lead and stayed there through the bike, but dudes were running like 4:30 miles - not this guy). But I could go 8 or 10 miles at 6:30 pace or so, which sucks when you are talking about actual running, but when you're a complete hacker just in it for the exercise it's okay. At least you're passing most people out on the road, which counts for nothing but you'd rather do it than not.

Anyhow, after I broke my leg I tried to get back into it about 6 months post-accident. By that point I'd regained some fitness by being a really good student at physical therapy and pushing it pretty hard at the gym. Two weeks into it, I'd clearly done too much too soon, my knee and tibia really hurt all the time, and I bagged it in favor of other stuff. Last winter, I did a bunch of workouts on the treadmill where I was walking up silly inclines - like 15%. That's a great workout but I'd still like to be able to run faster. When I was running the most, my weight naturally went down into the high 150s. It's like my body knew to get rid of any extra. That would be a good thing in general. Plus, just running is kind of fun.

So last night I had a conversation with a dude at Georgetown Running Company (they have a store like a block from our house) and he encouraged me to start on the treadmill VERY gradually and see where I got. The challenge he identified was that my fitness would generally encourage me to go way too much for what my body can take now (a la 2 years ago). I was really cautious with it, warmed up on an elliptical and then did one (yes, one) 10 minute (yes, 10 minute) mile. Over time, maybe I'll be able to realistically challenge myself with some sort of time/distance goal. But I've done it the stupid way once and I ain't doing that again, no sir.

Following that I did many variants of my friend the plank, which has left a legacy of ain't-right-ness (the good kind) around my trunk. Then I did 30' on the stair mill (decidedly different from a stairmaster) and I don't know that I've ever been that sweaty. The key is never ever touch the handrails. I didn't believe it fully until I tried it. Good Lord. The thing gives you wattage too, which is probably not too wildly different from what you do on a bike.

No astounding kitchen revelations last night, although I'm definitely into it now. I took down a cookbook and started to look at a few things. We'll see.

New bike coming soon. Can't wait. Want a 29er so bad. So bad. So bad.

Cooking

2010-09-22T10:53:00.002-04:00

I like pasta, a lot. My wife she no likey the pasta so much. What to do? For one, I admit that the way I cook pasta is the standard American half-assed way to cook it. So, having one of the better chefs in the area at my disposal, I asked him how I might improve my success with this most basic of staples.

His first piece of advice was to make my own sauce, but that takes a lot of time. So I'll do that, and then store it in jars for later use, but I didn't have the chance to do that last night. His next mainframe point was that the water should be salty. As in salty as shit. I usually put a few pinches of salt in the water. No. Tablespoons - multiple - is the answer. Think "brine". Next is that 95% of pasta is ruined by overcooking. More on this later.

The sauce needs to be cooked in a pot, and the pot should be reasonably large. More on this later as well. Start by heating some oil in said pot, and then adding a generous amount of fresh minced garlic. He likes garlic, but not a crazy amount. The heat should be low at this point, otherwise the garlic will caramelize prematurely. When the garlic starts to cook, add in your sauce (if you are making your sauce, this is where you start doing so). Again, low heat. Stir often and season to suit. Seasoning during cooking is better than seasoning all at once at the end. Fresh oregano is great, but I'm a philistine I guess. We are trying to make a nice dinner here, not open a noodle shop.

If you are doing a protein, do that while the sauce is going. For the record, I used Whole Foods Classic Tomato Sauce. Anyhow, I made chicken, which I do well. Heat oil, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, add chicken breasts. I prefer them not too thick - filets, but not the thin ones for scallopini. Anyway, after the flip, tent the pan with foil. Trust me on this. Again, heat is pretty low.

Now for the pasta. The water is at a FULL ROLLING boil when the pasta goes in. Cook it until it's bendy but still firm in the middle. Then, using a pasta scoop, scoop the pasta into the sauce pot. The final two or three minutes of cooking is done with sauce and pasta together. The sauce will bind to the pasta, which is when you scoop in a little of the water you cooked the pasta in. Remember that this water is SALTY so having your shit a little under-salted at this point is a good thing. You want the sauce to remain liquid but not soupy, so be measured in how you add water.

You can add the protein to the pot, or you can serve it on top, it's up to you. I chunk it and mix it in. Last step is to add fresh grated cheese. I used aged manchego last night, but you just want something along the hard, salty lines.

This is probably basic as shit for anyone who actually knows how to cook, but let me tell you, the shit was FANTASTIC. Like, I couldn't believe I'd cooked it. Total sucess. Nice.

Before all this, I'd done my first strength training of the off season. It's been a long time since I've had real pronounced delayed onset muscle soreness. I don't love the gym, and though my age qualifies me for the sequel to The Expendables, my body's proclivity to adapt to any stress by becoming ever more stick like means that I don't get much positive reinforcement from checking out how jacked I am. Nonetheless, I'm committed to this. It's happening.

Just 20 Weeks Until Tradezone!

2010-09-21T08:18:00.002-04:00

All this beautiful weather is bittersweet since it gets dark too early to ride after work. Getting my light out of purgatory would help, but that's a touchy one that I can't go into. The other thing is that I find some time away from the bike helpful.

Wheels are sold. Next up for bids is a nearly new 28 hole DT240 rear hub. It's been built and used for a couple hundred miles. The freehub is barely scored. Competitive Cyclist has them for $390. First $250 takes it. Skewer not included.

Anecdotally, the best way to throw your training off track is to talk about it a whole lot. I'll play with that fire just a little bit. The plan is to only be on the trainer once a week through until December sometime. The other time will be spent doing some running, some lifting, some plyometrics and the stair mill. The stair mill is a brutal animal that crushes souls, but provides a pretty extraordinary LT-type workout.

Also, if anyone out there plays squash or wants to, and is convenient to Chevy Chase, let me know. The gym we go to has a nice court that's almost always open and it's not that expensive. The owner wants to get more peope using it so he'll probably hook you with some killer deal.

Another boring post. Splendid.

Out With A Bang

2010-09-20T07:49:00.003-04:00

As with last year, this road season ended with the Tour de Fair Haven, a lovely race in NJ. It's good to get credit for an inlaw visit when you go to a bike race. This year's event was bigger than last year's, with some silly prize money on offer. The masters field was stacked with powerful teams.

One of the biggest things I have to work on is getting psyched up at the start. I always have this extended moment of "aw jeez, why'd I even come to this race, I'm just going to get beat up," and it often turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Not good. I had the same feelings yesterday but fought back, even as they were calling up former pros and national champs. The worst and most immediate effect of my pre-race malaise was realized was when I was in the back third off the line. Uggh. Well, I pulled up my big boy pants and started dealing. My goal was to get to the front 12 slots by the time the early break went. Fail, but mostly because I was so far back and the break went early. Next goal was to get and stay in the front for when that break got caught, and be in the counter.

I'll give myself credit for doing a good job of moving up, by taking it just like a group ride. The pace was really high (we were going 30 as often as not) which made getting a lane to move up super easy. Going fast enough was the hard part. I had to do it in stages, grab a buch of spots, slot in, take 2 breaths, and then at it again.

The 2 guys out front got much closer despite having lots of team mates in the field, but then a guy shot off for a bridge. Hmmm. How was this going to work itself out? One guy from a team in the break looked VERY itchy to go, so I moved into position behind him. Everything looked pretty neat when we approached the turn onto the straight where he'd definitely go. And I hit a pothole so hard it nearly knocked my teeth loose. I was really surprised I hadn't flatted. Only a couple of seconds later I learned that I had. Merde.

When the field came back down the straight at the end of that lap, homie whose wheel I had marked was around 2/3 of the way across. Eventually, another of their dudes bridged. Homie won. At least I had it picked out right. Some Adler racing guy in a track helmet wins beast of the day in a landslide. Dude was MONSTER.

That's the way these things always go I guess. Even with the flat, I learned much in this race. It was by far the fastest race I've been in where I was able to slow it down and actually build and set about executing a plan. I also got better at cornering in crowds, which has been a weak point this year. Cornering on my own is a strength, but in crowds I got tentative and was too much on the breaks. Energy wasted. No more. Sweet.

After my race, watched a great women's race and then hung with Jay's family (absolutely awesome people) while watching Jay and Chuck roll the P-1-2 race. They looked solid as hell the whole time, but we had to get back to family before it was over.

So now the off season. Lots to work on, but coming from a good spot. The simple goals for next year are to win a masters race and win a sport class mtb race. Achieving them will be as much a mental victory as a physical one.

My carbon clinchers are for sale. You see, I won't be needing them anymore. Rear is a Reynolds Attack, front is a Cane Creek Aros. Same rims, different hubs. 20h front, 24h rear, 46mm deep. In very good shape, I haven't used them really very much since I got them. The set weighs around 1600g. $450 the pair for readers. Email at dkri7358 on the google mail for details, pics, whatever.

Fred, Barney and The Matrix

2010-09-15T17:04:00.004-04:00

In cycling, Freds are called Freds. In sailing, Freds are called Barneys. I don't really know how this happened. There are theories. One thing we know for sure is that Fred Flinstone was a sporting paragon. (and Wilma was a POA - DAMN!!!)

Although he sometimes showed flashes of vulnerability, Fred drove a race car better than almost anyone (Goggles Paisano), achieved gridiron immortality at good ole PU, and was a bowler par excellence (they don't call just anyone Twinkle Toes). But Fred never really did too much with water sports (see surfing clip above). When he won the houseboat on "The Prize's Price," that didn't turn out too well either. So why, when he was such a land sports icon, and a water sports buffoon, do cyclists affix his name to the uncouth among them, while Barney, who was just straight cool across the board, is the whipping boy for dopey sailors? Who knows?

On to the matrix. This was presented to me in slightly different form. Notice how Fred is at the baseline of "x=y" on our graph. I did not put him there, he was there when I found him. Presumably Barney occupies a lofty position along the Y axis, while being somewhat to the left along the X. Notice how Bert, Jim, and I both occupy positions of blogging prominence, while our cycling characteristics are slightly outweighed (to varying degrees) by our blogging accomplishments. Chuck's blogging accomplishments, while notable, are outweighed by his racing. Ergo, he is the the left of the line where X=Y.

At present, Kyle is flat-lining the cycling quotient.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
B------------(Chuck Hutch)
I
K
E-------------------------------------------------(Bert)
R---------------------------------------------------------(Unholy Jim)
A (Drew)
C---------------------------------------------------(Dave)
I
N
G(Fred)------------------------------(Kyle)
XXX B L O G G I N G
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(it looks better without the dashes but they're a formatting necessity)
This matrix can not be questioned. It simply is. It was brought to my attention while discussing a third party blog with a non-blogger. Surprisingly, I don't actually read many blogs. Few, in fact. Said third party blog was made known to me by the non-blogger. The third party blogger in question made many many references to the blogger's ability to maintain a position of third or fourth wheel, while also bemoaning the lack of pace and selectiveness in the race in question. ONLY A TRUE BLOGGER sees the lack of inherent conflict in this situation. Racers are for others, with far fewer journalistic peccadillos to consider, to make speedy, selective and interesting, while the 5th estate (the 4th estate kicked us out a while ago) gets a free ride. Of course history is actually written by the bloggers, not the victors, so either way the blogger looks like the hero. Alternately, the blogger may choose to make repeated senseless and hopeless attacks, or sit on the front of the race and drive the pace (of course at a rate of speed which will inspire the other type of blogger to remark on the slowness of pace and lack of selectiveness in the race) while enjoying scant results.

It's hard damn work keeping you people amused. Respeck, bishes.

That is all.

Like Ya Stole It

2010-09-13T11:44:00.002-04:00

Very high level executive meeting Saturday morning. Lots of critical decisions made. Long range planning. Lots of harumph-ing. If only all such meetings could take place on 2 wheels.

The afternoon was for getting dirty. We finally got to Patapsco. The last time we'd been there together, it was an unrideable mud bog in many places (it hadn't rained in a while - the place just holds mud like a champ and I hate riding in goop, and it's terrible for the trail obviously) and we got way lost trying to stay on dry trails. This time, after 3 weeks or so of no rain, it was dry all over and lightning fast. What a fun time.

You get really spoiled at Fountainhead with everyone going in the same direction. We seemed to be going the opposite way of a lot of people. What can you do. On the first real climb (starting from the Park and Ride) I broke my chain. That took a few moments to fix, then back at her. I have no idea what the names of the trails are for the most part, but I know we did the Ridge and took that all the way out past the Blair Witch house and almost to 95, and then took Red out by the second (western most) meadow and then came back to the swinging bridge from the northwest. Shortly thereafter I made my navigational boo boo.

We went up Vineyard Spring which is a fun little climb up to the powerline. Then we started todrop down to the spot where the climb where I broke my chain ends. I remembered this fun weird off camber connected back to that climb, saw the opening, and took it. Well, it was an awesome little section that actually started with a beyotch of a climb, but it wasn't my connector. I lost the scent and got us lost in Max Yazgur's field. We slogged around and were clueless for a while before we got the heads up from a hiker. Turns out there was an awesome drop down to the bottom of Bull Run, which we took back to the car.

Now we both have the fever, bad. My technique has officially progressed beyond robosuck. A couple of things have changed. First, I trust my tires a lot more than I used to. This is partially due to equipment and partially due to having learned a lot more about what tires are and aren't going to do for you. I used to freak out a lot thinking that stuff was going to happen, but as I've learned to keep the throttle more open and just go, I kind of just go with it now. A lot of times, speed is the best answer. Also, my weight placement on the bike is tons better, much more centered, not so much on the front. I find myself actually noticing this quite a bit.

Back to tires, tubeless is the absolute business. I am still a tiny bit high on pressure (a shade north of 25psi front and back) but I've found I like this pressure. The back tire got squirmy when it was a little lower. I don't like squirmy. The front tire feels fully engaged like this, and bottoming out happens what I'd call an appropriate amount. Not too often that it freaks me out, but enough, and maybe it's just compared to what I was used to, but I definitely don't feel like I'm bouncing around or being beaten to death. It's really pretty smooth out there.

As it turns out, my previous pressure loss wasn’t due to burping. There was a tiny ass little leak at the rim joint, which I discovered by pumping it up to about 70psi, whereupon I heard a slight whistling. A little shake and bake and out comes the bubbling goo and voila no more whistling. No more air leaking. Mint.

Sunday was just a mellow ride.

All of the observations and reports from EuroBike are coming out/have come out, and boy are we feeling pretty reassured in a bunch of our decisions. But that is a story for another site.

Run, Run, Rudolph

2010-09-08T12:23:00.003-04:00

Did the old Conte's ride last night, only I was a little beat up and didn't feel like doing the A ride so I did the "rolling hills" ride. It started off as about 1000 people, none of whom really knew where the route went, so we made it up. What ended up happening was 6 or so of us split off and another dude and I beat the crap out of each other. He won.

Today's GJ survey is an apt one, as by the time I got through socializing it was pretty much pitch for the ride home. Armed with Nasty McBLinky on the back of the seat and the trusty Planet Bike Spok light up front, I was tres visible but didn't have exactly daytime visibility in front of me. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't a set up you'd want to go mountain biking with.

In the interest of not getting hit by a car or something, I took the Cap Crescent up from Georgetown to River. That should be called the Darwin Trail. What are you going to do about joggers who don't wear any sort of lights or reflective stuff at all? Better yet, they DO wear headphones, so they are deaf, blind and invisible. For the most part you can see them from pretty far away, so it's not that big a deal.

Credit is due to a large percentage of people who have totally reasonable set ups. The rule I generally go by is "if I encountered someone set up and acting like I am, would that cause a problem or not?" Several people had fully legit light setups (most, unfortunately, were going the other way so I was severely blinded every once and again), and most of the ones who didn't had a setup similar to mine and so were easy to see and gauge.

One bonehead, however, failed to get the message that the red light goes on the BACK of the bike. Jesus H, that was confusing and nearly fatal, or at least very painful. Is a red blinky light on steady shine REALLY giving you any visibility (as in able to see, not able to be seen)? These things actually matter, people. Seriously.

I used to have a pretty sweet light. A friend borrowed it to go on a night time mountain bike adventure. There's a very long story, but I don't think I'll ever see it again. Being able to ride when it's dark out is pretty money, so I think I'll probably get another light sometime before too long.

In other news, WKO+ is cool. I have the trial version downloaded onto my work laptop. It is easily able to import .tcx files from Garmin Connect. Golden Cheetah seems to be somewhat wonderful, but the Windows version I downloaded doesn't understand the power component of the .tcx file. Maybe it works better on a Mac? I'm going to try it this evening. Power Agent for Mac so far seems almost totally unable to import .tcx files. Nothing is ever easy.

Slow Burn

2010-09-07T08:18:00.005-04:00

Time to put the white bibs and shoes away. No more seersucker jerseys until next spring. School's open, drive carefully. That must mean I'm finally in shape.

After Saturday's 80 mile can of whoop-ass, we went out for a jaunt around Fountainhead on Sunday. Andrew was at it again, stomping on the accelerator from the get go. It takes my legs a bit longer to wake up, but I got there, and rode just fine. I was pretty happy with a couple of things.

First, I feel like I've gotten my gear dialed in pretty well. The UST tubeless front tire I started using this summer (Bontrager Jones ACX (?) 2.1) has been good all along. The first time I used it, I felt like I was washing it out all the time. That went away when I dropped a couple of pounds of pressure from it, which was coincident with me finally learning to keep my weight off the front of the bike, and to keep my fingers off the front brake. You can possibly imagine the benefits that this confluence would provide. The rear tire that Paul hooked me with a few weeks ago (Bontrager XC (?) Tubeless Ready 2.0) is now firmly in its element. If you run it with too much pressure, it's okay to fairly unimpressive. It's adequate, you just wind up walking up a lot of stuff that you shouldn't because the small knobs do NOT hook up with dry dirt when the tire is overinflated. Taken down to 28 psi, the thing is a champ. It's a fairly skinny tire, so there isn't a whole ass bag of volume there. Translation: you're going to bottom out on your rim every once in a while. Perhaps because it's a narrowish tire and I am using narrowish rims, there is ZERO squirm from this tire. I hate squirm, it freaks me out and saps my confidence in what the bike's going to do. The tire/rim interface still isn't 100% ideal, I definitely burped a few PSI out of the thing during the course of the ride, but apart from that I'm all good with this setup.

Second, I feel like I might have grown a pair of balls in terms of taking bouncier and twistier sections at pace. Jim had a pretty good experience doing the bull dance, feeling the flow this weekend, and uses a skiing analogy that occurs to me as well. When I first got bump skiing, I'd do a section really well but then reach a point where my weight would gradually, inexorably start drifting back, which is a cycle that accelerates at blinding speed and inevitably ends with you shot off your line and needing to regroup. When I learned whatever it was that I learned to keep my weight forward, everything came together. Same thing in mountain biking, only in reverse: now that I'm keeping my weight back, a whole lot of good things are happening with my turns and control. On a lot of sections, I'm going way faster but feeling a lot less haired out. Being relaxed on those sections allows me to recover a little bit, which lets me go harder on the uphill and grinding flat sections. Happy happy joy joy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still marginal at best at this shit, I've just gotten onto a new ladder rung, from which I can see the fruited plains of really not sucking. I'm going to ride the bejeesus out of my current setup until either it gives evidence of slowing me down (and yes, I would be some increment faster/better/whatever on different gear, but I'd still suck and that would be the big problem) or it all just falls apart and wholesale replacement is the logical option.

Three outings into using the Garmin, and I like it. The display flexibility is great, its functionality on both bikes is great (not that I ever looked at it on the mountain bike), and some of the route stuff is neat. It automatically starts a new lap for you when you're doing circuits, which is kind of cool. The lap display is pretty neat. The rubric under which I'm judging this thing is that a head unit would have cost me the same whether I got the Garmin one or the regular PowerTap one, and I'm glad I got this one. I'm a tiny bit concerned about the security of the mount while on the mountain bike. There are ways around that.

So maybe Turkey Day this coming weekend, and then a race in NJ the weekend after. The race in NJ is a cool one, an odd duck of a course but a fun one. I tried really hard to win it last year as a 4, and came pretty f-ing close. My game is such that trying hard to win something is more of a get rich or die trying proposition, and that's what I tried. Unfortunately, I got caught within sniffing distance of the line. Oh well it made a good show for the crowds and it was a good move.

Very cool to read on VeloNews.com about Rugg spending time off the front in the crit at Green Mountain. That's a race I'd maybe like to try next year, but it seems to me that unless you go there with exceptional condition, it's just going to be kind of a painful experience, mentally as much as physically. Being on the back side of the bell curve at an event like that is pretty punishing. But plenty of people from around here rode well and distinguished themselves (and for the person for whom we were rooting the hardest that meant making it through the event, which he did, and which we cheered) and that's really cool. We live in a place where people are pretty fast.

Mark your calendar for 10/23. Something different than the other thing is happening on that date. It's going to be really fun.