Sturbridge Race Analysis

I swear I'm not this out of shape, or at least I hope not.

Sturbridge Road Race & The Run of the Charles

Sturbridge Road Race

This was an extremely disappointing race. Long story short I couldn’t breathe heading up the first “hill” and got dropped. This was 2 miles into the 4 lap, 28 mile race. On the second lap I nearly got hit by traffic and ended up making a wrong turn, sweet. By the time I made it back to the course the 35+ 4/5’s had caught me. I pulled out at the end of the second lap completely frustrated.

Why did I get dropped so early? A bunch of possibilities including a) no warmup whatsoever, b) pollen allergies make breathing difficult, c) just barely missing an accident a quarter mile into the race on the wet roads made drafting terrifying, or d) I’m just plain out of shape.

TPM and Big Time also raced today and did well finishing with the pack.

Run of the Charles

This is a fun canoe race for me. I don’t train at all for it, just hop in and go. This was my sixth year doing it, but my first year doing it in the OC-1 (one man racing canoe). Perhaps one of the best things about this race was that it didn’t start until 10:30! Being 15 minutes from the start (near Wells Ave) I got to sleep in till after 8AM! Bike race organizers should take notes (haha).

The race was fun, although the portages were nasty. It’s a lot harder than it looks portaging with an 18 foot boat. No matter how you hold it you still hurt. I have a huge bruise on my hip now.

C-1’s were the first non-pro division to go off, and there were only 8-10 of us sitting at the line. I think I was the only person under 50. I’ve heard that the OC-1 division has been really dieing off in recent years as the kayak class gets more and more popular. Makes sense I suppose. Ask Big Time or Ken how hard it can be to make a canoe go straight with one person.

I was slow right from the start, although I’d like to think I sped up a little bit as the race went on and I remembered to canoe again. After all, the last time I raced a canoe was this time last year. Pretty much all the other boats dusted me in the water. I could paddle as hard as I wanted and still be unable match the 19-mile pace of everyone else. These guys are incredible.

As much as the portages hurt, they were my saving grace as usual. I felt like I was crawling along compared to running with an OC-2 boat, yet I was still passing a bunch of older folks struggling to carry their kayaks. I did manage to pass one older guy in a C-1 racing boat and stay ahead of him to the finish, although that was about my only real accomplishment for the day.

Coming out of a portage in Watertown the current was really strong and the river was twisty. Going into a turn I immediately started losing some control and ran into some tree branches, one of which was a good inch in diameter and too strong for me to crash through. I ran into it, my canoe turned sideways and I went swimming in the Charles. I now have a third eye growing in my forehead.

There’s one brief whitewater section in the race that is by far the most entertaining spot from a spectator’s point of view. It’s in a location with high current, just after a series of twisty turns underneath a large cement bridge that causes a funneling-like effect. In addition, there must be some rocks not far underneath the waterline because the rapids are pretty significant. So many people dump their tippy flatwater racing boats here that there is a “rescue-crew” that throws you a booey on a rope if you tip.

I figured for sure I was going swimming again here but I just barely managed to stay upright. I came in at a decent angle but the turn in the river pushes you closer to the outer edge of the river than you’d like to be. My canoe turned just a little sideways and some of the really big rapids caused me to take on some water. A little bit of rolling at the hips really saved me.

I actually felt pretty decent in the last five miles to the finish where the river opens up a bit. Normally this part of the race is total death. Thanks to cycling training for this. I crossed the finish in just over 3 hours and 30 minutes.

Erica, Andrew and I went over to Rudy’s in Somerville afterwards for a much deserved lunch.

Myles Standish

I headed down here with TPM Sunday morning. It’s so nice that the race started at 9:13 and the drive was a little shorter than going to southern RI; I got to sleep in until 6:45! I didn’t sleep well on Friday night and was feeling totally out of it Sunday morning despite the extra sleep. I stalled my car pulling into the Bruegger’s parking lot. Friday and Saturday were complete rest days so my legs did feel unusually fresh by the time we got down to the course in Plymouth. At least I had that going for me.

The Myles Standish State Park is a pretty neat place. There are lots of narrow winding roads throughout the park. Unfortunately many of these roads have random obstacles on them like tree roots and gigantic maneater potholes. As we followed the signs through the park to the parking area we got our first look at the course and it was obvious that this wouldn’t be a smooth race.

The course itself was a 5 mile loop through the formentioned roads that are bumpy, twisty and rolling throughout the beautiful state park. There were two pretty tight 90 degree turns that really got everyone slowing down. About 1/3^rd of the way into the lap there was a steep but short 100 foot climb that was a little over 10% grade. On the back stretch there was a fun little section that came down a hill and turned right in front of a lake with no guardrails and if you were riding on the right side you felt like you could fall in if not careful.

Cat 4/5’s 35- did 4 laps. There were 3 NEBC riders in the race including myself, Keith and Jason who I met just before rolling out. I started off riding pretty much in the middle of the 30 man group. The first lap was interesting. The road would appear to be pretty smooth, and then out of nowhere the maneater potholes would come up and they were everywhere. It was a pretty random crapshoot to miss them sitting in the middle. They also caused the pack to slow down significantly over the rough sections.

In the first two laps I saw Jason and Keith at the front doing some pulling and maybe controlling the pace somewhat. A few riders would sneak maybe 20 feet off of the front a few times, but being a cat5 race the entire pack would accelerate and pull them in. I feel a little bad sitting in most of the time and not being more helpful with my teammates but I really don’t know how to help and also it’s not like we really worked out any plan before hand. Perhaps as I do a few more races it will become more second nature to me.

At the very beginning of the second lap there on the section with a tight 90 degree turn followed by a short hill and then a very bumpy section with tree roots there was some crashing. I didn’t see it because it was behind me but I certainly heard it. It sounded like someone fired a gun. I think it was the sound of plastic smacking into the pavement, which is a pretty unnerving thought, perhaps it was a helmet? Just after the first crash I heard a second rider go down as well. Scary.

The pack really sped up and slowed down a lot, surging up hills and resting down hills requiring a very inconsistent effort. This kills me, I don’t think I’ve ever been good at doing intervals. Once my heart rate gets up into the 185 range it just sits there forever not matter how relaxed I feel coming down the hills. On the second lap I almost got dropped going up the “big” hill and my heart rate hit 193 but I managed to hang on. However, the hill on the third lap got me. We surged a little bit just before it and I didn’t have a chance. I sat up and dropped off the back. Tim noticed I dropped and hung back a little to give me a chance, but I was done.

I hate getting dropped, but there was still over 9 miles left in the race so I recovered for a minute and went into time trial mode. My frustration was immense at first, but after a mile or two I passed another dropped rider. Half way through the last lap I overtook a chase group of three other dropped riders. I was surprised no one got on my wheel.

It turned out that a NEBC rider, Jason, took the sprint at the finish and won the race. Good for him! The finish sounded like it was a bit of an unorganized mess. Jason started with a very early finish and was sure he would be overtaken. TPM says that the narrow turning road made things very clustered and it was impossible to get around slower riders in the front. Sounds like it was good thinking on Jason’s part to get out on the front early.

I was a little happier when I saw the results. I finished 20^th out of about 30 starters and was only 3 minutes behind the pack despite time trialing the second half of the race on my own. TPM did well finishing 10^th, but I’m sure he could have finished better if he hadn’t gotten blocked in at the finish. I wish I could have made it to the finish with him.

I’m going to look into switching up my training some in the weeks to follow. This year I’ve logged about 600 miles riding which is good, but it’s been almost entirely consistent efforts and I think my performance at Myles Standish reflected this. The surging and easing up of the pack really seems to drain me, and I think I could almost TT the race at the same pace as the pack. In the next couple of weeks I plan to add some interval training in, maybe two days a week or something, and hopefully I can get the results I want.

Result: 20 of 30 starters, +3 minutes

A Little Tech-Talk About Wheels

I'm trying to make a decision about a racing wheelset. I've been pretty sold on classic non-aero rims based on my initial research. However, I'm beginning to think that the people I've been talking to about wheels, while having a ton of experience building wheels, don't really know very much about aerodynamics. It's definitely complicated and there are a lot of assumptions and variables to consider not to mention there are all sorts of conflicting reports out there.

I came across this spreadsheet that I kind of like:

http://www.whitemountainwheels.com/SpeedPower.html

I've made something very similar to this, the big difference being that I took the easy shortcut by not considering wind effects from varying angles which isn’t very realistic. I haven't verified his equations yet, but there is a section at the bottom called "iterations" that looks pretty thorough in accounting for wind. After a quick look at the equations it seems like it accounts for both head and cross winds, so that’s good.

The most interesting inputs to me are comparing CdA in cell B26 and weight in either C4 or C5 (CdA is the total aerodynamic drag coefficient of the rider/bike). They allow me to compare the effects of losing 1lb of wheel weight (a lot) and a 0.01 improvement in CdA. The 0.01 improvement in CdA wins by a landslide unless you have a decent climb of 5% grade or more which is comparable to the Whiteface hillcimb.

I found a graph online (which I’ve provided above, although I don’t know the source) that shows the relationship between rim depth and CdA. The CdA difference between a 20mm rim depth (about right for a Ksyrium wheelset) and a 55mm rim depth (now we're talking something like a zipp404) is about 0.01, maybe even slightly more. The default CdA for the bike/rider combo in this spreadsheet is .32 and I think this is about right. I think it was Cervelo that once bragged about getting a CdA value of .285 for a TDF TT (try this in the spreadsheet, it's a crazy difference!). According to: http://www.fitwerx.com/NewFiles/Tech%20Center/BicycleAerodynamics.html

the wheels account for 7-11% of the total aerodynamic drag. So let’s see, 0.32 * 0.11 = 0.035 and 0.32 * 0.07 = 0.0224, a difference of 0.013. Hey! That’s pretty close!

So what do I conclude from this? Well, assuming that the whitemountainwheels spreadsheet is close, wheel weight doesn’t mean much to me, right? My answer is still no! This is still overlooking two very important things that I am yet to look into myself. They are:

1) Wheel Stiffness: Being the young grasshopper of a racer that I am, I don’t really have a type of riding style that defines me yet but I see myself developing into more of a sprinter type than trying to make Floyd Landis breakaways. I think this means I need a stiff wheel! If I go to sprint like I did at Wells Ave the other week and my rear wheel flexes so much that I feel like I’m riding a mt bike, my brake pads are going to rub and Tim Mitchell is going to smoke me. But wait, what if I’m more tired from using a stiff but non-aero wheelset and I just don’t have the gas to lay down a good effort? That brings me to my next worry.

2) Aero benefit within a pack: All these numbers and calculations seem to be thorough and all, but they all make the assumption that the rider is in a time trial situation and there is no drafting. In most of the racing I do there is lots of drafting and it’s important that I consider it, but how? I might be able to to simply adjust the CdA coefficient to a much lower value to account for the drafting effects. I’d throw out a quick guess and say the CdA will be something like 0.20 with drafting (down from 0.32), so about 63% of the non-drafting CdA. Does that mean that the 0.01 improvement in switching from Kysrium Sl’s to Zipp404 is reduced to 0.0065? Maybe, and it seems like my best guess for the moment, but I really don’t know.

According to this really cool spreadsheet, if I’m sitting in a pack putting out 280W with a CdA of 0.20 on a flat rode with my Ksyrium Elites and with whatever other assumptions, I’ll be cruising at 24.96 mph. Now give me a set of zipp404’s with none of those golfball dimples thus reducing my CdA from 0.20 to .1957, I only have to put out 275W to do the same 24.96mph! Woohoo! I guess that means my heart rate will be lower, but how much lower? Gosh I don’t know.

Let’s do one other quick calculation to compare 280W vs. 275W. Let’s assume a whole bunch of typical inputs for a 10 mile TT type situation (so we’re back to the 0.32 CdA if anyone is trying to repeat my results here). The question is, how fast can I do the 10 mile TT at 280W vs. 275W? Let’s consult the magical spreadsheet! The answer is: 28:12.3 for the 280W effort and 28:25.1 for the 275W effort. Somehow that doesn’t seem like anything too crazy. I could eat my wheaties in the morning and make a way bigger difference than that. Does that mean if I go do the Charlie Baker Time Trial it’s only going to make a 13 second difference by using the Zipps?

Nope. But while we’re on a roll we’ll figure that too. Same assumptions, blah blah blah, conservative 0.01 CdA improvement at a 280W effort (gee I hope 280W is a good number to be using for a cat5 like me, I think it is…), the Mavics finish in 28:12.3 and the Zipps in 27:53.9! That’s about an 18 second or 1.04% improvement! 1% doesn’t sound like much, but if the winning non-aero rider is finishing in 24 minutes (not sure if this is true), you go from 4:12 back to 3:54 back which is over a 4% improvement.

This stuff probably only appeals to 5% (if that!) of the people reading this, but I can’t get enough of it. If anyone does any calculations of their own I’d love to check them out. Also, if anyone has had any actual experience with a similar decision involving my key factors of wheel rubbing and drafting effects I would love to hear them. Thanks for reading.

Spring Training

I just wanted to go on a quick little rant about spring training. Every day I rush to get home from work around 6pm, get right on my bike and ride until the sun sets. If I'm lucky, it'll be as warm as 45 degrees and I won't have to wear a sweater under my jacket. By really pushing myself hard, I can manage to squeeze out 25, mayyyyyyybe 30 miles before the sun sets assuming I don't waste any time doing something like stretching or eating/hydrating before hand. Twice now it's rained on me when it's less than 40F out and I was pretty sure I'd have to amputate my feet when I got home. At least on the weekends I can take my time a bit more and go out for a relaxed long ride, of course that's when I'm not at a race which has been every weekend for three weeks now.

Not to say the weekend rides always go as planned, take this picture for example. It was one week ago, Easter Sunday, and I was home visiting my family in Pittsfield. Erica, Shawn and I go out for a ride just too cruise the neighborhoods in somewhat chilly weather, but nothing too crazy. We decide to ride our bikes to the top of the hill that we used to run up in high school cross country. At the top of the 900 foot climb, it's SNOWING! I determined later that it was in the 25-30F range up there. Yet again, my feet need amputation when I get home. Today I finally invested in some booties.

I made it out at work yesterday to watch the Boston Marathon. Somehow it was actually kind of inspirational to watch the runners crawl their way towards the finish in their totally soaked clothing. It's hard to believe some of these people make it all the way to the finish but they do. With that in mind, I made the decision to bag the gym and go out for a ride praying the holds off after work. I ended up getting lost in Carlisle trying to do part of the Charlie Baker TT route. Of course it's 7pm, starting to get dark, and I'm at least 15 miles from home. Well those last 15 miles were a total time trial effort, my heart rate didn't drop below 170 for a second and I still got home at nearly 8pm well after dark. To make matters worse, my Garmin didn't record my route for some reason which would have been really interesting between getting lost and giving 110% on the way back.

Enough with the negativity though, the forecast for next week is great, sunny skies and temperatures in the 60's. Spring training really hasn't been THAT bad, it's certainly kept things interesting. I had an absolute blast doing this hillclimb with Erica and Shawn and riding through the rain and snow at these cold temperatures has made me feel as unstoppable as the Terminator.

No Wells Ave

Snow showers today, no wells ave race, doh.

Rick Newhouse Race of Pain

Went back to Ninigret Park today for another race on the track that the Chris Hinds Race was held on. Last week seemed pretty mellow overall with the pack staying together for all but the last 3 laps or so. This week was pretty much the complete opposite.

This had been a pretty good week of training and I felt confident coming into the race. Got 20 minutes of warmup in, perhaps a little too easy but not bad and met two other NEBC racers in the process. It was a lot windier than last week though, it was tough just going 18 on the front stretch with the strong headwind.

The plan this week was to stay closer to the front throughout the race in the field of 26 riders. If any good looking break attempts formed, I’d do my best to bridge them and suck wheel until we were caught by the pack. I don’t really know a whole lot about tactics yet, but it didn’t sound like we’d be doing a whole lot as a team so I thought this would be a reasonable strategy for a solo sprinting finish.

Unfortunately, this race went down nothing at all like I expected. Right at the start the pace seemed super fast hitting 26 or 27 mph on the back straight. What really surprised me was how fast we rode into the wind on the front straight, staying around 22+ by the looks of the Garmin data. There was a group of four or five riders that were alternating with very short pulls through the wind. I was riding around tenth starting the second lap and people in front of me were already being dropped, I couldn’t believe it. Every time the front guys would surge it seemed like the rider in front of me would drop and I’d have to sprint around to catch up. I swear I spent most of the first three laps out of the saddle. Needless to say the lactic acid built up fast and I was hurting bad. I would have liked to see my heart rate data for this part of the race but for some reason it was reading 200+. By the fourth lap I was dropped by about 10 riders on the back straight. I hate being dropped. I looked behind me and there was a bunch of riders scattered everywhere and it seemed like the pack had just exploded into pieces.

This all happened less than 15 minutes into the 55 minute race. The remainder of the race was more of a time trial effort workout than a crit race. About four of us grouped up soon after I was dropped. I did a TON of work during the next 40 minutes with my heart rate over 180 for most of the race. 180 HURTS. Last week I forgot to record, but I'm pretty sure my heart rate stayed under 180 except for maybe 2 minutes.

Another NEBC rider (Bruce) helped out and made some nice pulls, but most of the rest of the chasers (up to six or seven) were sucking our wheels. If it weren’t for Bruce I might have given up. At about 45 minutes the lead four riders lapped us. We were doing about 22-23 on the turn before the straightaway and we were passed like we weren’t even moving. By the end of the race there were only three of us chasing, the others had been dropped. We rode by the timing shack and they announced two laps to go. Wrong. The three of us finished one more lap and the officials announced that was the finish. Too bad for me because I was the last of the three at that point. The official results list me as 13th but I'd look at it more as a tied for 11th finish, so pretty similar to last week.

I posted the garmin output. You can see there's very little elevation change in this race, but you can also see my speed change consistently from lap to lap. That was the effect of the wind making us vary from 15-25mph. Also, there was something wrong with my heart rate monitor at the start of the race, and I tried moving it around to fix it after being dropped.

I'm so sore right now. Getting out of the car at a gas station I thought my glutes were going to tear. I haven’t worked that hard in a long time. Wells Ave should be interesting tomorrow.

Result: 13/26

Intro to Crit Racing

I've done two crit races in the past 2 weeks to start off my first full season of racing, Wells Ave and the Chris Hinds Memorial Crit down in Charlestown, RI. These two races had one thing in common, they were both really cold and way too early for a weekend. At least I didn’t end up like these poor fellows in the Beantown Classic Crit last weekend.

(4) On Saturday April 7^th was the Chris Hinds Memorial in Charlestown, RI. Traveled with TPM. Left the house at 5:10 AM to get there about 6:45AM, ridiculously early. We got out of the car and it was absolutely freezing out. Supposedly it was 30°F but the wind or something made it feel way colder. I had my new Garmin Edge 305 with me but apparently I failed to start the data logger function for the race, otherwise I would upload the data.

If you’ve never raced down here this track is really fun. It’s a flat, smooth, and twisty track 30ft wide with seven turns. The turns are basically the perfect curvature for an event like this, some of them are challenging to corner going faster than 20 mph. People all over the place were being forced off of the pavement onto the smooth grass both to the inside and outside of turns.

I did less than a half mile of warmup for this race. I need to get better at this! The race started and I was freezing cold, and felt really tight. Luckily, the pace was a lot slower than any other race I’ve ever done, I’d guess mostly due to the tight corners. At times we were doing 17mph on the straightaway and my heart rate could really slow down. The race was 30 minutes + 6 laps, so after about 30 mintues the officials brought out the lap cards indicating 6 laps to go. The pace still remained relatively slow with the occasional jump to 25-30 mph coming out of a turn. I had been sitting in the back of the 30-man pack pretty much the entire race and decided I preferred to maneuver the course on the left side on the pack. With three to go I was feeling ever so slightly worked, so I began making some moves towards the front of the pack. Met a fellow NEBC teammate (Kurt) in this process that I had watchced work the front of the pack for much of the race. Lesson learned: get to races earlier and meet teammates BEFORE the race starts!

With two to go one racer managed to sneak off of the front with no action from within the pack. In fact, the pack remained relatively mellow until the final lap, when everything really picked up. I was sitting in the front third, and made a move into the front 5 on the back stretch and we were really moving at this point, close to 30 mph. Coming out of the second to last turn I made my move and my pedals bottomed out on the pavement which was a near disaster. I sprinted ahead a little too cautiously and came around the last corner coming around the front of the pack, but with the breakaway rider still 30 meters out. Out of the last corner in the front I hit a huge wall of wind which totally killed me, and 8 riders sprinted by me like I wasn’t even moving. A lesson learned there too about finshing tactics. I think we had split the pack at some point because I looked back and no one was there, so I sat up and coasted through the finish for 10^th place, I was spent.

This was the most fun race I’ve been in to date which I’m sure has something to do with the fact that it’s the first race I’ve actually been close to winning. I can’t wait to go back for their next race and run this track again on the 14^th, it was so much fun.

Result: 10/30, cat 5, Results

(3) The Wells Ave race was a lot of fun even though it was an awful and embarrassing performance on my behalf. Being a crash5 I raced in the C race, and the plan was just to finish with the main pack seeing as this would be a personal first for a USCF race. We rolled off and the pace was fast, but not too too fast, maybe 24-25mph. I was sitting in 2/3rds of the way back when the official rang the bell for a prime lap on lap 3 of 12. Everyone in the pack got antsy and there was a lot of shuffling around for position. Going around turn 3 I felt really good my adrenaline got the best of me and I decide to contend for the prime. Came around turn 4 up on the pedals past the pack and realized that there were four riders that had already accelerated off of the front. I gave my 100% to catch them but what a waste. I finished that prime lap somewhere in between the leader and the pack and my heart rate was through the roof. Going around turn 1 the pack went nuking by me and going up the small hill on turn 2 I couldn’t even catch a wheel being totally winded from that waste of a sprint. I got dropped with a handful of other racers who formed a small but fun chase group. I sat in there pretty embarrassed for the rest of the race.

Result: Dropped, Results

Bad Weight-Weenie

So we were sitting around eating dinner last night and Erica looks at my new digital scale and points out that I never took some foam packaging off of it. I had definitely not noticed this, so I look up and sure enough there are two small foam strips underneath the weight platform that would act as springs whenever an object is being weighed.

I'd been thinking for the past week or two that everything I own seemed amazing in terms of weight. Bikes weighing 16.5 lbs, stems at 135g, saddles at 200g, everything seemed really high-end.

Of course as soon as Erica pointed this out I had to weigh everything. I threw the "205g" seat on the scale and it weighed 245g, 20% more! I ripped the bike bag off of myOrbea and took off the water bottle, 18.1 lbs. That sucks, 18 lbs isn’t nearly as cool as 16 lbs!

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