Canton Cup, cat4

For the second consecutive year, Canton Cup was my first cross race of the season. Training over the past few weeks has been fun, especially doing intervals on the trainer. Now that my body is capable of digesting food again, my watts go up each workout at ridiculous jumps. Most of these workouts have just been nice and stead threshold intervals though, nothing too anaerobic. It’s only been in the past 2 weeks that I’ve tried anything really anaerobic at all. Hopping in Superprestige the other week nearly killed me. I went out hard and tried to keep up with the big boys, only to find out I DEFINITELY did not belong. It was like bonking in the first 1000 meters of Alp d’Huez, not cool! It’s going to be a while before (or if!) I get fast cross legs.

A few changes for this cross season. First off, I'm racing on a small framebuilder's team, Maietta Factory Racing. I've thoroughly enjoyed every minute spent on my sweet custom cross bike and I am excited to be part of the team. I'm spoiled to have a custom bike with all the details tailored exactly to my preferences. Everyone should have this opportunity. Secondly, I made the switch to tubulars. I had planned on finding some old cheap aluminum rims to use, but I ended up scoring a front Stinger 5.0 for cheap and I reused an old 303 rear I had laying around. The set weighs in at almost exactly 1300g, lighter than my road set, pretty overkill for cat4 cross. Glued up a pair of Grifos. Of course I waited until the night before the race to actually put the wheels on my bike to test them. Turns out I may have some weird spacing issue with the 303 that causes my wheel to seat unevenly and messes with my brakes. Still trying to figure that one out. Ended up having to run my trustworthy Kysrium rear wheel with a Mud2.

Something like 115 people pre-reg’d for the cat4’s this year. I’m not sure how many people started, but the results show 110 finishers. It felt like a lot. We staged off of the course at a 90 degree angle. Despite planning otherwise, I got there late and people were lined up probably at least 30 racers wide and only 3 racers deep. What happened next was my only good move of the day: lining up on the correct side (left side) of this disaster. When we moved up onto the course we made a left, so all the people on the left side (myself included) ended up at the front. The folks on the front right ended up much further back. I was on the second row behind a dude dressed up like Super Mario. It was Halloween and if you wore a costume you got a callup.

Some IBC girls that had just finished their race were warning people next to me how slippery the paved section of the course is. One of them had some sweet road rash. Shortly after the official starts talking about how slippery pavement can be when you’re coming off of wet grass. Fair warning. I took note but in the back of my mind I was probably still thinking yeah, whatever.

The gun went off and we’re on our way. Super Mario got a great start and therefore so did I. Actually it took me way too long to click in and I felt like a clumsy idiot, but I kept pedaling like I had platform pedals. Once I got clipped in I had the opportunity to shoot to the front and get the holeshot, but I figured I bet not start too hot. Superprestige was still in the back of my mind. I was still 8^th or 10^th or something and out of 120 people and figured that was just fine.

We get to the first set of barriers and I’m thinking no problems, this pace is just fine. I haven’t jumped over real barriers in about a year, but got over without wrecking myself or anything, and even re-mounted OK. After getting back on my bike pedaling got hard. I forgot how much it takes out of you to dismount in cross. We went over some random rocky rooty sections, the long twisty pavement, and come up on the mini barriers. The dude in front of me tries to hop them and goes over the handlebars. I dismount and go around. Getting back on the bike confused me because there was a turn immediately after. I hadn’t gotten to preride the course.

After the mini-barriers I started to feel really torched. I switched to a pace that would let me recover a bit, but apparently that was really slow. People came around me like I was doing a recovery ride. I made it to the spectator friendly track without sliding too many positions, so at least I got to look kind of fast for a lap. Actually I’m pretty sure I was the slowest person at Canton around the track. I could barely move after doing the runup. My legs were worthless.

By the time I got over the third and last set of barriers and completed lap one, my slide was in full effect. For some reason I was sort of riding like the opposite of a roadie. I was getting buried on the power sections and felt like a champ through the turns. Every time I tried to hold a wheel I’d get shelled. Finally some dude on a front suspension MTB caught. He was slow as slime (like me) on the grassy power sections but cruised over the roots, rocks, and turns. We rode together for most of the second lap. I think he finally smoked me after the third set of barriers. I was deathly slow after any dismount.

On the start of the third lap I was overtaken by a large pack of 5-10 racers including NEBC’s linebacker turned roadie Jim Thomas. With a familiar face to chase, I tried picking it up. It’s hard holding a wheel in cross when you’re tired though. I messed up the uphill barriers a bit and got gapped. As I was trying to close up the gap, we came up to the twisty pavement section. Sure enough, I went into the second turn a bit too hot, feel my front tire fold a bit, and next thing I know I’m sliding on the pavement. Scraped up my right shin, a few cuts on my hands, but at least I didn’t cut up my new skinsuit!

If possible, I went even slower after crashing. Maybe I just hurt more, maybe I was afraid of crashing again, or maybe I just went slower because I had an excuse. Whatever the reason, I lost almost a minute and a half on Jim’s group before finishing.

However, I couldn’t be finished without one last insult to injury. After going over the barriers for the last time I was passed during the remount by a Geekhouse guy in a Halloween costume. I immediately hopped on his wheel, but shortly after a spectator heckled me:

“Are you seriously going to draft someone in a Halloween costume?!”

OK sure, good point. This is embarrassing. I took about 2 hard pedal strokes, then realized that pedaling that hard hurt and I didn’t like it, and then got smoked by the Halloween costume. At least I didn’t ride his wheel to the finish.

I finished 66^th out of 110 finishers in 33:17. Winning time was 28:59. I wonder how I would have ended up if I hadn’t gone out with the leaders and rode my own pace. I’d give up any shot of winning but maybe I wouldn’t have blown myself to bits. Or maybe I would have just another half lap later. Who knows. I figure I might as well start hard, stay at the front as long as I can, and try to hold it together. It was fun anyways. Next week is Noho and I reg’d about 3^rd or 4^th, so hopefully I can start on the front row and really blow myself up. Can’t wait!

Tully Lake Triathlon

When I did the Josh in mid-Septmeber I was in rough shape and I had no idea when I’d be able to race or even train again. I’m very happy to say that since then I’ve gotten my Colitis under control. Digestion is almost back to normal, I’ve gained a whopping 20 pounds, and I feel great. A lot of that weight is water, a side effect of some of the medication. I’ll be pretty psyched when I’m off the meds. Training volume has been a lot lower than it would be if I were training for road season, but I think it’s good enough for short cross races and my current situation. 30 minute cardio workouts with as much time as possible at threshold and general core and strength conditioning has been my bread and butter. My bib shorts are no longer baggy in the thighs, so high five!

In the past week or two I started turning on my power meter while doing my intervals. Instead of being in the 160W range like at the Josh, I’m up around 240W. +50% baby! I figure I’d still get crushed in a cross race at this point, so I decided to hop into a triathlon that would be a little lower key.

Tully Lake Triathlon in Royalston, MA was on Saturday. It’s a canoe tri, and I love canoe racing. It also had a mountain bike leg, so that’s a bit different too. Perfect! Called up my brother Shawn and asked him to be my teammate because there’s no way I was going to try to run, and canoeing is more fun with two people.

The race starts with the 5-mile canoe leg. It’s a mass start in Tully Lake and you loop out around an island. The lake has plenty of width to handle 50-100 boats or however many there are before coming back and heading up a river. This gives the elite canoeists a chance to avoid the mayhem and race their race. In canoe racing there’s a drafting-life benefit to be had from paddling nearby other boats. Canoes create wakes in the bow, midpoint, and stern, and positioning your canoe correctly on the wake is like paddling downhill. I’m not a good enough paddler to make use of this but it’s pretty cool seeing the elites in action.

The second leg is a 4.5 mile trail run. You’re not going to set an PR’s on this leg (check out the results). I was told that it’s full of rocks, roots, streams, and sharp terrain changes.

The 7.5 mile mountain biking leg is last. I spent quite a while before the race trying to figure out how technical this course is. The website calls it “moderately challenging” but that seemed pretty vague to me. I emailed the promoter who replied that it’s not a hard course for an experienced rider and that the fastest time in 2008 was actually set on a cross bike.

Cross bike eh?! Just what this roadie wanted to hear! And just like that my decision was made to do the mountain bike course on my cross bike.

It was 37°F at the start of the race, but luckily it was sunny instead of rain. While waiting to pick up my number I was noticing lots and lots of mountain bikes, but no cross bikes. Actually most of the mountain bikes were full suspension rigs. Having never seen this course before, I figured it would be a good idea to get a solid warmup in on the few miles of single track. Warmup turned out to be a 45 minute ride. I did way more of the course than I had planned on. The single track never seemed to end and it just got more and more technical as I went on. Where are the fire roads?! It was right at the limit of what I could handle on my cross bike. My lower back and hands were already killing me by the time I was half done. Not a good start!

By the time I got back to the start it was 15 minutes to race time. Shawn was getting anxious to where I was, thinking I might have plowed head first into a tree or something. No worries, my timing was impeccable (yeah right!). We hop in the canoe, Shawn in the back, me in the front, and my Mom says we’re a little stern heavy. OK no surprise there, Shawn’s a big dude. Boat trim is important for steering and efficiency. He moves his seat all the way forward. I go to do the same, but my seat is duct taped into position. Not a chance of adjusting that position. Bummer. I figured with the bow high in the air at least we’d be able to keep it going straight easily enough. No big deal.

We pull up to the line, right next to elite canoeist Gloria Wesley in a C-1. She looks over at us, then her facial expression turns a little funny, and she says to us:

“You guys are really stern heavy.”

I reply, “I know, my seat is duct taped in position and I can’t adjust it any further forward.”

“Yeah, but you’re really REALLY stern heavy. Your bow is almost sticking out of the water!”

“ I wish I could adjust it but I can’t!” I say.

“Can you steer? Maybe you should paddle in the stern?”

Just then a voice comes over the loudspeaker and announces TWO MINUTES TO THE START. We’re in the middle of the lake, it’s less than 40 degrees out, and there’s no way I’m going to try and trade seats in the super tippy 3’ wide racing canoe with my brother. I tell Gloria that we don’t have enough time and that we’ll just have to be happy with what we got. Her response:

“A little more preparation next time perhaps…”

Yeah yeah yeah, I know, she’s right. Lesson learned. Very embarrassing. Yet somehow the whole interaction was very amusing to me and just seemed entirely appropriate. I haven’t sat in a racing canoe in 18 months, so I’m not exactly dialed in. I don’t even know when the last time Shawn and I sat in the same boat. Must have been years ago. Regardless, we were still capable of paddling in sync and making the boat move a reasonable (to us) speed, so game on baby!

The cannon finally goes off and we’re on our way! Our plan was to pin it at the start and avoid mayhem with the recreational kayaks. It seemed like we were instantly 10 meters back from the fastest guys. Not sure how they accelerate so quickly on the line. Once we got up to max speed we hung in there. The five fastest racing canoes or so were noticeably faster than we were, but we were pretty much right at the rear of the rest of the racing canoes. Not a bad place to be, those guys are fast and we were matching their speed.

We reach the turnaround island in good position with the rest of the racing canoes and most of the kayaks behind us. As everyone makes the left hand turn around the island, we continue charging dead straight ahead into the middle of the course. Shawn starts yelling “AHHHHH…. CAN’T…. TURN….!!!!” We’re a solid 100 feet past the turn and we’ve only managed to change our direction by 5 or 10 degrees at most. Finally we decide it’s necessary to drag paddles just to change direction. Not so fast. By the time we’re back on course the canoes that we were initially even with were a good 100 meters away. Ouch!

The course turns around and heads back past the start/finish to appease the spectators. It’s only 1 mile into the race but things are pretty sorted out by now. Mishaps are over and everyone has settled into their pace. The last of the racing canoes is dangling about 100 meters ahead of us still, and there are a few of the faster rec kayaks even with us. We were all moving at pretty similar speeds, but Shawn and I seemed to have ever so slightly more.

As the race went on, we got faster, and eventually reeled in the racing canoe that was ahead of us. Just as we came up behind them the course bottlenecked through a tight chicane. Not good for a canoe with a turning radius of 200 meters. We crush over some weeds on the first half of the turn and manage to keep moving. As the chicane turns the other direction, again we headed directly into weeds. This time we weren’t so lucky and the canoe bottomed out and we completely beached the boat. We had to push ourselves off backwards and blocked the entire bottleneck in the process. Some poor kayak was coming through just then and had no option other than stop. By the time we got going we were a good 100 meters back on our racing canoe rivals.

This trend of making up time on the straights and giving it all back on the turns continued until the end of the race. We just could not turn the boat sharply at all. Luckily the course has a small amount of turns to it, so our damage was minimal. It could have ended much worse than it did, especially just after the turnaround point when the river is narrow and you’re in danger of having head-on collisions. That was thrilling.

Ironically we finished the canoe leg pretty much exactly where we were after the 1-mile point, about 100 meters in back of our rival racing C-2. We went under the spectator bridge, Mom and Christian heckled us a bit, we pulled into shore, made the portage, and that was that. There were actually volunteers at the finish to take your boat for you. That was a nice touch, my forearms hurt too much to hold the boat any more. Shawn took his sweet time changing out his wet socks for dry ones (jk jk), and took off for the run. My legs were super tight and I was very glad I didn’t have to start running immediately.

While Shawn was out running I changed from canoe clothes to bike clothes. Check out his perspective of the race at snibbor.org. I’m pretty sure I was the only person there rocking the skinsuit but hey I was in cross mode. One other guy from NCC was on a cross bike, so at least I wasn’t the only one. Talking to him before the race he mentioned was a stupid idea it was to be on that bike. He must have been on a fast team because he started his bike leg a good 15 or 20 minutes before me. Not sure how he made out but I heard he finished in the top 3 so his ride couldn’t have been too bad.

Anywho, Shawn finishes up his run and I’m off. The first bit of the course is very turny, and I feel like I’m barely pedaling with all my adrenaline. I don’t know much (or anything) about mountain bike racing technique, but I got the impression it was better to take it easy and pick a smooth fast line rather than charge/brake constantly. On the early part of the ride I got into a nice smooth rhythm.

Before too long I came up on another rider. The course is tight single track, and there was really no space at all to pass. I don’t know what the proper etiquette is here, and she wasn’t going TOO slowly, so I just followed and rested for a minute or so. Before long we came to one of the many rollers in the course, and it all became clear where I had made up time. She practically came to a track stand trying to grind up the steep but short pitch, and it was painful to turn the cranks so slowly in my 39-25. As we crested the top she must have sensed my frustration and she pulled off to the side to let me pass.

With a clear track ahead of me, and having just had a solid minute of rest, I immediately when into hammer mode. Not a good idea, I should have stayed in my smooth rhythm. Before I got far at all, I came around a turn right into a rock garden that had eaten me during warmup. I grabbed the brakes for dear life, bunny hopped, but still crashed dead on into a rock the size of a toddler’s play chair. I launched off of the trail and it took me a minute to gather myself. In the meantime I got passed back. I realized the error in my way and vowed to keep it smooth from here on out.

Smooth was key. The next 10 minutes were great. I passed three or four more riders, each of which moved immediately for me when I came up behind them. Very nice. The course was a little rocky through here, but it was easy enough to find a nice smooth line for my cross bike. The descents were sketchy but I was making up great time on the risers.

I could see a racer that I met in the transition zone not far behind me. He was a local rider on a hardtail that seemed very familiar with the course. He was making up time on me when I slowed for rocky or rooty sections but I was getting time back on the smoother rollers. For a while we were pretty evenly matched.

One of the more technical parts of the course came up about 3 miles in. I had ridden it during warmup and knew it was coming. This section of the course was on the side of a hill and went right along the edge of the lake. The trail had large rocks in it and there was not much space to maneuver. I let my mtb’er rival pass me just before this because I figured I would surely be slower. Boy was I right…

There was an off-camber part of the trail that got really narrow due to a tree and some roots. Just after that was a small rock garden. I came into this way too hot and squeezed the brakes hard in a panic. The off-camber slope pushed me to the side of the trail, towards the lake, and my tires side-swiped a log that was down on the side of the trail. My body still had momentum towards the lake and I started falling over sideways. There was a 10” diameter dead tree sitting there and I reached out with my hand to catch myself. The tree snapped at the base and I somersaulted head first down the side of the hill right at the lake. I landed on the back of my head and the rest of my body snapped around, with my feet ending up in the lake. I was about 3 feet away from going for a swim. Such a spectacular crash and no one to witness it. What a shame.

It took me a minute to get going again. My back was whiplashed from landing on the back of my head and I wasn’t sure I was OK initially. I also had to crawl about 10 or 15 feet back up the hill to find my bike. It never came off of the trail.

After that crash I never really found a good groove again. It took a little while before I got my nerve back again too. I was dismounting every time I came to a rock garden. Running through a rock garden is not like running CX barriers either. The footing is uneven and it’s much more difficult to keep your speed. I had envisioned it going much differently in my head.

When I got to the parts of course that I didn’t see in warmup I started having issues staying on-course. I don’t think the course was necessarily poorly marked, I was just bad at trying to find the markers while trying to race over rocks and roots on a cross bike. Each time I made a wrong turn was very frustrating and it really threw off my concentration. That ended up being a real problem because I would make stupid decisions in the technical parts. Stupid decisions usually ended up with me crashing. I ended up crashing more times than I could count.

The fire road on the mid-point of the course was an awesome break, mostly because it let me regain my composure. The fire road was very bumpy though, and my back was in agony. I preferred the twisty single track because my back felt better when I got out of the saddle. I had planned on making up time on the fire roads with my cross bike and yet I couldn’t wait to get back onto the single track. Still, I think I did make up a little time at least on the fire roads as I caught two other riders.

The last half of the race was a blur. I was suffering badly, aerobically, legs, back, forearms, you name it. The course got technical again too. Lots of big rocks, or at least it seemed that way. I was hurting so bad it could have been silky smooth for all I know. What I know for sure is that I was off of my bike, a lot. I would do very well through some technical sections I never would have expected to clean, then lose focus and fail to hop a 4” log. Focus, focus, focus. So key yet I couldn’t do it. Getting lost didn’t help either. At one point I realized that the trail markers had disappeared completely and I couldn’t find one for the life of me. It probably didn’t cost me more than a minute or so, but it was more frustrating than anything else. Crashing, getting lost, suffering tremendously, it all just made me crash more, get lost more, and suffer even more. Yet somehow this was still all ridiculously fun. Sick pleasures…

Lucky for me the last mile or so was on a smooth(ish) and fast fire road. Boy was that nice. I felt like I was absolutely crushing it, but I imagine everyone felt that way too. Before I knew it I was making the turn onto the main paved road just a few hundred meters from the finish. I crossed the line with a finishing time of ~2h33m.

Results aren’t up yet so I don’t know how we did. Last year’s winning 4-man team time was about 2h7m, so we were well back from that. Regardless of how we placed, that race was FUN. The canoe course was great, I was told the running course was exciting and kept you on your toes, and obviously I felt the same about the mtb course. Taking all of these great courses and tieing it into one big team event is awesome. So much fun. Big thanks to the Trustees of Reservations crew for putting on a great event.

jayrobbins.net

I'm moving on. With all this free time I've had lately I've retuned my internet savyness and made a website. Amazing what you can get done when you're not training 15 hours a week and only sleeping 6 hours a night.

Anywho, my new website will be at jayrobbins.net. I wanted to expand so I could include things other than race reports without a bunch of clutter. It costs me a whopping $10 per year to register the domain through google. It took a little while to get the initial setup going (all morning!), but it looks like it will be easier to update than blogspot.

I'm not planning on deleting this website, but I haven't decided how I'm going to do future race reports. It would be a lot of work to import all 109 reports to the new site individually. Maybe there's some easy way. I do have a gadget on the new website that can read the race reports here, but I don't like the way it looks. Right now I'm leaning towards having a race reports section on the new website. We'll see how it goes.

Cheers!

2009 Josh Billings Triathlon

The Josh was Sunday and it was my final time lining up for 2009. Colitis has really hit me hard over the past 2 months. My weight is down nearly 20lbs and I’m pretty sure I have anemia (common side effect of the disease). The few times I’ve ridden my bike lately my FTP appears to be under 200W.

Luckily the Josh might be the best bike race there is for people that just want to race without having a serious athletic background or being committed to some sort of regular training program. Don’t get the wrong impression though, there’s still a super competitive race at the front with Jamey Driscol, Chris Fischer, Nat Faulkner, and Josh Lipka setting the pace. But when they drop you, there’s always going to be a pack of riders nearby to latch on to. For someone in my position that can’t keep up in real roads races anymore, it’s a good opportunity to do one last race at my own pace. Seeing as this will likely be my last race report for quite a while, it’s going to be a long one. Might be worth grabbing a coffee first or you’ll risk a Solobreak race report DNF.

There were 425 starters on the line this year, and as always, it’s a spectacular start in downtown Great Barrington. That’s more than double the size of the pro peloton in the Tour de France. As always everyone wants to start at the front, and staging is set up so that the licensed riders (there’s usually about 50) get to take the front few rows. Afterwards everyone else crams in.
Despite knowing that I was no where near capable of performing at a cat3 level, I was still game on for lining up. At the first staging line I was three rows back, but when the tape raised and we raced up to the real starting line, I totally rocked it. Made some super sweet passes (think GMSR crit staging style) and ended up dead center on the front line, right next to Nat. Boo-ya! I basically just won the race! I hope someone got a picture.

Looking around at the start I saw some familiar faces, some names I knew, some not. Driscol was sporting his Rock Racing Anarchy skinsuit with his name printed onto the back. Dang that thing is sweet. Oh, and he had the RP aero helm again too. Have a nice race. Some guy was wearing a Rite Aid kit, thought it might be Robbie King, but he wasn’t in the results. I asked Nat where his aero helmet was but he was too sensitive about his appearance to bust it out. He was still wearing a tri tank though. Apparently UMBRC President Jeremy Durrin has a brother, and he introduced himself to Pat before hand (who was wearing a UMASS kit). He’s fast too.

Despite a shakey lineup of his own (I’ll get to this in a minute) Pat managed to get pretty far up on the right side of the road, maybe 5 rows back? Brian Rabuse (BCA) was a few guys down the line to the right, and Rob Geller and Scott Raymakers just a few rows behind me. Lipka was in the UNH skinsuit and it looks like he Iron Manned it (a roadie running?). Also recognized a guy from NCC (Todd Roberts?) and Joe’s Garage. My buddy Andrew had started somewhere on the left side, but I couldn’t see him at the start.

So back to Pat’s story. Pat’s a strong guy, he just doesn’t ride his bike. Ever. Too much running Pat. Used to be a cat4 but he’s too lazy to race, lost his license, and had to stage with all the unlicensed riders. At the end of our warmup he had dropped me (happens when your vo2 max is like 10) and he headed over to the prelim staging area. I was chasing him down to shake his hand and wish him good luck. Pat sees an open spot pretty close to the front and decides to go for it. Now keep in mind that most of the people around this vacant spot are racers wearing T shirts and toe cages. Pat goes to pull his bike down off the curb, catches his tires, and lays himself out on the pavement. Water bottles fall out of his cages. The guys in T shirts laugh at him, call him and noob, and say “just don’t do that in the race!” Awesome!

The race finally starts right at the drop of a rope and the start banner. I’m not sure why they don’t just pull the rope with 30 seconds to the start like every other bike race, maybe it’s more dramatic this way. Being on the front line you get severe anxiety if the guy next to you gets to go .3s earlier than you because the rope hasn’t cleared yet. Cheater!

Despite the official saying we were neutral for the beginning, we absolutely drilling it right off the line. Whoever pulled for the first 30 seconds must’ve been hammering because we were all strung out behind him. It felt fast for me anyways, but I wasn’t fast so it was probably slow. Who knows. Anywho, I was 5 wheels back or so, and sort of drifted between 5-20 wheels back as we went through Great Barrington. It seemed like a team of guys wearing orange and blue kits did the majority of the pace making. Driscol, Nat, and Lipka were sitting in before we turned onto the hill.

Coming around the turn into the hill I was about 10th wheel on the inside line. Perfect position. As we start the climb, riders come out of their saddles and begin to power up. I go to do the same, totally ready to hold on again this year and get in the first pack. I come out of the saddle.

Uh oh.

Control to engine room, anyone there?
Control, this is engine room, we have a problem.
State your problem engine room.
Control, you have no fuel. Your heart rate is maxed. Your legs are full of lactic acid.
But engine room, we’ve only gone 2 miles in this 27 mile road race and we’re not even on the first hill yet!

Yep, it’s going to be a long race.

Last year it took me almost exactly 3 minutes to get to the top of the first hill from the turn. I averaged about 425W. This year I averaged 170W. I don’t know how long it took me, but it was a very very very long time. I rode about 2 inches from the curb hoping I wouldn’t mess up everyone’s day behind me. I think the only person I might have screwed up was Pat, who was a wheel or two back I think. I could see the first pack forming as I let a huge gap open. Sorry folks, I was a bit greedy. I had a ton of fun though. Well, before that turn onto the hill.
I’m pretty sure at least 200 people passed me on the way up the first hill. Like I said I was about 10th wheel going into it, and in the end I finished in 307th place. Had to have been 200 people that passed me on that hill. It was ridiculous. A constant stream of racers moving by like I was at a trackstand. Andrew went by too and was looking real strong. And it’s not like I wasn’t pushing it either. I was totally redlined and blowing up. My heart rate monitor didn’t work for some reason but I had to be near max. First it was real racers, then aspiring racers, then casual riders and fit looking old guys, and before long it was cruiser bike, ATB bikes, and toe cages. And I was on my 16 lb CR1.

After approximately 8 hours of pedaling I made it to the top of that first hill. Usually at this point the racers settle into packs here and you pretty much finish with this pack. If you had a good or bad start you might be able to move up or you might get dropped. That doesn’t happen often though.

So like everyone else I settled into a group. There was no way in heck I was contributing to the pace making. My lungs burned like I haven’t felt in ages. Anything over 100W was way too much. This was suffering like I’ve never experienced before. Battenkill? App Gap? Step aside. This was 10x worse.

I figured it would be no problems after the first hill. Sit in. Rest. Save it for the long second Lahlma humps climb. Easy right? Ha! Not today! Every single little stupid annoying raise in elevation felt like a categorized climb. I couldn’t believe it. I might have survived the first 30 foot riser. That can not be confirmed though. And I definitely got dropped by my group before the second 30 foot riser. Unbelievable. Obviously when I finally got to the next major climb (400 feet?) I was dropped like I was towing a baby carriage.

At this point I’m only about 7 miles into the race. You’re probably getting bored. Fair enough. Just remember those last two paragraphs and repeat them until mile 22 or so. Nothing changed. I got dropped every time the gradient exceeded 1%. It was awesome. It hurt. It was bike racing. Oh yeah, I sent a text message to my Mom to let her know I would not be arriving at the finish anywhere near as fast as last year.

So mile 22. Give or take. This is the climb out of Stockbridge. It starts off steep for about a minute, but then levels off to a long false flat. I was surrounded by quite the mix of racers by this point. About 30-50% were rocking toe cages. I had been dropped long ago by a dude on a front suspension mountain bike that didn’t even have toe cages. He was pedaling harder than me. Like every other steep part of the course I got shelled instantly here. However, over the false I started bringing them back! In fact, I went right around them! I definitely couldn’t pedal any harder than 200W, so it was sort of a super super slow motion attack. It was my move though! 5 miles to the finish and I was on a breakaway baby! I could even see another pack up the road. I started reeling them in.

During the middle of my super sweet attack, some car full of amped up guys was driving the other direction really slowly and they were heckling like champs. I rode over to the yellow line and got some high fives out of their window. Dang I was fired up.

After the false flat there’s a short downhill and the course gets fast. I was close to the group in front of me, but they still had 10 seconds or so. I put my forearms on the handlebars like I was doing a cannibal TT and really cranked up the power to 250W. That lasted for about 30 seconds, probably not even. Suddenly my power is 100W. Ouch. I still have the last hill to go up too. I start going slower and slower. Finally the group I attacked catches me at the base of the last climb. Doh! Naturally they dropped me instantly too.

It was another long grind up that hill, I was breathing ridiculously hard as always and was feeling pretty self conscious about the looks I was getting from the spectators. Some guy at the start told me he worked with my teammate Jim Thomas. I told him we raced together so he must’ve though I was good. He gave me a pretty funny look as I cranked out my 150W with my face pale white. At least in my mind he did. But I felt that way about all the spectators at that point. Whatever.

The last mile is a fast downhill to the canoe handoff. Probably about 40mph or so. You could pedal in your biggest gear if you really wanted, but obviously I had had enough of that! I needed to make up some precious seconds though so I grabbed a super tight top tube tuck and I could barely see where I was going. Definitely gained at least 2 seconds. If Phil Liget were watching he would have called me a risk taker.

I tossed the wristband off to my brother Shawn, and he and my Dad battled out the canoe. It took me 1 hour and 35 minutes to finish, so that’s 28 minutes slower than last year. They had a lot of ground to make up! Their paddle leg went well and Todd ran the hilly 6 miles in 41 minutes despite wearing basketball shorts and a designer t shirt. We finished 9/26 in the family category 17 minutes back behind the Sawyer/Porter team. They used to be faster than that, not sure what happened there.

Despite being called a noob by guys in t-shirts, Pat finished at the front of the second major pack. Unfortunately for him his canoeist Ryan was no where to be found and he lost 45 seconds before finally handing off the wrist band. Ouch. Ryan and Gidon went on to dump the canoe, twice. Once was right at the start and we’re lucky enough to have caught it on video! Check it out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-XikkJChJ_8

I’ll try and upload some pictures later in the week. Mom, can you send me a few? And now how about a few fun stats from the race? Average speed was 16.9 mph. Average power, 134W. Official time was 1:35:29. Average normalized power was 161W. Like Pat pointed out to me after the race, it’s amazing how fast a person’s body can change. Less than two months ago I was dreaming of being able to hold on and suck wheels in the breakaway at the race. I didn’t even think it was possible to lose that kind of fitness that fast. On a positive note, the race was still SO MUCH FUN, and I was super pumped just to get on my bike and line up one last time this year. And I’m also showing signs of getting better now, and in another month or two I should be able to ride again. Unfortunately there’s almost no chance of doing any cross races this year. Maybe if I’m really lucky I’ll be able to do my first cross race of the season at the Ice Weasels Cometh (late December!). I’ll keep my fingers crossed!

What the douce?!

Normally I avoid posting about anything non race related, but here we are in the midst of all sorts of great races and I’m not posting anything new. This is a pretty lame post but I figure it’s necessary for the sake of the blog.

In July I was struggling through my training after taking 2 weeks off to go to Europe. My ability to go hard for more than 30 minutes seemed to be gone. The more I trained the worse I seemed to get. I figured it was just a lot of lost fitness. I was also losing weight, but of course I thought that was a good thing.

Fast forward to August and I found out I have Colitis. At first I tried to train through it. The doc said that it wouldn’t slow my recovery but that it would most likely be very uncomfortable. I probably should have explained to him that when I said "can I train on my bike?" that I really meant "Can I abuse myself 12+ hours a week still?" After another week or two things kept getting worse and worse and I decided to hang up training and racing for the season. I think it was too much stress on my immune system. My symptoms got bad enough that it was causing me to miss work. No work, no health insurance. Seems like a good place to draw the line.

With some luck I’ll be able to start training again in mid-September, but probably only at a moderate level. No need to push it. I was hoping to come into cross season with strong road fitness this year, maybe upgrade, but it’ll be fun just rolling around in the 4’s again too.

I have the Josh coming up in another 2 weeks and that’s a fun cycling race no matter is you’re cat1 fitness or 20 pounds overweight. 500 person mass start road race with a 28 mile p2p course? I can’t wait!

Concord Crit, cat3

The course at Concord was changed this year because a rotary was put in at one of the intersections. The already narrow road was made even tighter and the radius of the turn was sharper as well. To keep things safe the course was run backwards. Instead of bombing through the rotary at 30 mph we went much slower at the end of the short ascent. This made the back side of the course fast and thrilling. The finish line was moved to the opposite end of the straightaway to discourage aggressive riding through the fast turns.

The old course was one of my favorites mostly because of the downhill before the sprint. I tend to do best in races where I can take some tension off of my legs shortly before the sprint. As long as the finish line was kept on the bottom of the hill I figured this new course would suit me well.

Since coming back from Europe I’ve been having some digestive issues and my weight is now down to 164 pounds. That’s about 6 pounds lighter than where I’ve been racing at for most of this season. I wasn’t sure if this decrease was due to the digestive issues, eating habits, or a combination of both. I haven’t noticed any decreases in power output so prior to Concord so I was thinking I’d just be extra strong.

Race day was hot. I was well prepared for it and brought a gallon of ice water for my bottles as well as Gatorade mix. I did my usual combo of one Gatorade and one water bottle. Drank another bottle of Gatorade while watching the p12 and 35+ fields race.

We had right around 45 or 50 starters. NEBC had 3 in the race including Keith, Joe, and myself.
On the first lap or two we went extra slow around the corners as we felt it out. It was almost painful. The worst was going around the downhill switchback turn. No one swarmed and we just crawled around it. We got faster as we settled in but we still went way slower than I think we should have.

The first prime bell rang 3 or 4 laps into the race. Mark Theeman (Green Line Velo) was at the front and took a flyer. I wasn’t far back, maybe 10 or 15 wheels, when Keith moved up the inside so I grabbed his wheel and went to the front. I was hurting when we got to the highest point of the course and Theeman was still way up. No one was really pushing the pace until a pair of riders attacked. Theeman took the prime with these two other dudes right behind him.
After the prime lap there were a bunch of counter attacks and the pace stayed hot. I was hurting and am a little uncertain about exactly how it happened, but I think that one of the two guys that attacked on the prime lap snuck away here. It could have been someone involved with the counter attack, but I’m certain that after another lap or two there was one rider up with a 25 second gap.

The gap hovered around 25 seconds for a couple of laps. After maybe 4 laps or 10 minutes it wasn’t coming down, and the field showed no signs of organizing itself. A few individuals would take strong pulls, but not enough people seemed interested in bringing it back. We were slowing way down for turns, hammering out of them, and then easing up again.

I typically shy away from breakaways, but with the snail space around the turns I thought I might have a chance to bridge. Trouble was I felt absolutely horrible. I floated way back in the field thinking I would get a good rest in for a bridge attempt, but I kept feeling worse and worse. My legs didn’t really feel too heavy and my breathing seemed pretty under control. An aching feeling spread throughout my entire body and every pedal stroke sucked.

With 9 or 10 laps to go I couldn’t take it anymore and pulled out. Other than p123 “fitness” crits that were my second of the day, this is the first crit I’ve DNF’d in a long time. I think that this digestive issue that I’ve been having may be catching up with me and the heat may have made the side effects worse. Hopefully I can work these issues out and find some decent racing form in time for GMSR.

Norwell Circuit Race, cat 3/4

After more than a month of no racing I figured Norwell would be a good place to pick up racing again. I took two full weeks completely off the bike (sort of) in late June and early July to vacation in Europe. We did rent bikes and climb Alp D’Huez while we were there, as well as bomb through the streets of Rome on super sweet cruisers in a sort of wanna be hipster fashion, so I can’t say I was completely off bikes

Nonetheless, it felt pretty weird to come home and pick up training again. I started off by logging lots of hours riding mostly at endurance pace with random mild intensity efforts as required by terrain. For the first couple of rides I really struggled to get past the 2 hour mark, but that changed quickly and 4-5 hour rides were once again OK.

My wakeup call the morning of Norwell was 4:30 AM. Not because my race started early (1:45 PM), but because I was going to Webster with Erica for the Danskin Triathlon. That race started at 7 AM. How brutal is that?!

Erica’s race turned out to be far more interesting than anything than I witnessed at Norwell, so I think that deserves a little report of its own. This year she stepped it up a notch by getting a Cervelo p2c with aero goodies and devoted a good amount of training time in her aero position. I knew that she would have a fast bike split.

The course has a severe bottleneck about 1km from the bike finish. Runners are both coming and leaving, cyclists are coming in and spectators are packed on both sides, all within the yellow line (one half) of the road. It’s chaotic and there are 3,000 competitors that pass through here. When Erica came by on her bike, a 9 year old girl jumped out of the spectators and into the course directly in Erica’s path. Erica hit her square on, went over the handlebars at 20+ mph and was laid out on the pavement. Her bike went flying into the crowd. I don’t know if the little girl is OK, but a quick Google News search for “Webster Danskin accident” comes back negative so hopefully she is OK.

After peeling herself off the pavement, Erica fixed her chain and brakes, and went on to finish the race. When she came by me on the run she looked like heck and bleeding on her hips and elbows. Luckily her injuries appear to be limited to road rash and bruising.
Despite crashing, Erica’s bike split was 9th out of 2700 total competitors and within 2 minutes of the fastest time of the day. Overall she finished 2/211 in her age category and was just 3 seconds out of first place. Erica is a stud.

As for Norwell, that is a much less exciting story. I was pretty tired before I got there, considered bagging it, but a $5 foot long and a Coke was a huge help. We were running late due to the Danskin incident, and I arrived with about 30 minutes to go. My bike was ready to go and it was plenty of time. I was the only NEBC racer in the field.

Ken was racing today in the ¾ field, and it was the first time we’ve ever been able to race together. As I lined up at the back of the field I heard a loud bang, someone’s tire blew out. Turned out it was Ken’s new superlight Conti tube. Those things are too risky for me. We rushed back to my car and I gave him my spare wheel. As he was fixing it into place I rushed back to the start. Sure enough they had already rolled out. I was able to catch on easily enough thanks to the long neutral start. I hung on the back thinking I would dangle back and help Ken catch on if he could get close, but I think he made a wrong turn somewhere and he never made it on. Bummer for him, especially considering he was there 2 hours before his race.

Norwell is technically a circuit race, but only because it’s just a little too long to be considered a crit. There’s one hill that’s used for the finish and it’s a little on the big side for a true crit. I didn’t remember it being too bad 2 years ago when I raced this field, so I figured it wouldn’t be bad.

My plan was to sit in for the first half of the race, then try and get into a move if I felt good. I definitely didn’t feel good. The first time over the hill is always fast and never really hurts, but every time after that was totally brutal. I forgot what lactic acid feels like. I was just sitting in, a survival mission, not really paying attention to anything likes attacks or lap cards.

Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I looked up and saw “5” on the lap card. I did some Einstein math in my head and realized that we had only done 11.5 miles or so. Thank goodness we were only going 23 miles.
In the second half of the race I felt much stronger. I probably was just getting used to the lactic acid again, or maybe we weren’t hitting the hill as hard, but it was nice. It helped that we were barely racing too. Every time the pace started to feel hard we would ease up. I worked my way near the front a few times, but a headwind was coming over the top of the hill which was the natural place to attack. I might have been able to give a half hearted attack once or twice, but there’s no way I would have survived off the front for long. You had to be super strong to attack into that headwind and stick.

In the final laps I was not seeing straight so my memory is hazy. It was hot out and my legs hurt. Wah. I think it was when the lap card read “2” that a pair of riders attacked and got a huge gap. Maybe it was 3 racers, I’m not sure. It ended up being the winning move, and the results show Cyclonauts and UVM. I thought it was BRC and Cyclonauts in the move so who knows. The BRC guy may have dropped out of it.

With 2 to go and riders up the road I got ready for a furious chase. I doused myself with my second water bottle giving me what I imagine to be an EPO-like energy boost. We were chasing to some extent, but there was no big team in the field other than Cyclonauts who was in the move. It was mostly a bunch of individuals like myself who were unwilling to sacrifice themselves. Had I felt strong enough that I could have actually won the sprint I would have been irritated, or maybe ever of helped the chase a little. Instead I just sat back, content to sprint for 3rd, listening to other racers drop the F bomb.

The last time up the hill I powered over to stay with the leaders of the bunch and gained a lot of position. Coming down the back side of the course I moved up on the inside until I was 5th wheel or so. We were really strung out. Just before the course narrows to a single lane, the inevitable swarm came up the outside. Our pace was slowing and we were still single file so I wasn’t surprised.

As we squeezed into the one lane bottleneck someone hit a cone. I don’t think anyone went down, but a Nantucket Velo rider made a super sweet move and slalomed between the cones. I was two wheels behind him and so thanks for not crashing. That could have ended badly.
We made the next right hand turn and had about 1 mile to go. The swarming had pushed me way back to the middle of the field and I was looking desperately for a free ride to the front. A pair of Mass Bay guys came up the outside of me just as Green Line Velo was giving an early leadout to Mark Theeman. I’ll take it. They were left out in the wind as the rest of the field stretched out. It wasn’t much but it helped to move up another 10 wheel or so.

The last turn came into sight, the break was nowhere to be seen, and not only would I not be sprinting for the win, I didn’t have a chance of winning the bunch sprint. I was still 15 or 20 wheels back.

I think the guys on the front attacked going into the last turn and carried good speed up the steep part. As for me, I handled my bike like a scared 12 year old girl who just had her training wheels taken off. I pedaled softly into the turn and made a much wider than necessary sweeping turn on the outside. On the steep part I tried to accelerate for about 6 pedal strokes (or 3 seconds), then thought “ouch this hurts”. I pedaled kind of sort of hard, and maintained more or less the same speed as the guys around me. I might have passed 2 guys and someone nipped me on the line.

That was a long hill and it hurt. I thought I was going to throw up afterwards and only finished a mediocre 19/50 for the day. Not a great result, but I don’t think I could have expected to do much better after 5 weeks of no racing or intensity. It felt like a Wells Ave race in March. I’m sure the legs will come around in the next few weeks.