Well, this was at least a chance to redeem myself after Carnation. Since I just had a new baby, I’ll make this one short - I was demoralized by the course, and just didn’t feel super strong. My goal power was around 350W, and I only hit 335W. However, it’s better than the 324 last week. I widened my aero bars and was actually able to breathe, I just didn’t feel like I had strong legs.

Ended up 4th, which was pretty disappointing - 1 place out of “prizes”. Hopefully my form will start to come around this year...

Today I ended up doing the Volunteer Park Criterium - Jen hasn’t gone into the labor yet, and this was about 15 minutes away, so I figured I may as well go.

I showed up and registered, and overheard that the Cat 3’s were either full or going to be full. Super. I hate big fields. I got warmed up on the trainer, but someone went down in the Women’s race before ours, and they had to roll an ambulance to pick her up. By the time our race started, I was totally cold again.

The course is basically a long, sweeping right turn, followed by a slightly twisting downhill, uphill, and wide false flat finishing straight. The first few laps, I just tried to adjust to the really high speed on the downhills, lost a few spots, and went around some people blowing up. I had quite a bit of trouble moving up, since it was so fast and twisty. Basically, there wasn’t any pedalling on the turn, downhill, uphill (it was really short), and everyone went fast on the false flat.

With about 10 minutes to go, I managed to move from the back to chase down a break myself, and ended up off the front. That was fine, but when I came back to the field, someone else went, blew up, and I ended up sliding all the way to the back of the pack on their wheel. Whoops. I need to be more careful to maintain position near the front - this seems to be my biggest limiter right now. I didn’t feel very tired at any point really, I just didn’t totally commit to a big effort to move up the side of the field on the false flat.

Ended up mid pack in the sprint - I think the race was really over with about 2 laps to go - the top 5 at that point ended up top 5. I really need to work on positioning.

My power ended up being higher than I expected - something like 358 normalized power. I had forgotten was it was like to do a crit...

First time trial of the year. Also the first time I’ve ridden my TT bike this year. Probably should’ve adjusted to this a bit more before racing, but oh well.

On the drive over to Carnation, I noticed a number of cars with snow on their windshields. Seemed sort of odd, since it was raining, and about 37 degrees. Once I got over the mountain to Carnation, however, there was enough snow on the ground to make me pretty nervous driving. The race, of course, wasn’t going off with good coat of slush on the ground, so it ended up being delayed by an hour. Unfortunately, this meant I got about an hour and a half of warmup, which is a bit much for me. I was also the second person to go off - which also sucks.

Eventually, the race did start, I got lined up, got a decent start, then noticed my powermeter wasn’t reading anything. Unfortunately, when I switch from training to race wheels, my Edge 705 doesn’t switch powermeters, so pedaled at what I thought was about 80% of LT while I ran through the menus for about 30 seconds to pick up the new powermeter. Once it came on, I noticed that I was at about 380W, which was a lot more than I wanted to be at in the first 3 minutes. Weirdly, I just couldn’t make myself back off the throttle, and ended up going waaaay too hard for the first 5 minutes or so (I’ve consistently had a problem with this, especially running). I did catch my 30 second guy at about 5-10 minutes out, which meant that I had nothing else to chase for the whole race, especially since there wasn’t a 30 second guy behind me (Adam Kaufman, also on Recycled, started a minute back).

After I calmed down, I started to settle in and chew up road (literally - I really hope that was mud and not cowpies). It took me a bit to figure out not to ride in the standing water channels on the road, but once I did, the cold wasn’t bad at all. Ended up catching the only guy in front of me, not getting caught by anyone, but having way worse power than I was hoping for (I was at about 326, and I was hoping for 350 - that’s a really big gap). Not sure what the deal was - I wasn’t breathing hard at all, I just couldn’t push my heart rate up and my legs felt dead.

I did notice that after the race I had some of the worst asthma I’ve ever had (maybe from the cold) - I was a little worried that I wouldn’t make it back to the car, and I was having a really hard time getting a half breath in. It’s possible that didn’t help the TT, and may explain why I wasn’t breathing very hard (couldn’t!) - then again, maybe not.

All in all, pretty disappointing - I was hoping to really burn this one up, and I ended up limping in instead.

After yesterday’s race, I was expecting to be pretty tired for Tour de Dung #2. And I was.

Our team had about 9 guys at the race, so my plan was to sit in for the first couple of 6 laps, and then hope my legs came around a bit.

In short, I didn’t really factor into this race at all. Pretty disappointing, mostly because I wasn’t aggressive enough at the end (a break went that I could’ve covered, but didn’t), didn’t position myself well for the sprint, and didn’t really set myself up to put the hammer down on the field. Also a bit disappointing that I seemed to be a bit underpowered today, compared to guys like the FRM rider that pulled us back into the field.

My teammates did a great job today though - covered a lot of breaks, pulled back the main break of the day, and factored in nearly every move (except the winning one, sadly). I think we’ll be pretty strong for the year, we just have to get a bit smarter about strategy and not miss out on the bigger moves (maybe let some smaller, doomed ones go?).

If nothing else, the weather for this race was a LOT better than last week. Unfortunately, this means a lot more racers (I think about 75?). It was a very fast race for me - people were attacking pretty constantly. In the last few races, when I’ve been in difficulty, people have been falling off the pace. This was not the case this week though - I don’t know if that’s the size of the pack and the fact that the race is relatively easy terrain-wise.

In any event, I did a ton of work on laps 2,3, and 4 of the race - in lots of little attacks (that everyone chased down really, really quickly). One of my teammates got up the road for a little dig, but every break was getting chased down hard. I felt like we were going hard the whole time, which worried me a bit - I was really hoping to be significantly stronger than most of the field and earn an upgrade quickly, but that’s not how I felt today.

Unfortunately, in the finale, I lot my place in the front of the field, and got shuffled to the back. Somehow, a First Rate Mortgage guy got off the front of a really fast race and stayed away solo for the win. There were so many people, and the pace was so slow in the last lap that there was really no way to move up (5 across the road for the whole lap), and I wasn’t a factor in the sprint at all. Definitely disappointing.

Power file here.

On the drive down to Mason Lake, it was raining quite a bit, constantly. At about 40 degrees, I knew it wasn’t going to be a super-fun race. Plus, racing out here without teammates sort of sucks. Teams in the NW actually employ useful tactics, and being alone against a field composed of about 30% First Rate Mortgage riders is a pretty tough billing.

I was also trying out my new carbon wheels with Zipp brake pads. Unfortunately, I was having a few problems with them that distracted me for the whole race. First, the braking sort of sucked. Maybe this was just the downpour, but when I touched them lightly, they just made a small scraping sound and nothing happened. When I really locked them up, I got sort of halfway decent stopping power, but certainly not what I’m used to. Is this normal? I’d actually really like to know, and I don’t have much experience with it. Also, something was making noise in my wheels, even without pedaling. Pretty annoying. Finally, the powertap rear hub wasn’t working at all, so I got no useful power data, which is really a shame.

In any event, I was feeling pretty timid about my brakes, so I hung out at the back for the first 3 laps. Nothing really went, but I did lose feeling in my hands by the start of the second (of 5 laps). This became a problem around lap 4, when I stopped being able to reliably shift because my hands were so numb. This has never happened to me with 2009 Campag stuff, as the levers are very distinct (unlike Shimano) and easy to shift independently. I was pretty seriously considering pulling out because I was worried about frostbite after I hadn’t been able to feel anything in them for about an hour.

The last lap, I moved from the back to the front for a few miles. I didn’t mean to be at the front, but I wanted to move up, and there wasn’t a good spot to slot in out of the wind, so I soft pedaled on the front for a while. Eventually, some folks came around and I got to sit in again. With about 10 miles to go, I went sort of hard on a hill, and ended up with about a 20-30 second gap. Since there were no First Rate Mortgage guys with me, I sat up and waited. And waited. And waited. I was getting very seriously impatient with the race at this point (seriously bored, wet, numb hands). So I just put my head down and forged on for about 10-15 minutes. I thought there were only 4 miles left, and thought after a couple of miles that I might seriously hold them off. Unfortunately, there were about 7 miles to go, so I got caught with about 4 left. I moved myself back on to the front, and with a kilometer to go, someone got about a 40 meter gap. Since I was still feeling great (I’m pretty surprised about that, actually - a solo attack with a couple miles of recovery should have tired me out), I stupidly jumped on it. The guy I caught peeled off immediately, and I ended up leading out the field from 400-200 meters. At 200 to go, a bunch of people came around, and I ended up sprinting from the saddle for 8th. 400 meters is definitely too long for me in a sprint right now - I hope to improve that a great deal as the season goes on.

All in all, I was a bit mad at myself for being so stupid tactically - I was just so bored, felt pretty good, and just wanted to do anything to liven up the race and take my mind off of my freezing hands. I actually had to have someone else help me get my car unlocked, since I couldn’t work my hands. Warming up my hands after the race was one of the most painful things I’ve been through in the last couple years, oddly enough - 20 minutes of pretty intense pain. I won’t be wearing those gloves again below 50 degrees anytime soon.

After Mason Lake #1 looked to be a crash-fest (forecast was rainy, with winds > 25mph - turned out to be sunny and great), I drug myself out to Tour de Dung for my first Pacific NW race.

Turned out, Pacific NW courses tend to not have a lot of corners, which I really, really appreciate. The race was delayed for a bit due to snow, but by the time the race rolled around, the course was only a bit wet, and pretty warm.

I covered attacks for the first lap or so, and at some point in the second lap, a single guy from Lenovo got away. There were only about 35 people in the field, and between 12 and 14 of the riders in the field were from Wines of Washington. So when he got away with about 30-ish miles to go, everyone was sort of looking to them to chase. For some reason, they didn’t, at all. The Lenovo rider continued to gain time over the rest of the race, and the rest of the field just sat in and waited for the sprint.

At the end, Randy and I were at the back of the pack with 200m to go. Randy moved up along the gutter in a hurry, and we took 1st and 2nd in the field sprint (2nd and 3rd overall). In other words, Randy is fantastic moving up in a pack.

All in all, it ended up being an extremely easy race. I never really felt like I worked very hard at any point in the race - I really wish I had seen the Lenovo rider go so I could get in some hard miles out front with him.

The main theme of the morning of the Monroe Cyclocross race (before the race actually started) seemed to be that everyone really thought it was terribly cold. It was 39 degrees. As a comparison, State College was 16 degrees, with wind chill, the day before. It’s not even really winter there.

Seattle is awesome.

You know what else is awesome? Cyclocross. What a fun sport. You ride around in the mud, jump off, run, make crazy sharp turns, do nerve-racking (at least to me) downhills, and jump barriers. I love it. I wish I was better, but I love it.

Monroe (photos here) was no exception - it takes place at the local race track, which means there’s at least a bit of pavement. I was very excited about the course initially, since it looked like a long start on pavement, which would be wonderful for me. Unfortunately, it was just about 150m on pavement, then into a 180 degree, muddy, uphill u-turn. After the call-ups, I started in the third row (about 40% through the field). This would be okay, normally, except that in the 180 degree turn, someone in front of me unclipped on the uphill, which means I stalled out, and another 30% passed me. Then, in the infield, someone cut me off, bringing me to a brake-shuddering halt (and surprisingly pissing me off a great deal). This means that after the first half lap, I was in the last 10% of the field (which was sizable). In cyclocross, this means you’re out of the race.

I really wanted to get a good workout in and go fast though, so I put in as much effort as I could over laps 2 and 3, and managed to move up to 11th. 10th was a ways up the road, however, so I wasn’t able to make the catch in the last lap. Overall, I was sort of satisfied with my placing - I really think I could contend for the win with a decent start though, given how much ground I made up in a short time.


The course itself was really creative - there was a 180 degree banked turn, an uphill runup with a 2 foot ditch in front of it (that the old guys complained bitterly about jumping), and an off camber, 90 degree downhill turn that I thought I was going to eat dirt on every time. I was sort of proud of myself (sadly) for not running down it instead. Perhaps someday I’ll develop decent bike-handling skills.

The big improvement for me on the day was my ability to ride mud - I was able to hit some of the deep mud sections at speed without being totally terrified (70% terrified, maybe), and concentrated on keeping my weight back (thanks Randy!) and looking straight ahead, not down (thanks, Bill Strickland!). At least I’m making progress. I also figured out how to clip into the mud better, which I appreciated.

(me in the back, on the first lap)

I really enjoyed this race - sadly, it pushed my limits technically (though nearly everyone said it was a very non-technical course), but I had a great time. (Pictures here).

If I had been a little more gutsy at the start and gotten near the front, I think I could have been in contention for this one - I felt great, and there were some nice sections where riders could lay down a little power. I did line up in an okay spot, for the first time in a long time (second row start). The fast gravel start suited me perfectly, but I’m just not comfortable riding in close quarters yet.

What was really cool was that so many of my new team, Recycled Cycles Racing, were out racing. It’s great to be out with a team that really shows up to races. It ended up paying off for us, since we had 5 in the top 15. Nice.

The course started on a long gravel straightaway, through a set of barriers, and into a series of “S” turns along the length of the speedway. The grass was deep here, with very short pavement sections, which meant that I was able to make up a fair number of places here. Then there was a really steep ride up that I had to hit with a lot of momentum (hard for me to commit to), and a series of small turns.

Then, on the backside of the course, were two notable features. The first was a muddy, steep, downhill that was a full brakes, lean back, try not to fall sort of affair. I saw a few people go down here, which was sort of scary, since it looked like there was a drop-off at the bottom of the hill. After the downhill was a steep runup, with stairs available (which I always took, as the ground looked too muddy). I was able to make up a few seconds here each lap, but the big feature to me was about 400m of straight gravel after the run-up. I threw it into my smallest cog and flew through this section each time. Sometimes, I was able to put 10-15 seconds on people in just this section alone, oddly. Fun.

All in all, I just started too slow, but I consistently picked people off (I don’t think anyone passed me during the race). I got to ride with some Recycled people, and even in the short time I was on the course with them, I got to pick up some small skills tip for how to ride a cross race faster. Hopefully, I’ll develop some riding skills and come back strong next year.

Woolley Cross - this is a part of the Cascade Cross series.

Check out the SmugMug gallery for more pictures, but it was held at a really cool abandoned farm (a dairy?), which gave a great backdrop for a really fun race. The course was easily the most wide open ‘cross course I’ve ever done, as it was 10 feet (or more) wide nearly the whole length of the course, with few sharp turns. In other words, a course pretty much tailored for me. There was one turn of increasing radius, a couple of ride/run-ups (I ended up running all of them on most laps), and one set of barriers. On a wonderfully warm, sunny, mid-November day (good bye, State College), this turned into a pretty straightforward go-fast-through-gass-fest. Fun.

To top it off, the race started LeMans style, which means you run to your bikes to start. At most races, I start mid way through the pack, get nervous about all the riders near me, fall back a bit some more, then wallow in mediocrity until people start getting tired. I start making up places really quickly at this point, but in ‘cross, you have to race at the front to really have a short (really, most crit races are like this too).

In this one, however, I get to run for my starting place. Nice. I started riding too early through deep grass (instead of running my bike), so I only started 5th, but it was close enough to the front to let me ride my own race. I passed the first placed rider halfway through the first of 4 laps, and asked him how far ahead the leaders were. By the end of the first lap, I had opened up a 15-30 second lead. By the end of the second lap, I could no longer see any other riders behind me, so I focussed on not blowing up, rode a steady race, and finished rather strong-ish. Granted, it’s only a Men’s C race, but I’m looking forward to getting my 6 races in, getting my upgrade, and learning a lot getting spanked by the Men’s B/Cat 3’s.

All in all, this was the most fun I’ve had at a cross race so far - I like being able to go fast on grass. I usually don’t get a chance to use my fitness in cross races, since I’m too slow around corners to really put down much speed. But that day, I got to do a lot of hard riding, outdoors, in grass, on a fun bike through some mud. It’s all my favorite parts of ‘cross, and I’m looking forward to doing as much ‘cross racing in WA as I can.

This race was ridiculously muddy, and consequently (since I have no bike handling skills), really bad for me.

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...

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.

The weekend looked like it was going to be typical nasty Pennsylvania March weather. Sure enough, as we left Saturday morning, it started to pour. And pour. And pour.

So bad, in fact, that the 15 mile loop for the road race was shortened to a .8 mile crit in torrential rain. Words barely do the course justice, but I'll try.

It was a four corner crit. First corner was downhill, with standing water. Not bad, but worth watching carefully. Second corner was fine (slightly uphill, no standing water). There was a gradual uphill, then a medium, steep downhill, INTO HALF OF A ROAD. That's right - downhill 90 degree corner where we only had 2 lanes of a four lane road. There was only a soft mesh divider between traffic and racers.

Better yet was the unassuming 4th corner. With a manhole cover right at the apex of the turn, it was an unreal crash-fest. During the B race, my wife stood at this corner for about 1/2 the race. She counted 18 crashes, started to feel sick watching the carnage, and left. I have no idea how many people went down at this turn total over the course of the race. Some racers reported a crash in their small group each and every time they went into the turn.

Unfortunately, the race was dominated by the line-up for me. I lined up absolutely last in a field of more than 80 riders. It strung out very quickly, so I was never actually in the race.

This was probably the fastest race I've ever been in. I set all sorts of personal power records. My FTP is around 316, but my normalized power, over 20 minutes in this race, was 393! That's the most encouraging thing I've seen all year. If my FTP is anywhere around 393 * .95 now, I'm going to be really, really excited. Anyone have any idea how legitimate normalized power is?

For those who care, my power file is attached here.

StClair_Luke_3_8_2008

Sunday was a lot nicer. Sort of. It was 32 degrees, with a 25-35 mph wind.

As we got warmed up (sort of), I started to get really excited about the race. Time trials are my favorite part of cycling. Something about going as hard as you can and trying to hold it as long as you can appeals to me. Being a bigger guy, I get a natural advantage as well, which I appreciate. TTs are something I've spent the last 9 months working on, and its gone from being a serious, serious weakness to something I'm reasonably good at (say, midway through the A field). We got rolling down the first downhill, and I stupidly let about 3-4 bike length gap open up as we took a hard right hand turn at the bottom of the hill. Just not comfortable on the TT bike yet this year. I got back on quickly, and we proceeded to crank out what felt like a slow TTT. There was a lot of wind, and the pace kept slipping down. I'm sure that the complete and total lack of aero gear amongst the rest of the team didn't help here. At the end, I accidentally picked up the pace too quickly on the final hill, and dropped everyone off the back. Fortunately, two of the other B riders jumped back on, and we finished at least reasonably quickly. Turns out, we won, by around 15 seconds! By far, this was the best part of the weekend for me.

As for the circuit race: I rode at the front after the first 2 laps. John Gleaves got away with a small group that he was able to sit on for second. I stayed back and blocked well, for the first time ever (got to lead the field for about 3-5 minutes straight, doing 180 watts). I felt great, never really in trouble, even for a bit, and kept wishing someone else would up the pace. I'm glad it worked out the way it did though, since we put 3 people in points (2nd, 8th, 12th). Our best team showing so far, for sure.

More importantly, I hope that this will be a turnaround for me. Instead of hanging out at the back, I feel like I have the confidence to corner more aggressively and push myself forward in the pack. I know I'm strong enough to be at the front, and I'm slowing getting more confident in my ability to physically move up there.

Check out the photos here.

For those of you that care, here's a video of the infamous fourth corner of the crit. Notice the traffic between the third and fourth turns.

Power files for the TTT, circuit are here
lukestclair-phillycircuit2008
lukestclair-phillyttt2008

Well, the second day of the Rutgers weekend went okay...

I couldn't get to the front of the pack at all. With 60+ riders and a yellow line rule with narrow roads, I just didn't have much opportunity. And I'm a sissy.

Consequently, I did a lot of chasing back on, as riders got spit out of the apparently fast-moving pack. To be honest, I felt more bored than tired during this one. Perhaps some day I'll learn how to fight through a pack.

In any event, my planned sprint from back to front of the pack was quickly derailed when a couple riders went down in front of me in a very spectacular, bikes-flying sort of crash. While it was pretty impressive to watch, it totally ended my sprint.

Oh well.

All in all, a fun, but disappointing (for Men's B) weekend. Perhaps Philly will go better, but huge field sizes don't bode well for me.

Pictures here.

First ECCC weekend! And great weather. Getting into Piscataway, NJ, was terrible though.

A 4 hour drive turned into a fear-inducing 7.5 hour epic for me. I couldn't believe how icy/snowy it was.

Once we got to the ITT though, the weather was great - mid 40's and above. Unfortunately, the ITT was cut short yet again (thanks Rutgers), so we just had 2.4 miles to distinguish ourselves from each other. I ground it out way, way too much (not enough spinning), but felt great. I just couldn't bring any aerobic power to bear, with cadences so slow. Still, I got 6th, which was good enough for the second best Penn State time of the day.

Sadly though, my tubular wheel flatted - I'm not looking forward to changing that. Somehow, I was unlucky enough to put a cut in a tire that retails for $90 in the first 10 miles of riding it. I'm having trouble letting it go.

The crit was particularly exciting for me. As usual, I started in the back, and kept having to close down gaps in the field. I simply couldn't seem to move up. As people got tired, however, I managed to charge up the sides of the field, and eventually worked my way on to the front.

Once I got there, a kid from UVM attacked the field into a headwind, and I stupidly watched him go. About 60 seconds later, I decided it'd be a good ida for me to go too. Unfortunately, the field wasn't interested in letting me get as big a gap as the UVM guy had, and I was working against the most ferocious headwind I've ever seen in a race. I stayed between the field and the leader for the last 2.5 laps, and got caught with about 600m to go.




Sad, but this is the strongest I've ever felt. Maybe not the most fit/capable, but certainly the strongest.

Pictures here.

This weekend, I did the New Orleans Half Marathon with my wife. Given that I haven't run more than a 6 miler, an 8 miler, and a few odd 1600m races in the last few months/years, I was a bit worried about how I'd do. Jen's been running really well and consistently, so I knew she'd be okay.

All in all, it turned out to be a great race. The weather started a bit chilly, so I was torn between a long or short sleeve undershirt. It warmed up quickly though, which felt great.

I had never done a half/full marathon before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I was probably the most surprised as how cool the race course was. We ran downtown, then up Bourbon street (a crazy place, if you've never been). We made our way down a long, straight, spectator-lined avenue, and ran around the park downtown.

I can't believe how well-organized these are. Great water/gatorade stops spaced pretty evenly throughout, with great volunteers. One aid station in particular was especially great. We had been told there would be no food until the latter half of the marathon, but we we were 3/4 of the way through the park, we saw an aid station with volunteers dressed up as cowboys, providing not just water/gatorade, but also M&Ms, PB&J, Pretzels, and Vasoline (for those unlucky enough to have chafing/foot problems).

Coming into the finish was especially memorable - Jen had a lot left, and unleashed a monster sprint, to edge me out at the very end. I had a great time.