Monday, October 18, 2010

OC Criss Cross and Ruts and Guts CX

Since the first week in September, there's been a lot of opportunities to participate in several cyclocross events. The Wednesday night practices have gotten huge with over 40 riders showing up the last few times. The race season officially started on October 2nd with a race that was promoted by the race team I'm on, Team Undiscovered. The race was at the Oklahoma Christian University campus on a field where the cross country team trains. A few sections were cleared out with a brush hog making them a little bumpy. There were a few people who complained that the course was too rough, but with the right air pressure in the tires, I thought it was a fine course.


I decided to do the masters 40+ race and the cat 123 race also. Every time I've tried to do 2 races back to back, it generally doesn't work out well, at least for cyclocross anyway.



The masters race was first. There was a decent turnout, maybe 12 or 13 riders. My plan was to ride conservatively till 20 minutes to go, then go hard to the end. I figured that would be the best way to have something saved up for the A race and hopefully get a good finish in the masters race.



The plan was going good for about 1/3 of the first lap. I thought the tempo of the race felt slow, so I attacked and opened a little gap. A couple of guys chased me the whole race, and by the end I was pretty smoked.

I managed to get the win, but I didn't have much left for the 123 race.

An even bigger field in the 123 race. I wouldn't have done the 123 "A" race if I had known how blown I would be after the masters race, but I was already registered, so I just raced it to train. The competition in the A races is at an all time high. The course was pretty short and Bryan Fawley was going super fast. He won the race by almost a lap and put 3 or 4 laps on me by the time it was over.


Biff Stephens took this photo. I stayed in the whole race and I'm not sure how I finished...probably 15th or 17th or somewhere in there. I don't know if it was the stress of doing both races, or working Sunday at the shop and being around a lot of people at the Schlegelfest thing, but Monday I started getting sick and it pretty much went downhill all week.
I had to miss the showdown at sundown race in Tulsa the following weekend, but the Wednesday before the ruts and guts race, I did the practice race and felt good enough to race on Friday.

The Friday night ruts and guts race in Broken Arrow was pretty awesome! Due to a huge cash payout, the turnout was very good. It was the biggest CX race I've done to date. The course was layed out really cool, but the only problem for me was the dust. There wasn't much wind and driving to the course, I knew I was getting close by the gigantic dust cloud floating off the highway.

I'm in the middle of building some new CX tubular wheels. Andy wasn't racing, so he let me borrow his zipp 404 tubulars w/ vittoria tires. Very nice. I did the masters race again. I think there were around 25 riders in our field. The race was going good. Another rider and myself were trading pulls in 3rd-4th, we were gaining on 2nd, when I slid out in a corner and crashed pretty good. It was 3 laps to go at that point and I dropped back to 7th I think. I made it back to 5th and almost 4th but not quite.


First time I was on a podium. I wanted to do better, but it was still a really fun race. My teamate Judson Copeland took these 3 photos. The double crossed races are this coming weekend, but I popped my thumb pretty good when I crashed. Its ok to ride my road bike, but its hard to grip the bars on bumps.



Thursday, September 16, 2010

Wednesday night cyclocross action!

Coatney took a few pictures from the last CX practice. The rider turnout has been pretty good and the practice courses have been really good also.




We had to climb up the big banks 2 times per lap. It got pretty hard towards the end.






J-dog hitting the 1st corner. Off in the distance is the other bank we climbed.
The first official race this season will be on Oct.2nd. Lots of races every weekend after that!

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Har-Ber Meadows criterium and the Streak

The team (Jeremy, Parks, Judson, and Brad) and I got together for a late season criterium in Arkansas this past Saturday. I wasn't really sure how things would go, at least for me anyway, because I haven't raced sine July. I've been trying to ramp up the training intensity to simulate cyclocross conditions, so worse case, I figured the race would be a good hard training effort.


Jeremy, Parks and I decided to do the 35+ masters race and the P123 race also. The 123 race was being hyped up in the flyer as having a large "pass the hat" cash prime lap. We were pushing it pretty close time wise to make it in time for the 35+ race, but we made it with about 15 minutes to warm up. We knew the day was going to be fun when we were pulling up to the course and we see Brad Huff riding around.

The 35+ race went pretty well. Jeremy, Parks and I were the only guys on the team in the race, and it looked early on like we could possibly get a 1-2-3 finish. Parks and Jeremy got up the road and had a pretty good gap on the field, but Brian rolled his tubular tire in the last corner and crashed pretty good. I got in a 6 man break a little later after a prime lap and it stuck to the end.

We had about 30 seconds on the field going into the last lap. I tried to stick with the guy I thought was the best sprinter. As we approached the last corner, a guy attacked on the opposite side of the road and got a little gap on me and the guy I was watching. I passed the guy I had been watching, but I needed about 20 more yards to catch the guy that took off early. The 35+ and the 45+ were scored separately, so I ended up with the win in the 35+ as the guy that beat me was in the 45+ race.

We had about 4 hours to burn before the 123 race, but the race venue was a nice park setting with plenty of places to eat nearby. As we were getting staged for the 123 race, the promoters said the big cash prime would be at the 40 minute point. I think the prime ended up being $430.00 or something. Neither race seemed super hard. Brad Huff attacked the field at around 30 minutes in and stayed off the rest of the race.

The end of the race came down to a field sprint for 2nd place. I think the biggest weakness our team has right now is finishing strong in a big field sprint. We've discussed it but never really done any practice drills or had a solid plan thought out before the race even starts when it comes down to the last part of the race. I was sitting pretty good in the top five with 3 laps to go, but I made a bad decision and chased down an attack and got winded. I started to work my way back up with 1 lap to go, but the best I could move up was 16th. Brian finished the highest with the last money spot in 12th.

I don't see any reason why we couldn't have had 3 or 4 of us in the money as all the guys were riding well all race. I think the rest of the guys are going to do 1 or 2 more road races, but I'm pretty much done for the road season.

The OBS Streak was the following Sunday and I felt pretty good after Saturday, so I got up early again and made it by the 7:30 start time by about 5 minutes. Pretty fun ride with lots of people. Rode with my brother for a bit in the beginning. Gil and Helen were there on their tandem, so I knew they would be throwing down some pain around the halfway point. Sure enough, they punched it, but I was ready and jumped on their wheel with Steve Colton. We were ripping along at 40+ MPH for at least 2 or 3 miles. I could see a small group of riders chasing, and they eventually bridged up to us when we got caught at a busy intersection.

The break a way group grew to the tandem, myself and 7 other riders: 3 OKC Velo guys, my buddy Andy Chasteen, my teamate Little Ryan, and the infamous Jason Waddel. We just got into a solid rotation the rest of the way. We got rained on pretty good for a few miles towards the end, but nothing like it rained on my way driving home.

Pretty good end to a recovery week. Monday the 13th will not be a rest day. I'm starting a peak period cyclocross month before the real racing starts in early October. I'm pretty stoked for the CX practice race on Wednesday.

Saturday, August 28, 2010

If I could only have 1 bicycle.....

It would be my cyclocross bike.

Preparation has begun for the upcoming cyclocross season, and I was thinking about this a few weeks ago after I pulled my Redline out of summer hibernation. So far I've commuted to work, commuted to and participated in a practice race, and ridden a few laps at the mountain bike trails. You could road race it if you had to. It also works well for riding in the snow. I guess my point is, the cyclocross bike is very versatile.

Anyhow, I guess cross' season will officially start the first or second weekend in October. I've got a 12 week CX training plan that I'm 7 weeks into. This coming week will be a recovery week with 1 practice race, maybe a criterium in Arkansas, and maybe the Streak. Doesn't seem like much of a recovery week. The next 4 weeks after that will be brutal! Lots of high intensity intervalls.

My CX season this year will probably be all wrapped up by mid November as my wife and I will have our hands full with a new baby!

Tuesday, June 22, 2010

OKC Rocks crits and Oklahoma state TT championship

This is another one of those posts that's been in limbo for a month and a half, so it's time to get it finished. From what I remember, the main plan I had made for myself was to peak for the Joe Martin stage race, then ride the fitness wave hopefully through the Windy 100, Tulsa Tough, and then the OKC rocks crit. After those, I would take a summer break and start getting ready for cyclocross season somewhere around mid July-early August. It seemed easy enough, but I have to admit, it was starting to get tougher to keep motivated to race every weekend. I think since early March there was a race every week except 2.

Anyway, it was nice to not have to travel to the OKC Rocks criteriums. I think the traveling and being away from my family are the parts that wear me down the most. So day 1 of the OKC rocks race was a loop around the state capitol. The course was pretty tame. Basically two long straights up and down Lincoln Blvd. with a long narrow corner on one end and a short, maybe 50 yard straight with 2 - 90degree corners on each end. It was pretty windy and the fast section heading north on Lincoln had some pretty wicked bumps. They kind of felt like whoop-de-doos where each concrete slab butted up to the next slab.

Warming up before the race, I noticed the cat 3 race had split all to pieces. There didn't seem to be any factors with the course or weather conditions to break the field up, but I assumed the same thing would happen in our race. Jeremy was taking a break from his race season, so we had 4 team riders: Rob, Brian, Brad, and me. I'm not sure why the race promoters set up the race categories as they did. There was a cat 3 race, a 123 race, and a Pro 1 race. I heard it was a USA Cycling rule or something, but I've seen big payout races where the race had a p 1/2 category.

Anyway, we did the 123 race. We took a couple of last laps warming up and as the race was staging and about to go off, I noticed none of my team mates were around. The race started without them and a few other riders that were riding the course. My team mates managed to work together and team time trial back into the race. There were about 40 or so riders in our race. Some cat 1's and 2's from around here, but mostly guys from Texas.



Since I thought the field would split up, I raced pretty aggressively to try to get into a move, but nothing stuck as the race ended up in a field sprint in the end.


I used the Zipp 606 rental wheel set from the shop. It's a 404 front-808 rear-carbon tubular with Vittoria open corsa cx tires. Running these wheels truly feels like cheating compared to using alloy clinchers.

By the time we had reached 3 laps to go, there were maybe 20 or so riders left in the main field. Aaron Smathers came out of retirement to do the race, and with 2 laps to go I got on his wheel figuring it was a smart place to be. Aaron's knowledge is at a pro level, but his fitness at the race was good, but not quite enough to punch it as hard as we were going for that long. We were about the 1.5 laps to go point when Aaron started to get gapped off and waved me by. On the last lap, guys kept falling off and I burned a lot of energy bridging up to the next guy in line. By the time we started sprinting,I was pretty winded. I ended up 13th and Rob got 15th.



Day 2 of the race was at the state crit course from a couple of years ago. It's a good course, challenging and fun to ride. I won a preme lap and got off the front for a couple of laps.

Once again, the race finished together in a field sprint. There were some breaks that got established for a good part of the race, but it all came together in the end.



I made a mental error at the end of the race that I never thought I would. I thought there was 1 lap to go when it was actually 2 laps to go. The race gets REALLY aggressive at this point. Lots of racing into each corner, lots of pushing and chopping, and lots more speed! When we hit the last straight to take the bell lap, (which I thought was the finish) I got pushed into the outside curb and almost wrecked. As I realize whats going on after I hear the bell ringing, Rob comes around me and tells me to get on his wheel. In the last lap, we quickly made it into a much better position to get some good results, maybe too quick because it was everything I could do to stay on his wheel. As we came out of the corner onto the second to last straight, some riders got into the curb and crashed right in front of me. I didn't go down, but I lost all of my momentum. I sort of caught back on by the last corner, but once again, I was way to winded to get any kind of sprint for a result. Rob managed to get 13th


One thing that was kind of funny was that we complained the first day about the big money race being only a pro-cat 1 event, so the promoters allowed the cat 2's to race in the P/1 race on Sunday. We had already registered for the 123 race, and I for one was way too tired to do a second race. Rob gave it a go and hung in pretty good for a while. Yeah, I know this picture is in here twice, but I couldn't figure out how to delete it. That's Randy Soto on the inside of me BTW.
The following weekend was the state time trial championships. I was sort of going back and forth about doing it, but a couple of days before the event, I decided to go. I tried once again to rig up my powertap-disc cover set-up. I worked on it until probably 11:30 pm the night before the race and eventually gave up. It seemed like a good idea, but all I got out of it was about 6-8 hours of frustration. Luckily, I grabbed the rear 1080 Zipp rental wheel off Steve's bike just in case the disc didn't work out.
I carpooled out with Andy Chasteen the next morning. I guess my goal was to try to do the 40K in under an hour. I hadn't even ridden my TT bike since the last time trial, and I've never been on it more than 20-30 minutes at one time, so I was curious as to how a 40K would go. The weather was hot and windy. For the first 30K I felt pretty good. Maybe sub 57 minute range, but the last part, especially the final 5 kilometers, I pretty much melted. I ended up finishing under an hour, but just barely. I think I ran a 59:31.
All year Rob and I have finished just seconds apart from each other. This time was no different as we finished 3 or 4 seconds apart.
Andy had a good race and is now the Oklahoma Cat 3 TT state champion. I knew he was going to win it. Andy has a BIG motor!

After the race, I was officially on a summer break. Time for some swimming pool cross training.
Something that was kind of weird was the day after the state TT, I started having issues with my arm going numb. I thought it may be an issue with my shoulder(which is pretty jacked up in itself) from being in the TT position for an extended period of time or maybe something else. I went to get it checked out and had all kinds of tests and x-rays done. The results were that I had no heart or spine/nerve issues and yes my shoulder is jacked up. The shoulder issue is from numerous broken collar bones and a seperated AC joint from years of racing bikes and crashing. I did a bunch of research on my own and I think I may have had a mild case of mercury poisoning. I was taking some omega-3 fish oil supplements and as soon as I thought they may be the cause, I quit taking them and the problem went away.
It took a bit before I felt like riding again, and as soon as I started feeling good again, I got a stomach flu thing from my daughter and was down for another week.
It doesn't take long to lose fitness, but I'm feeling good and rejuvenated and ready to start training for cyclocross season!
Next update is in the works














Thursday, June 10, 2010

Tulsa Tough 2010

So after a short recovery week with another crit on Wednesday, our same crew of 4 Team Undiscovered riders headed up on Friday for some epic racing at the Tulsa Tough. Brian Parks' friend Ann has a town house a block away from the riverside course that she was gracious enough to let us stay the weekend. The cat 1/2 race started late on Friday. For me everything went well the first 15-20 minutes until my rear brake started to tighten up and drag the rim, plus my rear shifting was not right as well. The exact same thing started to happen at the Windy 100 crit after I hit a witch hat pylon thing.

At the Windy 100 I thought I pulled the cables away from the shift/brake lever when my hand came off the bars because the problem corrected itself. At the Tulsa Tough, the problem just kept getting worse until the brakes were so tight, they were almost locked up. I was sitting somewhere around 15th or so and by the time I got back to the wheel pit, I was at the back of the field. The race officials would not let me have a free lap after getting the brakes loosened because they said my bike was mal-adjusted. I jumped back in about 3/4 a lap down and got pulled after about 2 more laps. I was pretty bummed because I was feeling pretty good. The whole race can be seen here:
http://vimeo.com/12437810
After the race, I was inspecting my bike to find the problem, and come to find out the shift lever was slightly loose enough that is was sliding down on the handlebars and pulling the cables with it.

Saturday went somewhat better. I tried to move around a lot and find the best places to move up when needed. Around 7 laps to go I started to work my way up, peaking with around 2 to go. I had gotten up to around 20-25th, but on the last lap I pretty much blew up and got passed by a bunch of people and ended up with 45th.

Friday night racing action

Friday and Saturday nights were nice because we started so late that the temperature was not as hot. Sunday was tough due to the peak heat of the day.

Suffering up cry baby hill. Last year I made it to 15 laps to go before I got dropped. This year I made it to 13 laps to go.





Off the back. Once you get caught near the tail end of the field, there's really no place to recover. You have to drill it due to the accordion effect at the bottom of the hill, then you're climbing again. Rob did the best finishing 27th, but we were all disappointed due to none of us finishing in the money any day.



On a positive note, my daughter Chloe has really gotten into riding her tricycle. She pretty much wants to keep riding until we have to physically peel her off. She's got a birthday coming up, so I see a 12 inch bike in her future.
The OKC rocks crit races are this weekend. Nice not to have to travel.





Sunday, May 30, 2010

Windy 100 Woodward OK

Early this season I got a flyer at the salty cow race. The flyer was for a race on Memorial day weekend in Woodward OK. The Windy 100. At first it looked like another T-shirt ride type thing till I saw the generous payout. We pretty much decided at that point we would probably attend this race. I never quite understood why the race was scheduled the same weekend as quite a few other big regional races as well as the weird start times the races would be going off.


A group of 4 of us (Jeremy, Rob, Brian, and me) left town around 11:30 AM for our 3:30 crit start time. The course was more like a really tame circuit race than a criterium. Basically 3 long straight 1/2 mile sections with 1 straight with some curves. Pretty much a big square. The weather was hot and it quickly became apparent we wouldn't be starting on time.


The P1/2 crit was pretty uneventful once it got going. Jeremy got off in a break early on with 3 other riders. I think there were 21 riders total for the day and the race payed 10 deep. Jeremy ended up 4th while Brian and I finished just out of the money with 12th and 13th. The masters race was the last race of the day at 7:45 PM, so I decided to give it a go.


Lining up before the race started, I was pretty sure I could win it. Looking back, I raced a little too aggressive early on covering way too many attacks. Okc velo had 5 or 6 riders and the joe's pros guys had 2 I think. Anyhow, the good masters riders don't attack with as much punch, but they know how to hit you when you're a little winded or out of position. 5 riders eventually got away and I won the field sprint for 6th.

The road race on Saturday was supposed to start at 6:30 AM. We were a little worried when it was 10 after 6 and we were just leaving our hotel. After scrambling to the start line, it became obvious that the promoters/officials were nowhere near ready to start the race. They decided to combine the 1/2's and the 3's and after about 45 minutes we were underway. Things were pretty tame for the 1st 5 or 10 miles. We hit the first crosswind section pretty slow, but I knew if we were going faster, it would be trouble if you drifted too far back in the field.

As we started into a long headwind section, I got into a move with Justin Rempel, but it only lasted for a few minutes.Towards the end of the headwind section, a Kenda rider got off the front and opened a substantial gap. The Park Place guys started drilling it and then the guys at the front of the group made a wrong turn. After a quick U-turn, we were heading west again with a pretty good cross wind. We had lost a little more ground to the Kenda rider, so the pace really got fast and the field started to break up. I realized if I didn't get towards the front very quickly, things would soon get much more painful.

I got near the front of what was left of the main field (about 15 riders) and sure enough, there were about 6 guys off the front. At least 3 were Park Place riders. Our chase efforts were a little disorganized as a few guys didn't want to do any work and as soon as we started closing, they would unsuccessfully try to bridge solo. The break was just about as disorganized as the chase group and guys started popping till there were only 2 left in the break.

The chase group stayed around 15 riders as we dropped a few guys here and there. Maybe 3 or 4 riders were cat 3's, 1 of which was doing some work, and a couple of Park Place riders who were just sitting on and blocking. Rob, Jeremy and I were in the chase group and looking back, we did way too much work trying to pull the break in.

With about 6-7 miles to go, I started to bonk. I had plenty of food with me, but it was hard to eat with the way we were riding. I started to eat and got dropped in a tailwind section. I figured I wasn't going to be any good in the sprint, 1st and 2nd were within sight but too far up the road to catch, and Waddel had been sitting in all day and was going to kill it and get 3rd. Plus, no one was as far as I could see behind me, might as well just eat before I fell over.

After about 10 minutes I felt good as new. I could still see the chase group up the road as we weaved back into town. The race finished on the crit course we had raced the night before and as I came through the finish line, nobody was around except the guys who got 1st and 2nd. I sat by the finish line and ate a banana when one of the race officials told me the chase group all took a wrong turn and came through the finish area backwards, so they were doing a 1 lap re-finish on the crit course. 1 of the guys in the chase group actually made the right turn and got 3rd, so they ended up giving me 4th.

Rob got 8th, Jeremy got 11th, and Brian got 20th. This was the first time I have ever done a race where there were as many payout spots as riders in the race, so needless to say, I'm pretty sure as a team, this was our biggest money making weekend to date. The race was a little disorganized, but if they have it again next year, I'm sure we'll come back.






Off the back in the road race, but almost done.....
When I got home, I decided to go for a swim in the backyard pool. I got my swimming trunks, and found my Assos sock that had been missing since last summer. Coatney got them for me on my birthday last year and I only got to wear them once or twice, so I was pretty stoked to find it!



What a lucky day! The big Tulsa Tough race is this weekend, so we're pretty excited.

Monday, May 24, 2010

Criterium state championship race



All I heard about in the week leading up to this race was how dangerous the course in Sand Springs was. I've never raced here before and I must admit I was a little concerned, but in the end, it was no big deal. The course definitely had some rough sections, but part of crit racing is finding the smooth lines. Pretty short course, maybe a little over a kilometer?


Just getting started. It was a semi-hot and humid day. I tried to start with my core as cool as possible by putting on wet, ice cold base layer just before we started. It seemed to work ok for most of the race. I seem to really struggle the hotter the weather gets and today was no different.



I felt ok for the first part of the race, but at around 15 minutes in, I broke a spoke and killed it trying to stay in the group to get back around to the wheel pit. The only real downfall to our Storck bikes is the rear entry dropouts. Not fun to try to get a wheel out and back in quickly.


Once I got back into the group the first lap was a preeme lap, so very fast, and I'm not sure if I had too much air in the tire of my spare wheel or the tire was really old, but it would not grip coming out of the corners. I started getting gaped a little and was only able to stay connected to the field for a few more laps.


I just rode solo TT style the rest of the race to get some good heat acclimation.


Not a very good race weekend, but I did like the course.







Saturday, May 15, 2010

OKC TT Series and other random stuff

The last of the OKC Velo series went off today. It was a little wet out, but the winds were light. With the good conditions and my legs feeling 100% after being tired most of the week, I thought I had a good shot at a fast time. I had planned on using Big John's wheels, but once again, his start time was too close to mine so his wheels were unavailable. Les Akins had an extra set of wheels that he was willing to let me use. I gladly accepted his offer and it made all the difference(thanks Les!)
My bike with Big Johns wheels. Les had a zipp disc rear with a Hed 90mm front.
I set a new personal best with a 17:34. Good enough for 2nd on the day and 2nd overall for the series in the mens cat 123 class!
I've got a few other photos I never got a chance to post on here. This is in Ardmore OK on our way to the Matrix crit in Dallas.
Hanging out in the shop. Andy is wearing a suit, but was moving too fast to be in focus. Andy tried out his new TT bike today and first time out ran a 17:49! Off in the background is Marty who dominated the Eddy Merckx class with a 1st place overall.
One of many snow rides this past winter on the cyclocross bike. Lake Hefner
On the way to a foggy Mt. Scott with the team in February
My cyclocross bike on top of Mt. Scott. This was my do it all bike this winter.
Jeremy and Judson on our last time up the mountain.

Looking down after the fog lifted up a little.

Brandon with a genuine smile after getting his surprise wedding gift in the mail. Super sweet custom BOB trailer wheel w/Chris King hub.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Joe Martin Stage Race

So there we were, maybe 27 miles into the second stage 110 mile road race. The bad luck for the day started fast and early. Little did we know, it was about to get a LOT worse! Before I finish, I'll start at the beginning. Our 5 man team headed up to Fayettville Arkansas Thursday morning for the Joe Martin 4 day stage race. The race was definitely a big one for everyone on the team as well as I think it's the first time any of us had raced an epic 4 day CAT 1/2 stage race.

Anyway, I'm sure all the guys on the team had a certain goal or position they wanted to finish. My goal was to try to survive, finish all the stages without getting time cut, be consistent, work for any teamates high in the GC, and just go out and compete and have a good time in general.

So the first day was pretty uneventful. 2.5 mile uphill time trial. Our times were ok, but not quite what we were looking for. Out of the 107 riders entered, our times ranged from 47th to 99th. I was mildly concerned about the next 2 road races. The longest road race I had personally done prior to the Joe Martin was 85 miles, so doing 110 and 92 mile road races back to back would surely make for some kind of adventure. I felt like we were all prepared to ride that far since we had been doing great with our weekend long rides, but still, anything can happen during a race.

Back to our crazy bad luck day.

We decided to park near the finish line and ride the 3 miles to where the race started. On the way over, Jeremy noticed his rear derailleur wasn't shifting right. His daughter had knocked his bike over in the hotel room and bent his derailleur hanger in slightly, so Jeremy went to the Sram neutral support to get it looked at when we got to the start area. The mechanic attempted to straighten the hanger with an allen wrench, but ended up breaking it off. The stress started with scrambling to get one of the neutral loaner bikes set up for Jeremy. They got his pedals swapped and seat height set just in time for the race start.

Once we got underway, Jeremy says something weird is going on with the loaner bike. Its pulling hard to one side and doing weird stuff under braking. The decision was made to just ride it out and try to get used to it for the rest of the race. Somewhere around 25 miles in, we were doing around 25-30 MPH down a straight downhill road when either someone touched wheels or had a blowout. I was sitting maybe 2/3 back in the field on the right side of the road. Up ahead on the left side of the road, guys just started wadding up with bikes and bodies flying all over the place. The wreck quickly spread across the road into my line. Somehow I made it through without crashing. I had to do some cyclocross/Lightning McQueen style maneuvers off in the grass, but got back to the main field without too much trouble.

I looked around to see how many of my teamates made it through. I saw Brad towards the front of the field and a few minutes later, Rob and Jeremy bridged up, but Parks was nowhere to be seen. So there we were, about 27 miles in, 1 rider MIA, another on a jacked up bike, when at this point Rob is having his own problems. His rear shift lever is letting the chain drop to the smaller cogs in the back, but won't shift back up. I tried to mess with it while we were riding by jiggling it thinking it might have a stuck pawl or something, but the lever just got stuck pointing inwards. As Rob moved the lever back down, it literally broke off in his hand. Not good.

If ever there was a road race where you needed a full range of gears, this was the one. We had climbed somewhere around 1000 ft. so far, but still had about 5000 ft. left in the race. Our Storck bikes have an adjusting barrel just behind the head tube, so Rob was able to thread it all the way out and get his chain in the 14t cog at least. Other than that, he just leaned down and pulled directly on his shift cable if he needed lower gears. I tried to shadow Rob in case he needed a push on some of the bigger hills, but he needed no assistance. With the robust gear he had to use while standing, he was getting up the hills pretty fast.

Brian caught back on at one point. He was involved in the big wreck as another riders chainring slashed his front tire open. After a slow wheel change, he pretty much burned all his matches motor pacing back to the field, only to catch the group just as we were hitting a large climb. He lost contact and decided to get a nice long scenic ride in finishing off the rest of the race without any drafting assistance. The big selecting factor of the race would come around mile 75. The Mt. Gaylor 9.2 mile climb.

My legs felt ok all day. As soon as we started up the big climb, riders started popping. I was probably sitting in around 50th place when I couldn't hold the wheel in front of me any longer. I looked behind me to see if anyone was coming around, but there was nobody as far as I could see. I knew Rob was in the group ahead of me and pretty sure Jeremy and Brad were somewhere behind me. I was pretty bummed out at first, but then I see a couple of riders coming up be hind me. We started working together, picked up another couple of riders, and after about 10 minutes of chasing, caught the group that Rob was in of about 20 riders.

We caught more and more stragglers on the way to the top of Mt. Gaylor and as we crested the top, somewhere there's a photo of Rob pulling about 40 guys while holding his rear shift cable. The last 25 miles was a twisty, slightly downhill run back into Fayettteville. We caught even more guys on the way, but about 25 stayed away in the lead group with our chase group finishing 8:49 back. Jeremy and Brad finished in a group 7-10 minutes behind us, but for whatever reason eventually got scored 50 minutes behind the leaders. The results got changed 3 or 4 times with the first result saying they finished in the top 10, then they were time cut, then they were back in.....etc.....etc

We didn't race the 3rd stage on Saturday until 3:00pm, so that gave us some time to get the bikes repaired and hopefully the results straightened out. Judson was able to pick up a derailleur hanger from Bike one Friday afternoon for Jeremy. $25.00 for a used hanger seemed a little steep to me. One of the mounting screws from the old hanger was damaged as well, so I had to rig it up a little to make it work.(note to self: always bring a spare hanger to races) Rob got a brand new Sram shifter installed at no charge from the Sram neutral support, but at the cost of lots of running/waiting around and a restless night.

Saturday we started with 4 team riders as Brian had been time cut on Friday. Saturday would be a 92 mile road race. 11 miles out to a 23 mile loop that we hit 3 times, then 11 miles back. The hardest part was about a 1/2 mile climb with the last 1/4 mile being pretty steep. We dropped a few riders each time we got over the big hill and unfortunately, Brad was one of them. Some guy stayed off the front solo all day long, but the field caught him with about 2 miles to go in the race. Jeremy, Rob and I all finished in the main group.

Sunday was the final stage. A 60 minute super technical, hilly criterium. Surprisingly, all of us felt pretty good. I prepared myself mentally of how tired my legs were going to feel before the crit, but it wasn't how I thought is was going to be. We got 1 quick lap to check out the course when we arrived. Lots more turns added to the course I had done before. Anyway, it didn't seem to gnarly until we saw groups of pros skinned up getting free laps. Word was going around that turn 11 was pretty sketchy. As we're staging up our race the head official tells us "you can't win the race on turn 11 but you can lose the race there".

I had a good starting position but blew it by not being able to get clipped in. I was sitting about 30th or so going into turn 11. I took it pretty easy. They even had orange stripes painted on the road letting you know which line not to take, but some guy decided he was going to rail it and pass me in the danger zone. He crashed right in front of me causing me to slow down a bit and I ended up getting gaped off the group. Long story short, I got into a group of about 10 riders and we just chased the whole race. We made it to 5 laps to go and got pulled. I don't think we would have gotten lapped, but maybe made the scoring hard if the leaders caught us at the finish?
Jeremy was in the group I was in and Rob was in a chase group just behind the leaders. Overall in the general classification standings, Rob got 26th, I got 46th, and Jeremy got 51st. I'm sure that Rob and Jeremy would have done better had they not had the mechanical problems on Friday. All in all I think everyone was happy to survive, plus there's no way to get that kind of racing experience and form building training stress other than to do an event like this.
The following Monday my legs still felt good, but by Tuesday and the rest of the week for that matter, pretty rotten.
There's tons of details and stories I left out, but there's not room here for all of that. The last of 3 OKC Velo TT's is this weekend, plus races every weekend from now till the end of June I think.

Monday, May 3, 2010

2 TT's and 2 crits

The last half of April was packed with racing, all of it good in one way or another. Race 3 of 4 in the Wednesday series was another time trial. The course was shortened a little to deal with the traffic, so instead of 8.2 miles, the course was 7.9 miles. Big John let me borrow his rear disc wheel and 808 front wheel. The set up was fast as I ran a 17:07, which was good enough for second place. Once again, the team took the top 3 spots. This would lock us into the top 3 spots overall in the race series.



The second of the 3 OKC Velo time trial series was on the 24th. I had originally planned on using Big John's wheels again, but his start time was only 10 minutes or so ahead of me giving us not enough time to swap. Rob was the first rider to start, so he got back a few minutes before I started and let me borrow his rear wheel with covers. I ran my best time ever with a 17:40, which is also the time Rob ran, so we tied for 2nd, 3 seconds behind 1st.



The next day, Brian Parks and I went down to Dallas for day 2 of the Matrix criterium. The course was tight and technical, and the racing was VERY fast. It would have been smart to go down to Dallas right after the TT on Saturday and race then as well. It took about 20 minutes on Sunday to get comfortable racing a criterium at that speed and intensity. I made it for 60 of the 90 minutes before I got dropped and pulled shortly thereafter. The courses were the same both days so I think if I had raced Sat. it would have definitely helped to be more prepared for Sunday. Anyhow, I got some good experience for the bigger crits coming up in this area.

Thursday the 28th was the last race of the April CORS. Criterium at the Edmond fire training facility. Jeremy, Rob and I had the top 3 points locked up so, if we could somehow get Brian Parks a win for the day, it would give him 4th overall in the series. We came up with a plan and for the most part executed it perfectly. Jeremy and me hit it pretty hard early to "tenderize" the field while Rob and Brian sat in and took it easy. Right about the point where the 3rd attack started to fizzle, Rob and Brian punched it and were gone the rest of the race. Jeremy and I policed the main field blocking, covering anything that tried to bridge, and just being disruptive to any organized chasing efforts. We let a couple of guys dangle in no mans land and I got the field sprint for the final points spot while Brian and Rob took 1st and 2nd for the day.
Our plan worked and we ended up with the top 4 spots in the April series. I think tactically, this was out best effort of the season so far!

This weekend is the big Joe Martin stage race. All 5 of us are going and looking forward to some epic racing in Arkansas.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Matrix crit pictures Dallas TX


Tons of racing going on with no time to do any race reports...

Photos courtesy of my buddy Andy Chasteen