Charlie Baker Time Trial, 5/26

Stage race season is just around the corner. KSR, CTSR, Longsjo, and WMSR are all in the next 6 weeks and feature flat enough TT’s that good aerodynamics will be vital to GC placing. For some, time trials are an exciting change of pace and for others it’s a painful necessity for success.

By this point it would be ideal to be totally dialed in, but I’ve been scrambling. Even though I bought my new TT “De Rosa” frame in March I’ve waited until this week to make the finishing touches. Internal cable routing has been a nightmare for me and until this week I’ve had no rear shifting and a good excuse to not ride that bike. Yesterday, in an act of pre-KSR desperation, I had the cable/housing routed externally via zip ties. It looks like a disaster but at least it’s rideable.

So last night was my first time on the new TT bike. When I say first time, I mean absolutely first time ever wearing a chamois with my feet clipped in. You might be thinking, well what about your bike fit? You know, that process of adjusting all your nuts and bolts so that everything is positioned just right? I opted for the 15 minute parking lot style “looks good” approach rather than the $300, 4 hour, WE USE LASERS, ATA Cycles mad scientist approach. After all, how bad could it be?

Did I mention it was hot out last night? My thermometer said 100°F when I turned on my car at 5pm. I think it may have been “only” 95 or something, and by 630 it was a frosty 85 and the sun was mostly covered by clouds. Wind was calm, so it was really pretty close to ideal conditions. Assuming you can stand the heat that is. I only have a long sleeve skinsuit so that made for an extra fun challenge.

Unfortunately my chamois cream could NOT stand the heat, at least not after I cooked it in the back of my car all day. When I opened it up for application, built up pressure sprayed it out and made a mess. The chamois “cream” was boiling hot and had the viscosity of water. This did not go over well with the delicate skin on my inner thighs. Ouch.

Warmup was short, 14 minutes of rolling time. Who needs to warm up much more than that when it’s that hot out anyways? Besides, I nearly crashed myself about 47 times during warmup. I’d forgotten how awful these TT bikes are. Your butt is so high and far forward that you lose a lot of control. I could never spend as much time training on this as I do my road bike. It’s miserable. I don’t know how the Iron Man people do it.

I got to the start and clipped in with both feet while being held upright. Geez, I could barely hold on the bullhorns. My hands were all lubed up from my chamois water and of course I didn’t wrap any tape around the short carbon bullhorns. The only thing that kept my hands from sliding off was pressing them into the brake levers. Need to fix that.

Finally I get rolling and within 3 minutes I was looking down at the computer trying to figure out how far in I was. I was dreaming of averaging 300W for this TT, which really shouldn’t be too much to ask if on my road bike, but TT bikes are a whole different beast (until you’re dialed in at least). Shoot, 300W was not happening today, not even close. Like Solobreak says, it shouldn’t hurt in the first 5 minutes.

7 minutes into the effort I wanted to shoot myself. I even thought about turning around, but only losers DNF. It’s a weird feeling trying to push yourself on a TT bike when you’re not used to it. My legs hurt, but not in a good way. It’s more of a weak untrained feeling than it is a I AM KILLING IT feeling. Not to mention I feel like I’m suffocating. A better bike fit and a little more TT training perhaps…

I had passed my unaero 30 second man pretty early on which was cool, but then my ego was completely shot down when a tri geek with one of those belly shirt tank tops passed me. That style just isn’t for me, and it’s really deflating to get completely owned by it.

As I was getting close to the Carlisle Rotary I looked down at my time and saw 9:30 or so. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at CBTT data, but I was pretty sure it usually took me at least 10 minutes on a fast day to get this far. My average power at this point was a measly 250W, which is absolutely pitiful on the road bike, but I kept plugging away.

Somewhere along the way my handlebars slipped forward and I think my saddle did too. I was constantly pushing myself back on the saddle and was pretty sure that I was going to fall forward over my handlebars if I wasn’t careful. The only thing keeping me on my bike was my grip, which had such a death lock on the aerobars that my forearms were fatiguing about as much as my legs were.

On Monument Street I was barely pedaling and my power was dropping below 200W for as long as 90 seconds at one point (on a downhill of course).

Somehow my speed was surprisingly high. Coming up the final hill it dawned on me that I was going to be under 23 minutes. My previous best on this course was 23:38 and I figured that couldn’t be right. Sure enough I crossed the finish in 22:48 (25.7 mph), a PR by a whopping 50 seconds.

Considering how disastrous everything had been, I was pretty darn psyched about that result. It was all in the aerodynamics, which is something that eluded me last year despite making a good effort. Running my CBTT model, my aero numbers are better than I thought I’d ever be able to achieve, especially with my ghetto TT setup. It was still a fast night though, with 3 new records being set including the fastest time ever by TPM.

My average power was 263W (3.55 W/kg). This is an average I see on 1-2 hour tempo rides on my road bike and my normalized power would be even higher on those rides. In a February indoor TT my AP was 302W after a 4 hour endurance ride. I haven’t been training these LT efforts at all lately, but I’m pretty sure I’d be in the 310-320 range on my road bike. 263W is just, pitiful. Some of this gap will be closed up through bike fit, and hopefully the remainder through training.

For all those roadies that say something like “if I only had a TT bike, I would be fast too”, I disagree. You can’t just hop on a TT bike and go super fast. Not like upper 20’s fast anyways (unless you’re a freakishly fast cat 1). It takes time and training to produce your road bike power on a TT bike fit. And unless you have silly amounts of time to spend training, I bet your road racing ability will take a hit. I’d like to figure out some sort of balance. I wonder what works for other people?

The KSR TT is this Sunday. My understanding is that it’s a relatively steady 1% gradient for 11 miles. I’m expecting (hoping/targeting) and average speed in the range of 23-24mph, slower than a level TT anyways. I’m debating whether I should slacken up my position for this one (I’m using an adjustable stem). Would a few more watts offset a less aerodynamic position? Who knows. I wish I had been more on top of this a month ago, but at least I should be more dialed in come July.

That’s a lot of text for a TT, must be the first one of the season! Thanks for reading.

Wells Ave A Race, 5/16 (plus a little more)

Wow what a weekend. It seems like I’ve been having to force it these past few weeks, doing a lot of racing and training either in miserable conditions or on the trainer. When the forecast called for sunny skies and 70 degree temperatures, I didn’t even know what that meant. Riding without warmers just feels weird right now. We even got a little cherry on top when Friday evening’s storm missed us to the south.

The racing was at Bear Mt and Ninigret this weekend. The 3 field filled up quickly at Bear Mt and I missed out. Ninigret was tempting, especially because they had a straight 3 field, but a Sunday afternoon criterium start meant I’d want to take it easy riding all weekend. With the nice forecast? No thanks. Yes, I actually skipped a race because the forecast was good.

Friday night turned into a 2 hour recovery/coffee shop ride with Erica. It was probably too long to truly recover but who cares when it’s that nice out. Need to keep the brain thinking that riding bikes isn’t always painful.

On Saturday morning I met up with Ken in Ipswich for a 3-hour ride. Nothing like riding with a criterium lover to check the snap in your legs. It was full gas right from the start with nothing less than 600W sprints up each of the punchy climbs in the area. With all the hill training I’ve been doing this year I think my legs are forgetting what that feels like. Anyways, we did a nice coastal loop through Gloucester and Rockport. Check it out here:

http://tinyurl.com/35medb4

Guess what? It was nice on Saturday night so when I got home Erica wanted to ride again. Geez, we get her a Scott CR1 last week and now she’s chomping at the bit to ride all the time. 2 hours later I was feeling pretty darn beat.

For some reason I decided to go do Wells Ave the next morning. I guess I was afraid I wouldn’t get a good ride in if I didn’t.

I was feeling especially unmotivated and unwilling to hurt and would have used the excuse that I was waiting until the second half of the race if questioned why I was sitting in so much. About 10 miles or so in, my teammate Justin got tangled up in some monkey business and down he went. Luckily we avoided a pileup but he still got a little chopped up. A few of us stopped to see how we could help before hopping back in with about 10 to go.

There was a lot of traffic and I think that pretty much neutralized any breaks. Not that I was even trying to get into one. I sat in until the final laps and got a semi-decent position for the sprint although a wheel or two further back than I would have liked. When we hit the final straight I had a red carpet that should have easily led me into the top 5, but my legs were junk. I pretty much just sprinted the same speed as everyone else even though I was out of the wind. Max power barely cracked 1,000. I hope I’m not losing my ability to kick it up.

Post-race I was going to just go for 2 hours or so, but Roy and Peter were riding out to Harvard. Stupid Rapha Race training (just kidding). So of course, being nice out, I had to tag along. What a thrashing. I cringed every time Peter would start pulling. There’s nothing like being in over your head to whip your butt into shape.

Of course when I get close to home it’s time to meet up with Erica for another little jaunt. I’m bonking hard for the first time in ages and 200W feels like a heroic effort. Thank goodness she didn’t want to go hard. It would have crushed me. Finally rolled home after just shy of 7 hours of moving time. Then off to Minado for unlimited sushis and we ate till it hurt. So awesome.

What a weekend!

Wells Ave B Race, 5/9

So far this season I’ve been sticking to the A races at Wells, but this week my teammate Ian asked if I wanted to rock the B race with him. He said that he thought we’d be able to do some damage if he were paired with a sprinter. The man had a plan, and I couldn’t say no.

That morning was a hurricane. Steady hard wind and the occasional knock you off your bike sort of gusts. My Powertap is currently away for service so I decided to bust out my good race wheels for a change. While I was at it I figured I might as well rock the onesie aka skinsuit and take the super aero approach.

Enough people signed up to run a separate B race which was a big “if” being mother’s day. It was only a 30 man field but that was probably for the better with all the wind. Before the race started the kind BRC gentleman (I should really start learning names) reminded us to race smart and that we were racing for $5 primes and stale bread. Good point but I was semi regretting using my race wheels. Oh well.

Our plan was simple. Take turns chasing moves and find Ian’s wheel for sweet leadouts when primes came up.

Attacks started pretty much from the start. I had planned on waiting until the field softened up some, but by the second lap I found myself countering the first lap move. It was a good effort but too early as it was chased down handily. I got brought back in as the first prime bell rang. Ian was in a move and I was too tired to go for it anyways. A few laps and attacks later, we missed the second prime for the same reason. It’s tough to sprint for primes while you’re also trying get in a break.

We continued to take turns going with moves, but when the third prime came up things worked out for us. Ian had just come back from a move and I was rested. I’m sure he was gassed, but he still found the manpower to set the pace on the front. My plan was to go from the American Flag on the final straightaway (there was a headwind) but a Quad Cycles sprinter (John?) jumped just before that. I moved from Ian’s wheel to his, followed suit for a few pedal strokes before popping around at the line. It was super close and I got it by a bike throw. He may have eased up just a few feet early. A shame for him really because he had a very long and solid sprint.

After the prime, I eased up to an easy tempo until the back straightaway. I checked my review mirror to see where the field was and they were nowhere in sight. For a moment I had visions of being able to solo away but the headwind on the front straight brought me back to my senses. I got caught by a 4-man move at the start of the next lap. This move would be the move of the day.

Obviously in hindsight I should have gone with it. Having just sprinted, then going for a lap, I just wasn’t feeling it. Seems to be this is when the moves tend to go, thinking back to my Rick Newhouse and Turtle Pond races this year. I keep getting in the move that sets up with winning move.

Ian attacked along with another dude right as soon as I came back. They were a good match and were able to successfully bridge up to the 4-man break, making it 6 total. It wasn’t long before they dumped 2 riders and were 4 once again. They had about 20 laps to go at this point which makes for a darn good threshold workout.

Back in the field I did my best to go with any attacks. This is the best seat in the house in my mind, frequent sprinting to sit on moves but not having to pull through. Some of the boys in the field put a lot of heart into the chase, it just wasn’t quite hard enough for long enough. The gap did come down to 10 or 15 seconds at times, but that was it.

As I sat on a few bridge attempts, I started weighing our (NEBC) odds as my chase group charged ahead. I didn’t want to help take 3 other guys up to the break, but maybe 1 other person would be OK. I told a strong CB rider that I would start helping if he could get it close, but that never did happen. I was also hoping that the larger bridge groups would get close enough that I could attack and bridge solo. Didn’t get that opportunity either.

The gap was over 30 seconds with 3 to go and it became apparent that we wouldn’t be seeing the break again today. The Quad Cycles guy that I had sprinted against earlier (John?) starting drilling it in super TT mode on the front. I was sitting 4^th wheel, and we didn’t so much as swap positions once until the last lap. Everyone was content with his strong man pace.

I was all fired up to sprint at the finish, thinking I had a perfect position. On the last lap it looked like we might get swarmed on the back straight, but that fizzled out quickly. I was still in that same 4^th wheel position as we rounded turn 4.

The guys in front of me turned in on as soon as we hit the straightaway, basically giving me the perfect leadout. Unfortunately there was a Prius in the way and our finish was cancelled. Only lap all race that we even saw a car. Oh well. Ian stuck with the break until the finish, but unfortunately was bested in the sprint and finished fourth. Great work in the break though. I had a blast at this race.

Sterling Classic Road Race, cat3

Ah Sterling, the last of the New England Spring Classics for me this season. I’m headed out west and will be missing Sunapee. Spring road races have been scarce this year. Battenkill technically isn’t in New England but it’s about 30 minutes across the border so I count it. We had Turtle Pond and Quabbin which fell on the same weekend. But that’s about it. Five big road races, only four of which I can race.

That leads me to this week’s dilemma. As described in my previous post, it’s likely that an ingrown hair resulted in a skin and tissue infection and my first major setback of 2010. I was off the bike for 7 full days waiting for the swelling to go down, and it might as well been a year. It felt like it anyways. I was also pumped up on lots of antibiotics. In the past I’ve felt pretty crappy doing intensity while on the antibiotics and on Thursday afternoon I had pretty much written off any chance of racing at Sterling.

Thursday’s weather went from a bad forecast to a really nice evening. The swelling on my foot was way down, so I decided to go out for a little spin. My Powertap is out being serviced right now, so average speed was my only real feedback. Of course that turned my “little spin” into more of a tempo ride. Despite feeling like death my average speed was decent and I pulled the trigger on Sterling.

Three paragraphs in and we’re only to the point where I decided to register for this race. Pretty incredible considering I didn’t even mention the weather forecast (which was miserable). I guess in this case I found the challenge of managing setbacks to be the more interesting part of my weekend.

Like everyone else has said, the weather was brutal on Saturday. Lucky for the afternoon waves, the rain eased up to nothing more than a light mist. No thunder, no hail, although the roads were still soaked.

My motivation was pretty rock bottom so I showed up just 45 minutes before start time, pinned up and went. The course is flat and neutral for 5 or 10 minutes and I think it’s neutral the first time up the finishing hill too. It seemed make a pretty natural warmup so whatever, no worries. NEBC didn’t have a team showing today with only Oscar and myself being present. It was also Oscar’s first race of the season, so he was just looking to build his racing form.

For some reason the first lap really hurt. I had started near the back planning to just sit on for the first few laps and see how I felt. The rain and wet roads seemed to have everyone really nervous. Lots of space was allowed between riders and the pace around turns was often slow and wildly unpredictable. This caused a lot of chasing. The turn onto Rt. 12 was the worst. Huge gaps were opening and I was definitely behind it. Same exact thing happened to me last year so no surprise really. Luckily this time my buddy Aaron came around and told me to hop on as he bridged the void. Super nice move from him. I think we dumped close to half the field here.

The first time up the hill didn’t hurt too badly. I find the first major hill is usually the hardest for me, but not today. Maybe it was because we went so fast prior to that. Somewhere around here the break of the day got away too. At first it was three but they shed a rider and were down to two. That’s a long way to go for so few people.

I was just sitting in doing as little as possible for the first 5 laps or something. The hill was really working me every lap, but I was hanging in there. It seemed like every time I would back off just a fraction the entire field would too. Sweet. If they had charged ahead I might have been in trouble. With each additional lap the long gradual grind after the wall got more and more painful. Then it took longer and longer to recover on the downhill. Boy did I feel lousy.

Coming up the wall was really hard on the lap where we were shown 3 to go. A lot of gaps opened up and I was able to cross them, but boy was that taxing. It seemed like there were only 20 guys or so on the front end of this. I was really hoping that a few guys would keep drilling it on the front and cause more selections, but it was not meant to be. We eased off big time after the long grind and I think it all (~40 of us) came back together.

That lap was a real match burner for me and I didn’t think I could survive another effort like that. We only had one more time up the wall before the finishing climb, and I really just wanted to finish with the group. When we got to Rt. 12 I moved up to the front so I could try and control the pace and sag climb if I had to.

I was first wheel turning onto the wall and I set a most non-ferocious and tame pace. For some reason only 3 dudes came around me. I pretty much sat up and spun my legs after crossing the finish line, trying to take it as easy as possible for the next gradual grind. The three guys in front of me rolled away and eventually people started coming around me. I was really pretty surprised by this and started realizing that maybe I wasn’t the only one that was hurting.

This gave me the idea that I might be able to contend the finish. After all we were only 8 miles to go with no more climbs (other than the finish). It was easy to sit in the front couple of wheels on the downhill. I was barely pedaling and a couple guys tried making desperate attempts to get away. Each time someone attacked we would all chase it down. Most everyone was interested in the uphill sprint.

On Rt. 12 we really ramped it up. I’m sure everyone just wanted to be first wheel turning onto the wall. I did my best to stay in the first couple of wheels without expanding too much energy, but it was taking a lot out of me. Lots of sudden accelerations were wearing me down quickly. By the time we got to town center I knew I was toast, and instead of thinking about how I was going to win I was thinking about how I was going to avoid getting run over. I was only about 10 or 15 wheels back. As we turned onto the wall I immediately pulled over hard to the right. I only lasted about 5 pedal strokes at that finishing pace before I was blown. Wow did I feel bad. Despite finishing near the back of the group I was 32 of 69 starters for the day. That’s a lot of dropped riders.

this is a stupid problem to be having

I resisted shaving my legs for as long as possible. Having thick curly hair it seemed like an unnecessary hassle, just one more thing to worry about on top of training, mechanic work, and coaching myself. Surely I wasn’t getting much respect from the style police and that didn’t really bother me for quite a while.

As I moved up through the ranks the pressure increased. Finally this winter I caved in and shaved ‘em clean. Initially I had no regrets, and I’m positive that I was getting more respect in the peloton. Fewer people fight to stay ahead of me with shaved legs and it’s easier to maintain a good position. Shaved legs equal better racing performance!

I thought I had it well planned out. My initial shave was in February as I was expecting serious razor burn the first couple of times. This would give me a month or two for my skin to get used to it as I ramped up the shaving rate. Come April I would be good to go, right?

Wrong. Despite doing everything by the book, the razor burn never got much better, and about a week or two ago a few of the spots turned a little red. I didn’t think much of it and my only plan was to take a break from shaving and allow it to heal.

This past weekend my ankle swelled up into a super-sized cankle. The next morning my skin changed color from red to purple. It was so stiff I could barely walk on it. Felt like a sprained ankle.

Being a Sunday I ended up in the ER. The diagnosis? Cellulitis.

My doctor was a large Navy vet. He asked me why I shaved my legs. I looked at him sheepishly and said that, without going into all sorts of explanation, it’s what you do in bike racing. He gave me the most obvious reply and said that he didn’t recommend doing that anymore.

Given my position laying there in the hospital bed, barely able to walk, I had to agree.

He went on to tell a story about his days in the Navy. Apparently there were sailors, most often African American for whatever reason, that had a combination of skin and hair types that prevented them from being able to shave clean and meet the Navy’s requirements. If they did try to do a clean shave they would come down with a similar Cellulitis condition. These people were given doctor’s permission to trim to a stubble.

My orders were to take two types of antibiotics, stay off my foot for a few days, keep it elevated, and stop shaving my legs. If I absolutely had to shave them, try just trimming them and going with stubble.

As a result, I’m missing a week of training because I shaved my legs. What a stupid problem to be having.

From here on out, I’ll be rocking the stubble.