Working Man Stage Race: Stage 2 - Circuit Race

Had a good recovery from Stage 1. Legs felt like a million bucks.

The circuit race course was pretty much the same as the time trial but with an additional little section that lengthed each lap from ~6 miles to ~9 miles. The new section introduced a new little hill similar in size to the KOM hill according to my garmin (which was only about 130’). Cat4’s went 4 laps, ~36 miles. There was a sharp 90 degree right-hander leading into a ~250m finish stretch. Yellow line rule was in effect until ~50m after the turn, which made the turn a bit sharper than it already was.

I only showed up 30 minutes prior to the start, so I was a bit rushed to sign up, suit up, and do the bathroom thing. No warmup other than doing a few circles around the small parking lot in a low gear. Got to the line and ended up pretty darn close to the very back. I hate jockeying for position before the gun goes off and just hung out at the back even though I’ve been told a million times “race at the front! race at the front!” Whatever dude.

First lap was nice and easy, was hardly breathing across the flats. The rode on the back stretch of the course had a deadly right side to it. I was dodging cracks and holes the entire time. The KOM hill was a bit of a push for me, definitely went anaerobic getting over it with the heart rate going over 185. Stayed on easily enough though.

Lap two things got more interesting. TPM and his young NHCC team did a nice job pushing their way to the front. Every time the pace picked up coming out of a corner I noticed Tim being on the very front, sweet. Well he’s cat3 now so I don’t have to worry about that any more.

Anyways, I thought I was moving up towards the front a bit myself which would have been good given the narrow course, however half way through lap two I looked back and no one was there. That sucks.

It was on lap two where my brakes started giving me some trouble. I was rocking the 44mm carbon rims but I didn’t take the time to set the pads with the proper toe-in before the race. The result was a big loss in braking power with the pads screaming and screeching every time I got on them. Talk about a good way to mark yourself as a guy to pass. The few remaining people at the back were working hard to stay ahead of me and rightfully so. I felt like a danger trying to keep tight on a wheel and was allowing way more space than usual.

This braking issue had me stressed out beyond belief. By the time the KOM hill came around I was pretty shaken up. I got on a familiar CCB wheel from the NEBC hill rides, but half way up noticed that a handful of us had been gapped by 5m or so.

Over the false flat I pushed up the power a bit to close the gap. I was almost successful, but couldn’t quite make it and completely blew up doing so, heart rate reaching 194 (196 max HR). My teammate Tom passed and urged me to push to close the gap on the downhill, but I couldn’t move.

In hindsite I should have let the gap stand over the false flat and picked them up on the downhill. The pace of the peloton slowed considerably here and I nearly caught them while gasping for air. Had I allowed the gap to gain another 2 seconds while they raced for the KOM I surely would have caught them.

Instead, I was off the back all on my own. Coming by the finish line Erica was there cheering for me to catch back on, as I was still chasing a 10-15 second gap. I destroyed myself trying but I just didn’t have it. What really hurt was knowing my error on the KOM hill and putting myself in that position.

On the plus side I felt very fit riding alone, averaging just under 21mph for the last 20 miles, not that it matters. I was close to pulling out of the race due to frustration, but in the end it felt really good to finish.

My goal for the day had been to stay with the field for the group sprint, as I think sprinting speed is my strong suite. Would have been nice to test it in the group finish, but maybe next time.

Teammate Mike Rowell (built Erica’s bike up) followed up his strong time trial with a top 15 performance, and ended up nicely in the GC as stage 3 was cancelled due to heavy rain. TPM picked up 3^rd in the GC being on the unfortunate side of a 2^nd place tiebreaker.

Working Man Stage Race: Stage One - Time Trial

David, Mike, Myself lined up at the start (photo credit two adventures)

Took the day off from work to get ready for stage one of WMSR. My plane didn’tget in until way later than it should have, and I didn’t make it to bed till 4AM. It was nice to be able to sleep to noon and get my stuff together.

Not a whole lot to say about the time trial. I came in 52 out of 57, finishing the ~6.25 miles in 16:53 @ ~22.2 mph, about 2:30 back from the leaders. There was a ridiculous amount of aero gear at the event, especially in the masters field. As a guess, 95% had aero bars, 75% aero helmets, 66% deep dish rims, maybe 10% disc wheels. I’d really like to try it again with some aero bars at least, maybe I could have finished somewhere in the middle that way, who knows. All I know is that I got a measely 24/100 points for the stage which puts me so far out of the GC it’s ridiculous.

The course itself was a lot of fun, and time trialing was overall a lot more fun than I thought it would be. There were some pretty technical turns and it was tricky judging how much to slow down. There was one hill of any real size about a mile out from the finish. It was just a little bit longer than the other rollers in the race and I may have gone just a little too deep into the red there. I was cranking my 53x19 over painfully slowly, 60 rpm tops, and couldn’t get it going too quickly over the flatish part to the top. Teammate Mike Rowell was staged 30 seconds behind me and blew by me a mile into the race like I wasn’t even moving. He finished 6^th for the cat 4’s. TPM had a big first-ever time trial for him, finishing 3^rd in 14:23.

Stage two tonight is a 35-mile circuit race. My legs feel good and fresh today, and I’m hoping to hang in there and be around for the sprint to the finish.

Colorado Trip

Awesome trip, can't wait to go back. We biked some pretty sweet routes, and there must be a thousand others in the area that are just as sick. Erica and I both rented a Giant OCR-1 with triple cranks dressed in 105. $50 for two days, much cheaper than spending big bucks bring our bikes on the plane and easier than shipping. The bikes didn't fit the best, I had an XL and Erica rode a medium, but it wasn't bad. The tall headtubes gave a very upright position so it felt pretty relaxed which was good for touring.

Being a weekend trip, my plane left at 5:30AM EST on Saturday morning, which meant I had to get up at 3:30 AM EST, the equivalent of 1:30AM RMT. Between biking every day and a severe lack of sleep, I was exhausted.

With Working Man's Stage Race coming up I was being pretty cautious not to go out too hard and stick to light to medium tempo, but when you do 6000'+ of vertical in a day, you're going to feel tired no matter how slow you go.

Day 1: Flagstaff Road

We didn’t have a whole lot of time on Saturday due to travel and didn’t make it out riding until well after noon. I think I read about Flagstaff road on northeastcycling.com and it looked pretty sick on the map so we decided it would be a good local road to give a shot.

Flagstaff heads out of Boulder on the south side and twists up and behind the flat irons. There are a number of switchbacks on the road and a lot of great views of Boulder. According to my Garmin, our starting elevation was 5200’, and I think we topped out around 7800’. This includes starting from Pearl St. in Boulder.

We were both pretty thankful to have triples on the way up. I think most of the climb could have been done on a double without too much trouble, but there were some sections near the top that must’ve been 12%+. Turning the 26(?)-25 at about 70 rpm was plenty hard for these sections anyways. Maybe it was the altitude, who knows.

Day 2: Vail Pass

After the long day on Saturday including getting up at 1:30 AM, doing Flagstaff Road, and meeting up with my Aunt and Uncle for dinner (and two bottles of wine), we somehow got up before 6 AM. It was kind of funny because we had set an alarm on our cell phones for 8 AM, and by the time it went off we were already in the car well on our way to Frisco.

The Frisco / Lake Dillon area is pretty sweet, being a hub to a ton of good bike trails both paved and dirt. There were paved bike paths that you could take including east to Keystone, south to Breckenridge, and west to Vail. It would also make a good starting point if you wanted to do Loveland Pass (12,000’).

We decided to take the path to Vail mostly just because it was the longest. I think the others were about 10 miles each way. Starting elevation was 8900’ and climbed to about 10,700’ by the top of Vail Pass. Along the way we went past Copper where they were having a half marathon.

The bike path was unreal the entire way. Some of it was pretty straight; a lot of it was really twisty. The grade wasn’t steep, but after 15 miles of subtle grade we were pretty tired and kinda sick of going 12-14mph.

At the top of Vail Pass we overheard someone say it was 5 miles down to Vail so we decided to go for it. I figured that even if it was 6% average grade that’d make for 1500’ of climbing at worst on the way back, ha! After descending for what felt like forever, we passed a sign that said it was 11 miles back up to the top, and we still had 4 miles to go. It was pretty disheartening to know you have 30 miles back to the car and nearly 3000’ of vertical.

In Vail we had a sweet lunch, took it easy for a bit, then headed back. Amazing what a good meal can do for your riding, I think we made it over the pass more easily than on the way there. Once over the pass we got to make the best descent I’d ever done. The grade wasn’t too steep, but it was just right to keep your speed around 30 mph with some tight hairpins and LOTS of good curves. I took a video of a brief part near the top. It went on like this for 6 or 7 miles.

Vail Pass Video

This is a short video of the descent down Vail Pass towards Copper mountain. Pics to come.

Wells Ave: July 8th

Raced at Wells Ave today. Haven't been racing much other than local training races the past couple of weeks, hoping to spend more quality time in the saddle and less time driving to races. Besides, when you have a great training race like Wells Ave less than 10 miles away it's almost too convenient.

Legs were a little tired coming into the race, the result of a few too many miles on Saturday (although they were easy). That being said, I wasn't exactly 100%, but my intent is to prepare for some upcoming stage races in the next month or two, so I did my best to deal.

Seems like just about every race during this time of the year is a combined A&B race and today was no exception. It's not a bad thing because it seems like there's a lot more "B's" than "A's", but 32 miles is sure a lot longer than I'm used to for a crit. Oh well, I'll get used to it fast at this rate. I'd also be interested to see the makeup of "A" racers and "B" racers. When I signed up there were only 5 or 10 A's on the list, but those guys probably come a bit later so who knows.

The plan for the day was to sit in for as long as possible at the front, not go for any primes (I don't have the legs yet to recover from these), and maybe make a bid at the finish if I get that far. Honestly, I have trouble feeling too competitive at most of these races, especially the training races, it was a perfect day out and I just wanted to have fun and do some good racing.

I sat in most of the race around 1/4 or 1/3 of the way back, not really interested or having the legs to get right up at the front. Actually, about 8 (of 40) laps in there was already a group of six off of the front, and another NEBC rider went to the front and I just kind of ended up there too. Pulled at maybe 90% max effort for a minute or so before fading back. That was my big excitement for the day at the front.

For most of the race I felt way better than I typically do. The big thing was that when it got to be crunch time, it didn't hurt half as bad as usual. That's a real nice change, and a good sign that the training is paying off too. Two riders were off the front and eating up a lot of the primes for most of the race. There were a couple of pack primes that predictably stretched things out, but for the most part the attacks seemed a lot more random that usual. The pack would stretch out just about anywhere, whenever someone with some strong legs felt like making a big pull I suppose.

The heat was kind of nasty though (83F with high humidity). A few racers went as far to start the race with the full zipper completely undone. I started the race with my jersey zipped all the way up, and when I went to unzip it some half way through the zipper got stuck. Like an idiot I wrestled around with it so much that I accidentally clinged spokes with a rider in front of me. Next time I'll give up my position and pull off to fix such a thing. Sorry to the riders around me that I put in danger.

With about 8 or 9 laps to go I completely ran out of gas. The pace didn't pick up or anything, I just died. At first I just had trouble keeping the wheel in front of me up the hill on turn 2. It took what seemed like a huge effort to close that, and not half a lap later it happened again and I was toast. I sat up for a lap and tried hopping on the back, but I was spent. Not sure if it was the heat or a few too many miles in the days prior or what, but it felt kind of funny to drop out that close to the finish.

It was a great day for a race, and despite dropping out close to the finish I had a lot of fun. Erica and I stopped at Panera after the race and soaked up some sun on their patio.

I'm headed to Colorado next weekend for a 3-day trip. Never been on a cycling trip but that's the plan this time. We plan to rent bikes in Boulder, but I'm not sure whether to do road or mt biking. Climbing Mt. Evans is high on the list, but so is the Monarch Crest trail. I'd like to try and keep the traveling within 2-3 hours of Denver if possible, and I haven't been able to figure out what exactly is in this range. If anyone has any advice I would love to hear it.