Well, the last weekend was probably the last collegiate weekend I'll ever get to race, which was surprisingly sad.

FIrst up was the TTT.

I was worried about this one, because I wasn't permitted to bring my TT bike. We were fortunate enough to have team vans from Penn State to drive (wow! Who would've thought?), but this meant that space was tight. For instance, we had to get 8-9 bikes in the back of our van, which was difficult, to say the least. Long and short was that I had to do this TTT on my road bike, with no clip on aero bars, in my road position. On the plus side, we had Griffen Weiler, notable triathlete.

Things were looking good when Vermont (the team that finished one second behind John Gleaves and myself at Beanpot) showed up late to their start, and lost about 45 seconds off the start line. We also had a great rabbit to chase, since they ended up only starting 15 seconds in front of us (which made for a rather hectic start).

I felt so-so during this one, but was still able to put in some big-ish pulls. At the end, John Gleaves rockets up the last hill, and only I'm able to follow. He gets us to the top, and I wait for a second for Griffen to catch back on, then blow myself up so that John and Griffen can stop the clock for us. We end up winning by a comfortable margin - I'm thrilled that we were able to win all the TTTs. This was my main goal for the year, so I was already happy with the weekend.

Crit - really fun, broke away early, shut it down late, John wins, Slim's a terrible sport

RR - I was just beat for this race. I’m not sure why I was so tired, but I was exhausted. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stick with this race long term, so I just sat in. Eventually, the pace was so slow I just attacked for fun to try to get the speed up a little bit (we were going about 15 mph on even ground).


More to come here...

Well, I decided to go to Beanpot after all. It's an 8 hour drive, but since this is was my one and only chance to do the race, I really felt like I should suck it up and make the drive anyway.

And I'm glad I did.

First event - TTT. The forecast was for a high of 48 (something like 32 in the morning) and raining (70% chance). What we got instead was 65 degree weather, and enough sun that I heard multiple people tell Chris Ruhl that he was going to get a nasty sunburn no matter how much sunscreen he put on.

The TTT went okay. We dropped off two guys in the first 2 miles, but John Gleaves and I were able to power home. Thankfully, he was feeling good, because I wasn't able to pull much more than 1/2 the time, with the way I was feeling. Fortunately, we ended up winning, but only by .7 seconds. This has me concerned, because their C sandbagger, Slim, is probably going to get a beatdown with the mandatory upgrade bat, which will speed up their TTT. But we've got Griffin Weiler coming to Easterns. He's got a full aero rig, and has been consistently between myself and Ryan in the ITTs, which seems to suggest that he'll add some serious horsepower to the team. I really want a TTT win at Easterns.

And I found out that Rachel Sutton rules. Since the directions to each and every Beanpot race were truly, awfully, terrible, she got lost. Jessica Kutz, who was slated to race in the Women's B race, looked sure not to arrive on time. As Rachel finally found the race parking lot, she noticed the Women's B field was lining up to start. Just as it looked like Jessica would have to sit this one out (and miss one of only two races that she drove 16 hours for, due to terrible directions), Rachel pulls her car in front of the field, and parks it as Jessica unloads her bike, gets her gear on, etc. Even though the race officials were yelling at her, Rachel stood her ground, got Jessica in the race, and got out of the way. What a champ. Plus, Jess went on to get 2nd in that race. Bravo.

As far as our road race, I was feeling pretty tired from our two man TTT. John apparently was as well, since he dropped off after a couple laps of the road race. I was fortunate enough to chase back on, when I promptly attacked. It was my first legitimate breakaway of the year, and I thought it had a great chance of succeeding. It came back in 3/4 of a lap though, and I'm not sure why. I'm a little worried that it came back so quickly. I heard UVM worked as a team to pull us back, which would explain it, I suppose, except that John and I held the UVM team off in the TTT, and there were 4 in the break. Perhaps I was just tired.

In any event, I didn't have a lot left after the TTT and my breakaway, so I just sat in the back of the field as the sprint started. I got a front row seat to a spectacular crash tha ballooned out from one side of the road to the other. After waiting on it, I decided to start a sprint anyway, and I ended up 5th with not a lot of effort. Maybe everyone was just tired. The sad thing is that I probably could've gone harder in the sprint, I just didn't think I was even in it.

The sad thing was that one of our D riders, Felix, managed to crash pretty badly in the road race. His helmet was completely, and utterly destroyed. He got pretty banged up, which everyone was sad to see. He's consistently enthusiastic about everyone's races, and we'll miss having him around at Easterns.

Check out the helmet. Ouch


(picture courtesy of Matt Gross)

The crit the next day was tailored for me to do poorly. Extremely technical, 6 turn course with very rough pavement in the only places you can put the power down. It was all about position, which is the worst thing for me. Immediately, there was about a 40 second gap to the field, which I spent the first 15 of 35 laps closing. When I finally got it closed down, I was so tired that I almost pulled myself out of the race. But I stuck in there, and managed a 16th, 1 placing out of points. Oh well. This was probably the hardest crit I've ever done. I'm sure it was easier for folks near the front, but in the back, it sucked big time.

Unfortunately, the winner also took down my teammate, Chris DeCarlo, who suffered a bit of road rash and some severe annoyance at being taken out by a senseless move. He's okay, but the crash really disrupted his ability to stay in the finale, I think.

I went and did the SVVC Time Trial today - it went okay, as I was able to average 340 watts, with a time somewhere close-ish to 22:49 (no official timer this week). After averaging 399 on the uphill TT at Army for 10 minutes, I'm wondering why my 20 minute power is so low. Just not excited enough about the race?

I'm a little confused here. Perhaps my power meter was malfunctioning at Army?

In any event, the SVVC TT is a great time - very flat, fun, and fast. I look forward to these every month.

Army is usually a big hill-fest for the whole weekend, which only suits me so well. Fortunately, the hugest hills were replaced this year, which helped a great deal.

Our TTT went quite well - I felt very strong, and pulled for around 75% of the time. This got a bit tiring, since it was significantly longer and hillier than the TTTs we usually do (15+ miles on a very hilly course). John and Chris were able to hang in, and we managed to take first by around 21 seconds. This was extremely exciting to me - if we're able to work together more smoothly as a team, we should be able to knock quite a bit of time off of these. I'd really like to win each and every TTT we enter, which just means Beanpot and Easterns.

Circuit race was terrible pavement, and went only okay (12th). I was still pretty tired from the long TTT, so I mostly just sat in. Chris DeCarlo did great, however, and managed to pull out a 2nd place. He seems to enjoy the uphill bunch gallops, as he tied for 4th in the crit on Sunday.

On Sunday, we had an uphill ITT. This should be terrible for me, but I love solo TT efforts, so I cranked as hard as I could. I ended up setting a 10 minute wattage record at 399 (good for me), and a 4th place in Men's B. Not terrible, but I definitely could've gone faster if I hadn't been trying to keep my watts down and had just gone off of perceived effort. Watching wattage keeps me from blowing up early, however, which I appreciate. Additionally, Chris got 6th, and Ryan 9th, so we scored a fair amount of points.

Finally, there was the crit. After 3 events, I was a bit tired and just sat in. Which is too bad, because I felt okay. I just kept getting bored with going round and round, and couldn't motivate myself to move up. This is a new record for lowest average wattage for me. Teh boring, for sure.

Now I can finally get geared up for the SVVC and Central Penn time trials each month...

I cannot decide whether or not to go to Boston's ECCC race, Beanpot. I've never been, and it sounds awesome, but it's an 8 hour drive each way.

The speed ride today was more fun for me than usual. Joe Whitman had promised to win every sprint - of course, he showed up on a sweet chrome-looking moped; this cracked me up a bit.

This also meant that when Chris attacked the large group (20-25ish), he got to draft instead of going alone, and quickly opened up a big gap. Jim jumped on it quickly, and for whatever reason, I responded as well. It was sort of fun, riding with a rider obviously better than myself, and still taking pulls! Of course, once the road started uphill, Jim dropped me like a bad habit. In any event, I was able to stay in the front group of 3-4 riders throughout the ride. I took a few more pulls than last week (especially when the pace was hard), but I still have a long way to go to get where I want to be.

Last week, I was pretty tired for the Penn State weekend after a previous speed ride, so I bagged this speed ride about 70% of the way in, and rode home myself at a turn off point.

All in all, I had a good time, didn't totally burn myself out, and got to put in a harder single effort than I've done for a while. Wish I had had an 11t cog on though.

More details forthcoming, but in general:

1) The road race really sucked for me. Things at work have been extremely stressful (I'm quitting to get a job elsewhere), and that took its toll on my road race. I was exhausted, with terrible legs the whole time. It might have had something to do with the speed ride, but really it's more likely to be that I'm a big guy and not a great climber, I was stressed beyond belief (10 on a scale from 1 to 10), and I'm a terrible descender and expend a lot of energy to catch back on the bottom of descents. I was able to stay right by the front group through the first lap, but was continually chasing at 5-10 seconds back. Both guys I was chasing with got back on, but I lost contact on a descent. The second lap was ridiculously hard for me, and indicates that even if I had caught back on, I would've been too tired to do anything anyway.

2) The ITT was okay - I ended up pushing way, way too much power in the first minute (500 watt average), and then hurting for the next few minutes and only pulling 300 watts. I had a carbon front wheel but not carbon specific pads, which meant I was relying pretty much solely on my rear brake. Unfortunately, as I was going around the turn, my rear brake cable snapped, which cost me 4-5 seconds. This turned out to be significant, since I ended up in third place by 9 seconds (10 seconds off of first). I really wanted to win this, and I was definitely capable, but it just didn't work out. Oh well.

3) The crit went quite badly. I got a back row start again, which put me totally out of it from the gun. Game over. I wasn't feeling great anyway, but I definitely could've hung on for a top 10, I think. What a great course though! Technical, with fast sections, it ended up being quite a bit of fun.

Looking forward to more TT's this year though - I plan to do as many as possible while I'm still in State College.

Pictures here.