2010 Keith Berger Cat 3 Video

Sprinter della Casa makes some very sweet race videos, especially with his insightful commentary and editing, and they're even10x sweeter when you're in the same race. In this one I enjoyed reliving the final lap terror at the end of the Keith Berger (check out the back straight action), and then getting totally owned by Luke Fortini in the sprint.

Tour of the Hilltowns, cat 3

Tour of the Hilltowns. Massachusetts’ 56 mile road race that includes the beastly East Hawley Road climb. This race intrigues me for a number of reasons. Unlike most hilly road races, the hardest climb (East Hawley Rd.) is over 30 miles from the finish. The finishing miles aren’t exactly easy being a long and gradual uphill grind, but the last kilometer is actually flat. This combo gives me a slight of hope of success despite being considered a hilly road race. It’s still a climber’s course though. I also love the location being in the general area I grew up. I’ve driven up and down West Hawley Rd (West, not East) so many times on the way to Berkshire East that I know every last corner. Also, the course is just one giant loop which is kind of a rarity in New England.

Last weekend I did the 6 gaps ride which obviously transformed me into a climber overnight. Ok not really, but I do feel more comfortable than ever climbing out of the saddle, and for reasonably long durations too. Not just short little 2-5 minute climbs. Killington is the only other real climbing race I’ve done this year and I wanted to try again, just to see how I’d stack up. No pre-race aspirations of soloing away in the first 20 miles. Just hit the climb in decent position and hold on as long as possible.

East Hawley Road is a brutal climb. It’s not just the 1,250 ft of elevation gain over 3.8 miles (6.2% average) that makes it tough. The gradient kicks up to 12% for sustained sections and drops back down to a more manageable false flat. But the road also twists and turns so you can’t see more than a couple hundred meters ahead of you. If you don’t know every last inch of it this forces you deep into the red without knowing when the next break will come. Average power will be high, but to maintain contact with the leaders like a true climber your power will be up and down which means its happy lactic acid fest suffertime.

taken from brentacol.com

Like so many others, all I did for the first 20 miles of the race was sit in and conserve every last KJ I could for East Hawley. There wasn’t any need to warm up or anything. A few people went off the front right from the gun and everyone seemed content to let them go. I’d heard that West Hawley Rd was in rough shape so I moved up to the front 5 right before making that turn. It made the descent a lot less stressful. I really didn’t want to flat or crack my rims. In hindsight this road wasn’t half as bad as people made it out to be. Much better than the KSR road race.

I have to gripe about racers going over the yellow line because it happened over and over on West Hawley Road which really fired me up. Sure, there may not be a yellow line actually painted in places, but to go to the far side of the road on a 40+ mph descent and blow by an entire field when no one is even pedaling? Come on. Is that really how you want to get an advantage? That’s worse than attacking the only person in the race that can beat you when they have a mechanical. Not to mention it endangers not only yourself but the people around you.

Anyways, enough with the sour grapes because this was an awesome race. There was a single lane bridge near the bottom of West Hawley that we were going to be neutralized over. Right before we got there a huge 18 wheeler was crawling along. We slowed to practically a standstill and got to pass the truck before too long. Didn’t matter much I suppose because we were going to slow down for the bridge anyways. I played this poorly and lost all sorts of position.

In the last mile or 2 before the climb I took some risks moving up on the inside. I didn’t get too far forward, but at least I wasn’t on the back. When we turned onto the climb I was maybe in the 2^nd quarter of the field which was about 4-5 seconds behind the leaders.

On the lower parts of the climb I just watched out for riders that were cracking. I came around a few and was feeling OK. After about 2 km the road kicks up to 11-12% for 400m or so. This is really the do or die point because it levels out at about 4% after this. You need to be able to go into the red and recover on the 4%. I was hanging on for dear life as we got to the top of this kicker, just barely intact with the tail of the group.

And that’s when I did something stupid. I was riding on the far right side of the road and I rode off the side of the pavement onto gravel and grass. A bad combo of being deep in the red and too close to the side of a winding road. The pavement was elevated a few inches and I couldn’t just ride back on. I tried but I banged my nice carbon rim on the side of the pavement and nearly fell over. I quickly unclipped my left foot to get back on but the damage was done.

This was 2.4 km into the 5.8 km climb. I rode at what felt like LT after that, but it was probably on the low end. There may have been a drafting benefit along the 4% section. The pack was motoring away from me. Matt from Threshold pass me somewhere along the long straight part but seemed to blow up shortly after the hairpin turn. I was able to recover kind of quickly towards the top and picked up 3 or 4 riders.

We formed into a chase group with everyone taking turns pulling. Just as I was thinking it seemed like sort of a comfortable pace, a giant dude from Bethel Cycles with a deep carbon rear rim and a box section front rim went FLYING by us. I assume he flatted.

So huge Bethel Cycle guy goes by and we all had to sprint to get on his wheel. He turned around to see who got on his wheel and laser beams came shooting out of his eyes. Anyone that can get up a climb that steep while weighing as much as he did would surely put the hurt on us.

For at least the next 10 miles we chased and chased and chased thinking the lead group was not far in front of us. I think we were “Chase 2” on the road. We dropped one guy and picked up another. The Bethel Cycles gorilla kept the pace super high and I was too afraid not to work. For us mere mortals though, our pulls at the front got shorter and shorter and some began skipping pulls. This is when I got into trouble. I pulled through a few times when I shouldn’t have, then we came to a hill and I cracked.

My crack came right before the feed zone which was a pretty crummy place. Once you hit 112 the roads get way flatter and I could have really used a little help. I got a feed from Mom (thanks!!) and pretty much solo’d it all the way to the base of the climb on 9. The only help I got is when the Master’s field passed me and the long line of cars took some pressure off for a few miles. Otherwise it was just a long miserable grind.

A small pack of 7 overtook me about a mile or two before Rt 9 gets steep. At first I thought it was all Master’s but there were two other cat3’s hanging on the back so I hopped on too. Pretty much just rode with those guys to the finish although I did drop off the back in a little confusion caused by an attack/rain/ and someone dropping his glasses. Whatever. Didn’t make much difference at that point.

I finished 43/64, about 15 minutes off the leaders. I had to have lost 10 minutes of that riding alone but the real race was on East Hawley. Still don’t have the horsepower to hang with the leaders there. If I do this race next year I should aim to at least get across that long 4% section. The chances of chasing back on after that are likely much higher. Too much time is given up otherwise.

My power isn't bad right now and my weight is pretty much as low as ever. I gotta wonder about my training specificity, in terms of cadence, duration, and position. If I had a power meter for racing that would huge. My 40/26 seems OK at pace but is definitely too hard after a blow up. No that it matters so much at that point. That gearing works great for 5 minute out of the saddle climbs where I seem to go fastest with a cadence in the 60’s, but 20 minute climbs may be a whole different story. My legs are just shot after 10 minutes of that. Maybe a wussy compact crank is in my future. Maybe. It's criterium August so who needs one of those!

Chet Warman Memorial Ride (6 Gaps)

The 6 Gaps ride is considered to be one of the hardest single day rides in the northeastern US. Most versions of this ride start and finish in Rochester, VT and cover 132 miles including Brandon, Middlebury, Lincoln, Appalachian, Roxbury, and Rochester gaps, in that order.The Chet Warman Memorial Ride included that same route but start/finished in Pittsfield, VT, about 10 miles to the south, adding almost 20 miles of flat roads. It was $100 to participate but was for a good cause and was fully supported.

This type of ride isn’t one that I try and tackle very often. In fact, my previous longest ever day (May 2010) was ~125 miles in something like 6.5 or 7 hours saddle time. That day included Wells Ave and several other high intensity efforts.

6 Gaps would be different.From what I’ve read, 7.5-8 hours is a good saddle time for the 132 mile route. That means I would be doing great if I ended up with 8.5-9 hours saddle time for our 151 mile route. I didn’t know how my body would respond after that many hours.My worst fear was not finishing, and I really did not want to blow up completely and not be able to make it over a gap. On the flats you can move at a decent pace even if you’re only pushing say 2 W/kg. On 10% grade you won’t even move with that low of power. If you blow badly on this ride you’re done.

Then there’s the question of how beneficial this is to my training. As a cat3 very few races are longer than 3 hours.Even the p12 races rarely go longer than 4 hours. What good is it to practice riding for 9 hours? I’d sacrifice intensity training, risk injury, and likely miss additional training days while I recovered.

But of course I had to try. I’ll never know if I don’t. Plus, when my teammates Landen and Alex said they wanted to do it, I couldn’t say no. None of us had ever done a ride quite like this before.

We stayed with Landen’s parents’ place in Barre on Friday and Saturday nights which was great. The 6-gaps group started at 6:30 AM which meant a 4:30 wakeup call. I still felt rushed and didn’t really get in my usual race-morning routine. Unfortunately, my Powertap is once again not working and I do not have power data for the ride.

It was a cool morning, near 100% humidity, but it was going to heat up fast. There were about 30 of us doing the 6-gaps ride. The 2 and 4 gaps groups went off later in the day. I was surprised to see a wide range of bikes were in use including everything from road to triathlon and even mountain bikes.

Riding to the Brandon Gap turnoff went fast. We were cruising right along at first as a larger rider on a p2c led the way across the flats. Then he lost his water bottle and had to stop. Then Alex decided he needed to adjust his saddle height so we stopped again.Yes, we gave him a hard time about that. Then, as we were sort of chasing back on, Landen and I both lost bottles over the same pothole so we stopped again. Great start!

It might have been for the better though. We rode over Brandon at our own pace. For me it was a nice solid tempo effort although I did back off a little and get gapped by the top. No big deal though as the three of us regrouped at the feed station at the top. If every gap went that smoothly it'd be way too easy.

There were feed stations at the summit of each of the 6 gaps. I grabbed 1 or 2 bars, 1 or 2 bottles of water/sports mix, a banana, and maybe a cookie or something at each one. I was trying to stay topped off fuel-wise and I think I did a pretty good job.

The descent on Brandon is mostly straight with only a few big turns and I hit my highest speed of the day, 54.6 mph.You hold 30-40 mph for what feels like forever.

We took turns in the wind as we made our way around Lake Dunmore and to Middlebury Gap. Rt125 was under some major construction and we were advised to take the dirt road option which reportedly doesn’t sacrifice any vertical. The construction really murdered this road though making it miserable to ride on. I like riding on dirt, but this was more like riding on gravel with sharp potholes. I was relieved that none of us flatted.

The middle section of Middlebury Gap is flat when you approach it from the west and we were still in take it easy mode. We passed a few riders around here but were then caught by a group of 6 or 7 right before things got steep. I’m not sure where they came from.

When things did get steep, the presence of the additional riders made the pace much more aggressive. Again, I backed off the pace before going into the red. Landen and Alex fought it out with another rider and we regrouped at the summit. This didn't hurt too bad because I still had my race legs.

Another fast descent and before I knew it we were heading north on Rt 100. What a beautiful road for cycling. We were a group of 8 at that point and made great time. Everyone was cooperative. A quick natural break before setting a very reasonable pace up Granville Gulch and suddenly we were on Lincoln Gap.Saddle time at that point was about 3.5 hours but it felt more like 45 minutes to an hour tops.

Lincoln Gap Road kicks pretty hard immediately after turning off 100 but then goes flat for a mile or two. Landen charged ahead of the rest of us who were all approaching the climb very cautiously. Everyone’s heard of the notorious 20-24% gradients that lie ahead. I’d driven it once in Erica’s car and we barely made it!

The real part of the climb starts on dirt. That was steep, but I pedaled as softly as I could get away with knowing that the worst was yet to come. I had made no changes whatsoever to my gearing and that left me with a 40/26, a much bigger gear than I would have liked. I prefer to grind a big gear, but this was just ridiculous.

Once I hit the pavement I knew it was about a mile or 15-20 minutes of super ridiculous 20% average gradient. At first I tried to straight shot it but it quickly became apparent that there was no way I would be able to pull that off. My cadence was like 3 and it was so hard to produce power. I resorted to making a slalom course out of the climb and slowly made my way, 1 turn at a time.

Most of the others in my group kicked my butt, except Alex, who had a worse gear than me (39/25). He was walking before we were half way up. I think he refused to zig-zag. It didn’t matter much anyways because walking isn’t really that much slower than zig-zagging. I did lose my balance at one point because of a car and have to put my foot down, so I can’t say I cleaned the ride. Maybe I’ll have to go back.

We went all the way down to the valley floor after Lincoln.The descent was a bit crazy because I was using 99% braking power with all the tight turns. We had been warned that the road was washed out in places, but it didn’t seem so bad. Once again the roads between the climbs were enjoyable and we were at App Gap in no time.

Next up was App Gap, which can be broken up into Baby Gap and App Gap Proper. There is a descent in between the two. I felt darn good on Baby Gap considering I had nearly 5 hours of saddle time.We were a group of 6 at that point and climbed at a pace that felt like it was right around my threshold. On the lower parts of Baby Gap I set the pace but I started to fade quickly on the top half and got a little gapped. I think Landen was gradually increasing the pace and he rode away from us once again.That allowed me to catch back on the group before the downhill section where we soft pedaled. I rode hard until the top parts of App Gap Proper where it got steep again. This is where I really started to have the power sucked out of me for the day.

Alex wasn’t feeling well on App Gap and had to abandon. This put our group down to 5.

It was getting really hot at this point, mid 80’s, 50% RH, and a brutally hot sun. I felt like I was on a frying pan on the top parts of App Gap. It was OK though because I was pretty sure I would finish the ride at this point. I was tired but still had a little gas left.

One of our group members pulled a Sylvain Chavanel move on the descent and tried to go it alone. Brave soul.When we got to Rt 100 again we could see him dangling out there about a minute ahead, but there was a wicked headwind and he eventually came back. The cracks on this road were also pretty bad.Seems like they get worse every year. I’ll be nervous running my carbon wheels here come GMSR.

Roxbury Gap was the only one of the 6 gaps I’d never seen before. The others I had ridden or at least driven. The lower part of Roxbury goes up the new GMSR TT course so I was familiar with that. We rode a pace that was either hard tempo or threshold for me.Once again I detached from our group not long after making the right hand turn to the upper half of the climb. I was obviously the weakest of our remaining 5.This was actually a pretty good point to be the weakest guy because it meant I’d get a ride to the final gap after we regrouped.

I plugged away really slowly on the top parts of this one and again had to make slalom turns to get to the top. I was shattered. No cramping, and I’m not even sure it was a true bonk. My legs just couldn’t press on the pedals very hard. I think it was more just frustrating than it was painful. I also stopped to try and have a natural break but was too bloated.

My group had waited for me at the top of Roxbury which was a huge relief. For a while there I got worried that I’d be so far behind that they’d leave. Once again I topped off my bottles, reloaded on food, and set off on the descent. Unlike most of the other descents though, this one was no fun. The road had such bad washboard bumps that it was super painful for your hands.

The haul on Rt12 south was very long but we were crushing it. When we were on 100S it was obviously a nasty headwind and we weren’t even going 20mph. Somehow we were holding closer to 22mph on 12. We made a quick stop at a market where I had a cookie, Coke, and Starburst candy. I think I was lacking sugar, and I definitely benefited from the caffeine. I just need enough to get to the top of the next gap.

On the very bottom of Rochester Gap I said goodbye to my group and rode at my own extremely easy pace after a successful natural break. Like the other gaps, I knew that this one was way steeper near the top so I wanted to pace myself accordingly. I also tried to avoid doing the slalom turns as much as possible, and for the most part, I didn’t need to.

Landen was waiting for me at the tight right-hand turn near the top where many of the trees go away. He had ridden hard to that point and was cramping badly. He knew I was shattered and figured we might as well finish up together.

It was so hot by this point that I was eyeballing tree shade up the road (which there was very little of) and counting down the seconds until I got there. Any time out of the sun was helpful. We decided that this was one of the very few times where it would be OK to ride without a helmet and we went bare-head the rest of the way to the top.What a difference that makes when you’re climbing at 4mph in the scorching hot sun.

But we were done! I was euphoric. The Rochester descent was great, and we took turns pulling back down Rt100 to Pittsfield. Somehow we still had the legs to keep the pace around 20mph and it went by fast. Flat roads are so much easier than the gaps. I stopped the computer at 150.1 miles, 9:02 ride time, and almost exactly 10 hours total elapsed time. Faster than I expected to go.

So I made it. My legs are toast but in a good way. I was worried that my knees would take a beating by doing this but so far they feel fine. That’s a huge relief. I did 1.5 or 2 hours of snail’s pace riding on Sunday and will do more of the same on Monday. Possibly on Tuesday I will be able to ride hard again, but it may not be until Wednesday. Hopefully this will make me a bunch stronger but if not, I still had a darn good time.

I did ride with a camera and got some pictures but it fell apart in my back pocket and needs a little repair. Hopefully I can add some pictures soon. Thanks for reading.

How's it going?!

They say a picture's worth a thousand words. How about a graph?

Attleboro Criterium, cat3/4

Attleboro is a great race to follow up Longsjo with. The course isn’t very difficult but its unique 1km layout keeps things interesting. I can hop in the race after a week off the bike and have a good time. It’s also close to Boston so I don’t need to dedicate the whole weekend to it. Win!

Ken and I drove down together in plenty of time for the 3 race. He was racing the 4 race which was scheduled for immediately after the 3’s. The p123’s were racing when we got there and it was scorching hot. Humidity was the real killer. Big Jim had a heat stroke and was taken away on a stretcher.

Shortly before we went off the sky turned black and we had thunder and lightning and a whole lot of rain. Our 3 race was combined with the 4’s. Sweet! I went from having no teammates to an out of uniform ally.

Being a combined field I thought there was a good chance that some sort of split or break could sneak away pretty early on. There were 26x 3’s, and 40x 4’s. As usual a lot of people lined up earlier than I wanted so I ended up on the back row. I wanted to be at the front for the first few laps. Sprinter Della Casa has a sweet ninja move where you line up 10 or 20 feet off the back, then watch for people to clip in quickly and move up with them. Boy that worked well. The inside lane moved up like a rocket so I followed it and was in ~20^th by turn 2.

Glowa (Svelte) seemed possessed to make a break work from the gun. It was tiring just watching him go. He hung out there about 5 or 10 seconds up the road for much of the first half of the race. I think he might have traded break mates a few times but it stayed under control. Threshold was keeping the pace relatively steady and Green Line was driving it for the primes.

We cornered very timidly for the first 10 laps or so. The pavement was soaked and there were plenty of cracks and potholes to make for a rough transition around the corners. Our cornering speed picked up as we started getting more confident and then the crashing started. I cannot even believe how many crashes there were, especially on turn 2. People weren’t hitting each other or anything, just losing traction mid-turn and going down. I got to see several of these crashes up close and couldn’t tell for the life of me what was causing them. Braking mid turn? Bad tires? Cracks in the pavement? There was an annoyingly high amount of dive bombing going on but I don’t think that was the cause.

Whatever the cause, I started racing like a girly man. I’m still hurting from my 2 crashes at Longsjo and really didn’t want to crash again. I was cornering like a moron and before long I was tailgunning. 20 feet off the back seemed like the best place to be. I thought it was OK for a little while because Threshold seemed content to let the break dangle just up the road.

Sometime shortly after the mid-way prime everything came back together. Then a group of 5 including GLV, Threshold, Fortini, and 2 others got a gap. It wasn’t huge, but I freaked. With 40 racers left in the field, GLV and Threshold must’ve accounted for 10 of them. Also, the race was being scored as separate 3 and 4 races which made for an unusual racing dynamic. It was unclear if this break contained any cat4’s, but if it didn’t, what incentive did the 4’s have to chase? There would be no one left to chase it down.

Glowa was still in the field and I was relieved at first when I realized that. He was dominant in the first half of the race and would probably make for good help in the chase. But he attacked in a bridge attempt (which caused a lot of panic) and hit the deck on some of the turn 2 wet pavement. Darn.

I went to the front to see if I could pull things back some and maybe encourage some chasing. I didn’t think I could bridge it. At first I could see the break going into turn 2 as we came up the little riser. Despite some tiring efforts, the gap didn’t seem to budge. The break must’ve been flying.

I think the wet corners may have slowed the chase a little. It was at least a thousand times nicer cornering in the front and not having to worry about braking or dive bombing or any of that foolishness. The trouble was that we would try and keep the pace up through the corners but gaps would open and we would slow down. No good.

Near the end of the race I lost all sense of time. I got into a rhythm of pull, recover, pull , recover and stopped paying attention to lap cards. After pulling off the front one lap I was gasping for air when I heard it announced that we had 3 to go. Because I’m really good at math I thought gee, it’s like 1km per lap, which means we have like 3 or 4 minutes left! I gotta recover!

So I sit in for a lap and lose all sorts of positions. Only like half the starters were still with us and with 2 to go I was on the very back. Geez. I was able to move up to mid way in the group on the little riser but I was hurting.

The bell rings and we’re at 1 to go. I’m half way back on the inside lane looking for an opportunity to move up again on the riser. Ken (Comp Racing) attacks, and everyone responds because it’s the last lap. The pace is too fast and I can’t go anywhere.

We were fortunate that the pavement dried up a lot in the last couple of laps. We went around the corners at good speed with minimal braking for a change. I think Ken may have gotten a gap coming out of turn 2 because I didn’t notice anyone off the front on turn 1. He corners well.

I thought about trying to advance coming down the hill but we were strung out and I was way too far back to get even into the top 10. I also didn’t want to risk dive bombing turn 3 at speeds approaching 40. I saw Ken come around the corner first with a good 30m gap.

Turns out we hit the turn too fast as it was and there was more crashing including the guy directly in front of me. I forget if he washed out or bumped someone else because all the crashes have blurred together for me. I just remember having to turn very tight and that my front tire was about an inch from his head. Yikes.

That crash basically split the bunch in two and I sprinted against some other guy, just off the back of the lead group of ~10. Ken held on to his flyer move to take 5^th overall and 2^nd for the cat4s. Apparently someone in the break crashed out during a last lap attack so only 4 people finished up the road, one of which was a 4. I finished 10/26 for the 3’s.

Fitchburg Longsjo Classic, cat 3

Ah Longsjo, the Tour de France of New England. With few exceptions, you can count on the top contenders within your category being present, making it a must-do race. What better way to measure your fitness than in a four-day stage race that has a little something for everyone?

This year’s format went Fitchburg State College Circuit Race, Wachusett Road Race, South St TT, and ended with the downtown criterium as usual. It’s different putting the TT on day 3 because the GC is a big mystery. Like 2009, the road race did not end on top of Wachusett, but instead in Princeton Center. I imagine the pure climbers weren’t a very big fan of this. The TT was again on the new fast and flat course where aerodynamics play a huge role. Certainly not a pure strong man’s TT, but personally I like the idea of having a fast man’s race. If you race bikes you should be able to go fast. If you’re strong but can’t go fast, what’s the point of being strong?

Keith signed up last minute, actually after last minute, so I had one teammate for the race. We were both in the same position, sort of lost in the midst of the season without any specific goals for the race. In our pre-race “meeting” we agreed to have no pre-race plan. Sa-weet!

Circuit Race

A ~3-mile loop with the finish line sitting atop a wall. The rest of the course is generally flat or slightly downhill which makes for very high average speeds. Cat 3’s did 9 laps, with points competition sprints on 8,6,4, and 2 to go. That means we were sprinting on lap 1. The wall is pretty short, less than a 1 minute effort, and I generally consider it to be a decent course for me.

Keith and I got right to the front on lap 1. With less than a kilometer before the turn into the wall we were side by side, and I asked Keith if he wanted a leadout. He said sure, so I went to the front and drilled it around the corner and up the first little kicker. I expected someone to have come around me by that point, but it wasn’t until I eased off half way up that anyone did. Unfortunately it wasn’t Keith. I should have paid better attention to who had my wheel. About 5 seconds later the eventual points competition leader, Luke Fortini, came by, and he was reeling in the first guy fast. I wasn’t really interested in the points competition so I didn’t contest it. One more person came by me and I ended up fourth, one place out of the points. Pretty cool for a leadout (albeit a failed one).

That little effort gave me some confidence. I’m sure I wasn’t the strongest person there for the uphill sprint, but I thought I could get a good result with smart positioning and confident cornering. For the remainder of the race I practiced different lines going into the wall and tried to conserve energy.

Fastforward to 2 to go and all heck broke loose. Going through the woods I heard the sound of bikes on pavement. I was happy to be in front of it. There’s something about a crash though that makes everyone nervous and twitchy. Just after that we made the tight turn onto John Fitch Highway and we were lucky not to crash again there. Too much pedaling into the turn followed by hard braking resulted in some creative cornering.

Per usual we sprinted out of the turn and eased off on the downhill. My calf was showing the beginning signs of cramping, so I stood up to stretch it before it became a problem. Just as I did, there was slowing in front of me and before I knew it my front wheel was crossed up. It wasn’t ridiculously overlapped, more just a crossing of tires, but I was knocked way off balance. My weight was shifted way to the right as my tire broke free and I shot to the right side of the peloton. I don’t remember exactly what happened next, but there was an extended period of time where I thought I was going down. I failed to regain my balance I bounced off of at least one other rider. Before I knew it I sideswiped the curb and I fell beautifully onto a soft patch of grass. My ankle hurt like heck and I had a minor amount of rash but I was OK. Quickly checked my bike and started chasing like crazy.

I finished the race about 3 minutes down and out of the GC picture. Keith finished within the lead group so he was our GC man.

My handlebar tape got pretty ripped in the crash. I had just ordered parts to do new bars, cables/housing, and tape so that night I swapped it over. In the future I need to avoid doing this much mechanic work mid-stage race. Being on my feet all evening was not good for recovery.

Road Race

Waking up Saturday morning was brutal. We had a 9AM start, which meant the alarm went off well before 7. When I rolled out of bed my whole body hurt and felt whiplashed, and my legs were especially tight.

The road race is 6 brutal laps around Princeton. The wall itself that leads into Princeton isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but the terrain around it makes it especially tough. A series of three little rollers, with a pitch that probably does exceed 5%, precede the wall. Another steep kicker comes right after the turn in Princeton that is followed by a false flat through the feed zone. All in all it’s one hard effort that’s a lot longer than you might expect.

There was no way I was surviving this race and it really didn’t matter because I was already toast on the GC. My plan was simple: suicide attack when the opportunity arises. Maybe the peloton would let me get away because there’s a long way to go in the stage race. Maybe I would get a few points in the points competition. It was the only sensible plan!

I lined up in sort of the middle, so not that close to the front. Somehow I found myself on the front of the pack in the first mile or so. And wouldn’t you know it, Keith was right there too. There road is pretty narrow for 80 or 90 racers, so it’s easy to be boxed out of the front. I looked around for the green jersey thinking that would be one person that might be interested in early breaks, but he was nowhere to be found. Perfect! Maybe I would be able to get away solo. I turned to Keith, confirmed that we weren’t neutral still, and said cya later as I went on the attack.

For the first minute or two I didn’t look back, just go, go, go. When I finally did, I was slightly surprised to see someone from CLR on my wheel. I hadn’t heard anyone there. Anyone at the front of the field would have known I was attacking after my little conversation with Keith, so it wasn’t that much of a surprise. The field was nowhere in sight. Surely Keith was trying to slow things down.

Boy did he pull through hard. It occurred to me that I had buried myself on a downhill and that it was probably much easier to sit in. We traded a few pulls, like two, before I was skipping pulls. Geez was I smoked. Maybe he understood because he went into a TT position when I didn’t pull through and set a nice tempo. The field seemed to be well out of sight already so I was happy to fall into a more sustainable pace (not that I had a choice).

After another pull or two we made the right turn onto 31 and I couldn’t hold his pace on the first of the rollers. A CLNoonan rider passed me as I went backwards. Shortly later a strung out field ate me up.

What better excuse to get dropped on the first hill than say you got eaten up by a break just before? Sure enough I was off the back around the time we made the turn through Princeton. Oh well, I didn’t really feel like “racing” this race anyways.

Finishing the race at my own pace was a lot harder than I expected. I was so toast by the last lap. I drank 5 bottles of Gatorade and took 4 neutral water feeds. My legs still cramped up so badly I could barely pedal. I lost over 10 minutes to the winner on the last lap and barely finished within the time cut. Ouch!

I wish I could have been there to help Keith who absolutely crushed this race of attrition and scored a 6^th place finish in what had to have been a furious uphill sprint. I was psyched that we had a GC guy. Unfortunately time trialing might be his weakest ability.

Time Trial

I was so destroyed after the road race I couldn’t even think of racing the time trial even thought it was a fast 9-mile rolling course much like the CBTT. It felt like I had hopped in the race after months of being off the bike. Everything hurt. Obviously my legs, but my entire upper body was as tight as could be. My guts also felt like I was going to be sick. I also had a splitting headache. I hadn’t felt this badly in a long long time.

Not really by choice, I did everything you’re supposed to do for recovery. Basically I put on my compression stalking, passed out, woke up to eat, and passed out again. Wowy tired.

12 hours of good sleep can do a lot for you though. I still didn’t feel great, but I felt at least a thousand times better in the morning. My time trial wasn’t until the afternoon so I picked up some lattes from Deisel Café and came back to watch the tour in the dark. Every hour or so I had another bowl of Corn Flakes. It was awesome and I actually felt kinda good when I left for the TT.

I got there early so I could see some of the pros. Time trial setups are so cool. In stage races you get such a wide variety of setups too. As a general observation, it seemed like a lot of people must have had equipment on loan or something. Either that or the wheel rentals business is booming. Seemed like everyone had a disc or at least some sort of deep wheel profile. I also liked the road bikes that had been converted to TT bikes with bullhorns and index shifters. Some serious preparation time went into this race.

Keith got a sweet Fuji C-7 on loan from a teammate that had raced the master’s category. Extremely generous and also very cool considering he was making a run at the GC. We did our best to get him fit in the parking lot but there were only so many changes we could make. The bike was set up just a little too relaxed for my likings. The handlebars needed to go down another inch or so and the elbows needed to come in. Considering it was on loan, we limited the changes to only the saddle. I’m sure it was still a huge help.

As for myself, Tim hooked me up with a sweet sweet HED Stringer disc and a Zipp 1080 on top of it. Normally I would just run my disc cover over my PowerTap wheel and my Edge 1.68 front. Seeing as my PT isn’t working, yet again, I opted for his wheels. Given my recent internal cable routing issue I was a little nervous at first about the shifting on a different cassette, but it worked out OK.

The only other change I made from my 6/30 CBTT setup was that I packed a bag of ice in my skinsuit. It was in the upper 80’s and all I had was a L/S skinsuit. I took the bladder out of my camelback, filled it with ice, then dropped it in the back. No straps or anything, just the tightness of the skinsuit to hold it in place. It was a little lumpy with some of the plastic attachments which might have caused additional drag, but it also seemed to line up with my helmet better. Who knows without a power meter.

I was the third cat3 to go seeing as I was 3^rd to last in the GC. My poor 30 second man had no aero gear and I passed him by the SRAM tent maybe 2 or 3 miles in. Coming down the long downhill leading into the causeway I could see my 1 minute man. I didn’t have a CPU so I don’t know how fast I was going, but I was turning the 53x11 at a good clip so it wasn’t too slow. Again approaching the turnaround I was in the 53x11 and I backed off big time knowing that it would be a grind coming back.

Around the turn turnaround cone I was super conservative. I wonder how much time you can make up or lose there? I sprinted back up to speed and caught my 1 minute man shortly after.

After that I was at the front of the 3’s and had a motorcycle escort in front of me. That made for a good carrot as I kept trying to get in its slipstream. Much to my dismay, the official didn’t let that happen.

The wind was out of the west and the hill after the causeway felt easy. It wasn’t a true tailwind but it did seem to help here. I didn’t need to go any higher than the 53x17 or 19.

I was tired at the finish but didn’t blow up or anything and had enough gas left to sprint up the final kicker to the finish line. It certainly wasn’t an earth shattering effort or anything but OK for a TT Probably on par with the 22:48 CBTT effort I did on 6/30. If I had to guess I’d say it was around 3.5 W/kg.

I had one little issue with the sweet disc wheel. When I sprinted out of the start it shifted slightly in the dropouts. The wide C-2 profile rubbed ever so slightly against my chainstays. Throughout the race I thought I had a brake pad rubbing.

My finishing time was 20:56 which put me in 38^th place at +1:56 and right in the thick of things for the 3’s. A lot of 3’s finished around that time. Just 20 seconds faster would have put me in 23^rd. Another minute would have bagged a top 10. All things considered I was pretty pleased with that.

Keith did a 21:24 which really shattered his GC hopes, dropping him all the way down to 30^th or something. The crit was going to be purely for a stage result.

Criterium

I felt good Monday morning. I think it really helps that I can’t seem to TT at much better than 90 or 95% of lactic threshold power. 20 minutes at that kind of an effort is almost like doing openers. The day after a TT always seems to be a good workout.

But geez almighty was it hot out on Monday. We parked on this garage with white pavement and I was absolutely boiling before I finished kitting up. I had planned on riding the trainer for warmup but just kitting up was enough for me. I couldn’t take it.

My plan was simply to sit in and sprint for the finish. The course has two long straightaways with a 180 degree turn 1, and two back to back 90 degree turns 3 and 4. It’s a little over 200m sort of false flat uphill on the finishing straight. It’s rare that breakaways succeed on this course.

During the early laps I was sitting in the first third or so, but by mid race I was more in the back third. I wanted to race the second half in the front in case anything happened. Trouble was its harder racing in the back on this course. It’s much smoother and easier at the front. When we got to the half way point I was losing interest in moving up. It didn’t help that it was over 90F.

Luckily I did carry a water bottle for cooling and pouring that over my head and back made all the difference. It still wasn’t easy to move to the front. We were strung out for several laps around the mid point of the race. It wasn’t until 7 or 8 to go that we eased off enough that I could move up significantly without crushing myself.

Once in the top 20 my only job was to stay there. Keith was in there too. I started feeling stronger and stronger as riding at the front was noticeably easier.

With 4 to go our motorbike neutralized and stopped us completely. Not for too long, but for at least a minute I think. I was pretty frustrated by that because I was being swarmed after I had just made a good move to get to the front. Oh well though. I’m sure the officials had a good reason for stopping us and it was a safety first deal.

So we had a fresh start with 3 miles to go in the Longsjo Stage Race. Picture 80 rested dudes chomping at the bit with about 7 minutes to race.

Terrifying.

Just half a lap after the restart we were coming down the back downhill straightaway and everyone felt good and was trying to move up. I was forced into the far right lane which was not where I wanted to be. In fact, the only place I would have been OK with was on the front. Even being on the inside lane you’d likely end up getting dive bombed.

And then, just as I was worrying about how sketchy the upcoming turn would be, the guy 2 wheels in front of me went sideways. I haven’t a clue what happened. We were flying, and the guy in front of me ran into him and went over the handlebars. For a split second I thought about bunny hopping as going left or right or slow down didn’t seem to be an option. I didn’t have a prayer though and I added to the pile. Having just crashed on Friday I was well rehearsed and able to do a tuck and roll that would make Jet Li proud, landing on my left lat. After rolling to a stop I curled into a ball and hoped no one would hit me and luckily no one did.

Once again I got up, quickly inspected my bike, and finished the race. We were only 3 laps to go at that point and I couldn’t get a free lap. Huge bummer.

Keith stayed to the front and out of trouble and finished respectably in the top 20.

Summary

Another Longsjo in the books for me although it was certainly not what I had in mind. I guess some races are just not meant to be. I’m still a little in shock about crashing twice. The last time I’d crashed was April 2008. I’m lucky to just have general soreness with some scrapes and cuts. I’m also lucky that my bike had next to no damage. Apparently Specialized Tarmacs are really good at crashing.

Time to rest up and try again.

On the Eve of Longsjo

What a great week this is in New England for bike racing. The only times I ride my bike is in a race or to get coffee. How great is that? If the races were longer you might call that building fitness, but these races are all short so it’s really more of a peak. On second thought, forget those terms, how about we just call it action-packed fun week?

Longsjo is tomorrow and I am excited. I didn’t really care for this race back in 2008 (GASP, I SAID IT) but then they did away with the TT that no one could possibly like, as well as the grind to the top of Wawa. Those were my 2 least favorite parts of the race. Now we have a true flat TT and sort of an Ardennes Classics style road race. Much better!

I promised more race reports this week with the whole 7 races in 9 days thing, but the problem with that is I’m always racing or working. Tuesday was Exeter Criterium and Wednesday was the CBTT, and for various reasons I don’t have a whole lot of details about them, making this easy, so let’s do it.

Exeter Criterium Pro/Am

Ever have one of those races where nothing goes right? That’s how this one will go down in the books for me, and here’s why:

1) 1) Sitting in heavy 128 traffic worrying about missing your start causes stress

2) 2) I forgot to bring water with me, but luckily internet celebrity Dave bailed me out

3) 3) I didn’t eat enough and got hungry, but luckily we parked next to a sweet bakery

4) 4) I forgot to bring sunglasses and gloves

5) 5) Landen pointed out that I had excessive stubble on my legs

6) 6) My metal chainstay protector fell off during warmup and got jammed in my chainring/chain

7) 7) Lining up at the back of a pro/am crit is bad for your confidence

8) 8) Getting caught behind a crash on lap 3 and having to chase back on is tiring

9) 9) Could more people have possibly flatted in front of me? (as least I didn’t flat)

10 10) I’m not strong enough to close gaps over and over and over

And that guy on the front wearing an iamtedking jersey was doing 30mph all day long I got dropped after about 20 minutes. I was mad because I felt like I should have been able to hang. This stupid stuff got me all flustered and I started riding like a triathlete in a cat5 crit. Sprinting out of turns way longer than I should be and then braking because I overdid it, over and over. So much wasted energy, so stupid. I deserved to be shelled. It was a good experience though.

Anyways, back to my comfort zone…

Charlie Baker Time Trial

It was certainly debatable whether or not it was smart to do the CBTT on Wednesday with Longsjo starting on Friday. From a training stress point of view it doesn’t seem bad to me. My total ride time was a whopping 35 minutes. Sure, 23 minutes of that is at threshold, but something about the TT bike never really feels very draining. It might just be a mental thing due to the fact that I can’t seem to TT at anything more than hard tempo power. During the effort it hurts, but it’s a weird hurt and I usually feel fine about an hour later. I don’t think doing the CBTT will cost me anything at Longsjo, and it was nice to have a final tune up, but I might have to reevaluate this statement next Tuesday.

In each of the 3 previous CBTTs I’ve done this year I’ve gotten slower and slower. I set my PR on a fast night but with record low watts. That night was the maiden voyage for my TT bike and my aerobars slipped forward. That slippage probably contributed to the low watts. However, I also think it contributed to the fast time by inadvertently increasing my aeroness.

Last week I moved my saddle setback much closer to my road position and found that to be much more comfortable. I didn’t have power data but I was slow that night. My handlebars were also higher.

This week I went the opposite direction. I kept my saddle in the near-road position (eyeballing it of course) but I lowered my handlebars to about 1 click below where I had them on the first night. I was worried this would pinch off my hip angle but it felt fine rolling around. Better than a stupid steep saddle position for sure.

I’m beginning to think your hip angle is something that only tri geeks and TT specialists should worry about. I’m not saying that they’re wrong, but there’s definitely this whole adaptation thing you need to consider. There seems to be very little info out there on how to approach your TT fit if you’re not riding the TT bike a lot. It might be one of those things that varies a lot from person to person but for me, I need my saddle position close to my road bike (~7.5cm setback). Otherwise I’m working all the wrong muscles, sort of like a less extreme version of running.

Once again I had no power data. I’ve barely been riding with my Powertap lately since I don’t have one on my race wheels and I forgot to fix it after last week’s problem. This week it was just 0 watts from the start, so I didn’t get fooled or even have to worry about it. I just paced myself by feel and speed. The downside is that I can’t evaluate my aeroness.

It was a windy night. Talking about wind on any previous night this year seemed totally insignificant compared to this week. But it was out of the west, so lots of crosswinds going to Carlisle and on Monument St and a fabulous tailwind on 225. My CBTT model suggests this would only be 5 seconds slower relative to a perfectly calm night. If the same wind was out of the east (instead of the west), it would be a whopping 36 seconds slower. Don’t expect fast times on nights where the wind is out of the east.

I got to the Carisle Rotary in 10:07, which is the third time this year that’s been my split. Coming down 225 was incredible. I was barely pedaling down that hill and doing over 35mph. Hooray tailwind.

No matter what, I always always always blow up on Monument Road. Tonight I tried something a bit different. Instead of trying to power over the rollers, especially the little hill by the town line, I kept a much more steady power output. I did slow down noticeably more, like 16.6mph by the town line, but I think it was better. It wasn’t any slower (speed-wise, not power-wise) and I felt much less pain. Win win! I felt at least 10x better going over the top of the last hill.

My official finish time was 22:48. My computer had me at 22:35 and I have no idea why that’s so far off. Either way, I figure 22:48 is 16 seconds faster than my 22:48 on May 26 if you normalize the weather conditions. I’m pretty happy with this because it was actually a somewhat enjoyable TT. No funny pains or anything like that. Heck, I even forgot to use chamois cream! Hopefully I can find one more gear for a special effort at Longsjo.