NWA Spring Classic 2011

It was another early morning road trip for our small group to Prairie Grove Arkansas for the 2011 NWA Road Race. Rob, Judson. Tony, Alex, and myself met up at our normal meeting spot and sponsor Schlegel Bicycles, and were on the road shortly after 5:00 AM Sunday morning. We took a little different route than the normal one. I-40 to Salisaw, then north all the way to HWY 62 all the way to the race . Pretty scenic curvy, hilly roads. Shawn drove up the day before and would be racing in the 1/2's with Rob and I.

I realized my first major error of the day when we first stepped out of the car. It was cold. Really COLD. I had plenty of clothing, but being as warm as it was last weekend, I decided to shave my beard off and buzz my hair. Looks like I cut it about a week and a half too early. Anyway, this was maybe the coldest weather I've ever raced in. I've definitely ridden in much colder weather, but racing in it is a different story. Normally, you want to dress lighter than normal if you're racing cause you're going so hard and it typically warms up as you go along as well. My legs, feet, and head were all good, but my hands and upper core never really got warm all day. I think the temperature may have actually gotten colder throughout the day. Upper 30's I think.
The weather didn't really affect my race performance, it just made things really uncomfortable.

Our race was 72 miles. The course was a 24 mile loop that we would be doing 3 laps on. I really like this course. I guess it's the 4th time I've done this race. Kind of a big rectangular shape with some nice rolling hills, some long straight open country road type sections where the wind can be a factor, some winding roads through big trees, and a good climb about 5-6 miles from the finish. The wind was not too bad, so the gutter racing was there, but not enough to cause any serious damage. There were 33 guys in our race. A lot of individual riders, we had 3, Soundpony had 4, Tulsa tough had 4, BOT had 4 riders I think, and Mercy had 8.

The first lap, I thought we rode pretty smart for the most part. There was usually 1 or 2 of us near the front keeping a good eye on things. I got into a couple of early moves with Jacob Lasley from Soundpony. Around 12 miles in he started attacking like crazy. I went with him the first 3 times I think. There was one point where 5 of us broke off, and I thought it was going to stick, but no go. He took off again, and I was there but I let it go. Maybe a bad move not going with him? Maybe not, but it took a while for the field to bring him back this time. Everything was back together. I could see the big hill up ahead, when some guys wanted to take a pee break. Everyone slowed down, and some guys were already stopped.

It was kind of like in a Nascar race where everyone is coming in for a pit stop, but at the last second, one guy fakes everybody out and goes back onto the track to get position on everyone. That's pretty much what happened as Jacob kept rolling. He didn't attack, but he didn't slow down like everyone else did, so he established a nice little gap going into the hill for the first time. When we got over the hill, I found myself towards the back of a hard chasing field. I think at that point Rob and Shawn were towards the back as well. I remember thinking I had burned quite a few matches already, and that I should just sit on and recover for a bit. Looking back, that kind of thinking can cost you a good result, and in the end it did.

I could see that the field was slowly pulling Jacob back. The next thing I know, I see a couple of guys trying to bridge. That's the problem with not having anyone where the action is. If you're not there, you can't react. The 2 riders were Evan Bybee riding solo for DNA and Jay Blankenship for Tulsa Tough. They bridged up and took off from there. Early on I wasn't too concerned. They were kind of dangling 20 seconds up the road for a long time, plus I figured the Mercy guys would start working, or at least working harder than they were. By the time we were a lap and a half in, the gap had gone up to a minute. Rob asked if we should start working. I figured it was still no big deal and if it got over 1:30 or so, we would start.

I went up to the front to see what the situation was, and it was not good. Jason Waddell was in total control of the race tempo, and the Mercy guys had pretty much given up. I rolled through a few times to try to encourage the group to keep on it, but it didn't help much. Somewhere around this point, I heard the time gap was up to 2 minutes. I found Rob and we decided it was time to start working. This was just before we hit the big hill the second time. As was the case last time up, I got shuffled to the back. For the remainder of the second lap, Rob stayed on the front and just drilled it. He single handedly shrunk the gap from 2:00 to 1:15, but, it quickly became apparent that Rob would not be getting any help. If anything, all the guys who had a rider up the road and were blocking-sitting on, were sitting pretty out of the wind, and all the potential allies were struggling in the gutter.

I weaseled my way up to the front and told Rob to shut it down. I figured at that point we could either race for 4th or give it to someone else. Going into the last lap, the field had gotten smaller. Maybe 20 guys left. There were a few moves that we tried to get into, but nothing was sticking. I'm not exactly sure how Rob was feeling, but another possible bad move on my part was asking Rob to hang back on the big hill to help me stay connected to the group. I knew the race would be from the top of the climb to the finish line, and sure enough, the fresh guys killed it. I think if Rob went up the hill at his own pace, he may have been more in the mix.

Anyway, there's a ton of woulda, coulda, shoulda type things that happened in this race. The field split up into 4 groups or so in the end, and Rob and I spent the remainder of the race bridging from one group to the next. In the end I got 15th, Rob got 19th, and Shawn got 30th. Not quite what we were looking for, but we did get a lot of work in and learned some new lessons in the process. I'm looking forward to some of the upcoming events were we'll get a chance to ride with some of the newer guys on the team, as there are tons of things coming up. Sorry no pictures this time. My teamate and buddy Tony has our race finish as well as the cat 3 finish on his blog http://joetoprocycling.com/video-clips-from-the-finish-line-nwa-spring-classic-2011/

How to pin up a bicycle race number

Pinning up a race number is one of the basic fundamental things every bike racer should know how to do. I've been meaning to do a how to post on a simple, quick and functional way to do it for a long time now. Every time I go to a race, I see several badly pinned numbers as well as methods of pinning them up. Some folks need someone to do it for them. Others need a pillow or steering wheel to put their jerseys on.

This method you can do by yourself quickly. I made a short video at the end of the post for a full demonstration.

Start off by laying the jersey on your lap or on some flat surface. Position the number where it needs to go and push the fist pin in about half way through the number and jersey.

The pin should go through the jersey and back out through the number. Kind of like sewing the number to the jersey with one stitch of the pin.

It should come out like this. lock the pin and you've got 1 down, 7 to go. Don't use the holes on the corners.

Put a pin in each corner, then one on each side. This is what one side looks like when finished.

Hopefully this post is helpful anyone who stresses before the race even starts about pinning up a number.

OKC TT #1 of 3 2011

As is usually the case, I didn't get my TT bike ready to go until around 10:30 PM the night before the event. I actually had it rideable 2 days before, just not fully prepped. Luckily, the bike feels very neutral and easy to ride. I'm fortunate to be able to use this bike this year. It's the Cervelo P4 that Steve used last year. The frame has a small crack in the top of the seat tube and has several small holes drilled in in to accept a Shimano DI2 system. The frame is fully functional and works great! About the only investment I have in the bike is the aero wheel covers for my powertap wheel.

 The course this year is a little different. It was the one PG-13 used on their TT series last year. The start/finish line is about 300 yards further in, and the turnaround is about 75 yards further out. My CPU showed it to be 7.91 miles

 I need to get to the race earlier next time. I only had about 30 minutes to warm up, which for me is not enough. My suffering buddy Rob Bell took this photo around 2 miles into my run.

 This is what it looks like overall on the power agent graph. The spike in the middle is the turnaround.Blue is speed, yellow is power, purple-torque, green-cadence, and red would be heart rate, but it lost the signal when I was putting up my trainer.

 The 1st 5 minutes seemed to be going well. I felt like I started pretty conservatively. Power was averaging around 320 watts, right at where I wanted to be going out.

 The 4 minutes before the turnaround, I started to lose focus and fade a little. I had forgotten to take off my knee warmers and just noticed as they were starting to slide down my legs. The little jump midway is where a car stopped in front of me and I had ease up for a second to figure out what they were going to do. Not too big a deal.

 The next 5 minutes were ok from a "keeping it steady" standpoint, but about 15-20 watts too low on power.

The last bit was ok. My overall power was 300 watts, and I ran a 17:26. Average speed was 27.16 MPH

That put me in 3rd place for the day in the cat 123 class. The only downfall was that the weather was about as good as it gets. All in all, a good baseline to start with.

Salty and Tall race weekend

The first Oklahoma racing was this past weekend. The race has changed formats a few times in the last several years, but is typically the first race of the season in Oklahoma. This year the Saturday race was at the Salt Creek park in Manford Oklahoma. I really like the Salt Creek venue. Scenic, spectator friendly, and some nice short power climbs. The Sunday road race was at the old Skiatook state road race course in Skiatook Oklahoma. I'd never ridden the road course, but it was really nice as well.

I chose to run the same bike set-up as what I ran in the Mineral Wells race. Zipp 404 tubular demo wheel up front, with my powertap/open pro rear wheel. I also used a Vittoria open corsa evo cx clincher rear tire with a latex tube, and a corsa evo cx tubular up front. The rear feels almost like a tubular with this set-up. My drivetrain is pretty worn out. My chainrings are pretty old, and when I tried to put a new chain on a couple of weeks ago, it ran really rough on the rings, as well as slipped on the cassette. I'm holding out on buying new drivetrain parts till we get our new frames because I'll have to get a new crankset anyway as the frames take a BB-30 system. I used a similarly worn ring-chain-cassette-combo to make it work.

Saturday I got to ride to the race in style in the Vittoria sprinter van. Curt, who works at Bikemine was driving the van up to the race, and taking my co-worker Brandon and his wife Lindsey. They had an extra seat, so I gladly accepted. It was a fun trip.

We had a 3 man team for the weekend - Rob, Shawn, and myself. Going into the race, we knew it was going to be hard as the Tulsa Tough had formed a super group of all the fastest guys in the state. They had 8 riders to go up against, as well as the Bicycles of Tulsa guys who have a strong Cat 2 team, and the BMC/Wal Mart guys from Arkansas who have a nice Cat 1/2 team of riders. There were several other strong regional single riders there, and a few guys that came from several states away and I had no idea of who they were.

The race payed 10 deep, so I knew the Tulsa Tough guys would want to grab as many of the top 10 spots as possible. It didn't take long once we got racing for the attacks to start happening. About 15 minutes in, I got a flat. The good news was that it happened right at the wheel pit, but the bad news was I would have no power data to look back on. This race would have been interesting to look at number wise cause it was hard!

Anyway, things after that pretty much happened like I thought they would. Tulsa Tough attacks over and over till something sticks, then leapfrog some more guys up to stack the results. That's pretty much how it went down. 3 Tulsa Tough guys got a minute or so up the road, and somehow a chase group of around 10-12 guys formed, with the rest of the field about a minute behind us. Our chase group included Rob and myself and plenty of strong riders, but also 3 Tulsa tough riders who were being disruptive-blocking, or just sitting on.

I knew if we got too close to the 3 leaders, the Tulsa Tough guys in our group would try to jump another guy or 2 into the break, so it seemed to me our best option would be to stay where we were and get something in the field sprint. That's pretty much how it ended up except a group of guys from the main field caught us on the last lap because we sat up too much on the last 2 laps.

I ended up getting 2nd in the field sprint behind Jason Waddell, so that gave me a 5th place overall in the race.

Overall I was happy with the results. Tulsa Tough could have easily took the top 6-7 spots. The next day the plan was for Rob and I to leave OKC at 6:00 AM to drive to the Skiatook road race. I thought I had set my alarm to go off at 4:30 AM, but the clock I set it on was 12 hours out of phase, so the morning became a mad scramble when I woke up on my own and saw it was almost 6:00. We made it to the race on time. The weather was overcast and had gotten a lot colder. It was actually colder when we got to the race site then when we left OKC.

As is the case with most races early in the season, Rob and I had pretty tired legs going into the race. We both were training through the weekend and had pretty heavy training weeks, along with the brutal race the day before. I warmed up some before we got started, but in hindsight, not nearly enough for what was about to go down. There was a good hill climb up the backside of the dam right as the race started. I started towards the end of the field, and the first time we hit it, guys were just drilling it right off the bat. At the top of the hill, the course turned onto the dam road which was about a mile or two of stout head-cross wind.

After only around 2 minutes into the race, the field was totally strung out and I was off the back fighting to survive. A group of 9 or 10 guys formed a break, and the rest of the main field got back to 1 group. It took me about 5 miles or so, but I managed to get back on with a couple other stragglers. We would be doing 3 laps of the 20.5 mile course. The first lap was pretty hard as the Tulsa Tough guys only had 2 riders in the break, so they were driving the field pretty hard. Coming back to the hill on the start of the second lap, I made sure to position myself at the front of the group to minimize the damage. Towards the end of the second lap, we started to catch some of the break a way group. They had split into 2 groups, so we ended up catching 5 or 6 guys with 4 riders left in the break.

2 of the riders in the break were Tulsa Tough riders. I guess they (Tulsa Tough) were ok with that, because the pace slowed down some. When we hit the hill the third time, it was a lot easier. Somewhere around halfway through the last lap, my legs started to feel a lot better. There was a climb around the halfway point that a couple of guys took off on. I'm not sure why, but the BMC/Wal Mart guys were killing it to bring it back in. Seems like they were all used up by the end and didn't get any result for all the effort. Anyway, we caught the two riders with about a mile to go. It seemed like the sprint lasted half a mile.

Once again, Jason Waddell won the field sprint, but Rob was right with me as we got 2nd and 3rd, giving us 6th and 7th overall in the race. We were pretty stoked to be able to get some decent results with all the horsepower we were up against. Our team has gotten a lot smaller in the last couple of weeks. Shawn has been riding a TON, and is getting faster. This was his first race weekend in a long time and I'm sure the intensity was a shock to the system, but I know he'll be mixing it up with us soon.

 

The 1st of 3 OKC Velo time trials is this Saturday, so hopefully I'll have my secret weapon ready to go

Strange days at the Mineral Wells stage race

The first race of the year definitely got off with a bang. A small group of the team went down to Mineral Wells Texas to do a 2 day stage race. None of us had any big expectations....More of a test of fitness and just getting back into the racing groove. The first race was the criterium. I really liked the course. Kind of short, L shaped with a short, semi-steep climb.

I wanted to try and stay near the front as much as possible, and actually ended up starting on the front row. I thought the race would start a lot faster than it did. So far every race I've done as a cat 2 has been a P 1/2 race or a cat 123 race. This was the first race I've done as a cat 2 only race. I don't know if it's because it's still really early in the season or what, but the effort seemed a lot easier than I expected. I rode second wheel the first lap and led the next lap or two.

It's a lot easier to ride a criterium in the front or in the top 5 or so. Physically and technically.

Rob and Brian were the other cat 2's from the team riding in the race, and both guys were riding really well. Rob got off the front a short time after this photo with Les Akins. Some how they miscommunicated and got into each other and crashed. I didn't see what happened so it's hard to speculate, but it seems to me if 2 guys are in a break (or any number for that matter), they need to make it as easy to work together as possible. Some kind of rhythm has to be established, intentions need to be announced well in advance. I don't know as again, I wasn't there and I didn't see it, so I'm not trying to blame anyone. It just seems like a stupid mistake that shouldn't have happened. Rob's bike was pretty jacked and all he was able to do was just ride the rest of the race out and finish in order to do the next stage.

A USPS truck got on the course at one point right out of the corner leading up to the climb. Looks like Paul Bonds is giving the postman a dirty look.

A guy got off the front and soloed in for the win. Brian and I were able to maintain our position at the end pretty well. I had to throw some elbows in the last 2 corners because guys started getting super aggressive. I ended up 5th and Brian got 10th.

Our hotel was only about 3 miles from the crit course, so we rode back to the hotel to eat and get our TT set-ups going. I just put some clip on aero bars and a reverse seatpost on my bike. I also used a aero helmet and my skinsuit. We rode out to the TT course. It was 7 miles away. As we were riding out, Rob and I were discussing what type of power we would try to go at. In hindsight, I figured a little high. I thought the crit seemed somewhat easy as I never really felt like I got winded, but once we got to the TT course, I decided to put a little effort in to warm up properly before the TT started. My legs definitely did not want to go.

I hoped once I got going, my legs would come around and start to feel good. Brian went 1st with me 1 minute behind him, and Rob went 1 minute behind me with 2 other guys staggered between the 3 of us. I went out a little hard, but my 30 second guy behind me caught me after only about 2 miles. I caught Brian around the 4 mile point, and Rob caught me around the 6 mile point. The TT was about 7.5 or so miles long. It had about 4 good climbs, and the last 2 really killed me. Rob did well getting 10th. There was less than a second difference between 7th through 10th. I got 21st and Brian got 29th.

The drama continued on day 2 for the road race. We would be doing 3 laps of the 24.6 mile course. There was a pretty good hill around the halfway point with KOM points on the hill on the second lap, and prime points on the 1st and 2nd lap at the start/finish line.

It was cool, overcast and windy when we started. It seemed like it took forever to get warmed up as we started pretty slow. The first lap was pretty uneventful until we hit the hill. The 1st time up it, I got dropped a little bit, but managed to catch back up to the group without too much effort. A short time after the hill, a group of 4 guys were off the front. As we started our second lap, I had no idea of the racing emotional roller coaster I was about to be on for the next 2 hours. About 1/4 mile past the start/finish line, the course turned right into a pretty stiff cross wind. I was sitting on Paul Bonds' wheel in the gutter, when the whole echelon whipped the both of us off the road. Luckily Paul and I have some cyclocross skills as we were both sideways in the grass for a while. Somehow neither of us crashed, but Pauls bike got into my front wheel and  took out one of my spokes.

It was a pretty good effort to get reconnected to the group with my front wheel rubbing the brakes. I was able to undo the brake quick release lever and thread the adjusting barell all the way in.That helped a lot. I survived the crosswind section and we made another right turn. The road smoothed out and it was mostly tailwind all the way to the hill. Brian attacked the group a little after we got out of the cross wind section and another guy went with him.

Brian and the other rider were about 30 seconds ahead of the group, and around 30 seconds or so behind the break of 4 riders. They were trying to bridge up when disaster struck again. Somehow they crossed wheels and Brian went down hard! As we were passing, it was obvious Brian was in a lot of pain. Rob stopped racing to try and help. I didn't really know what to do, but I kept going as there was a follow vehicle as well as other support vehicles around. It was definitely a disturbing feeling seeing my buddy all jacked up on the side of the road. Things only got worse shortly after that. I still didn't really feel very good...kind of lethargic, flat, and tired. Add that I'm worried about Brian and I have no teamates left. Then we hit the big hill.

Sure enough, I got dropped again. There were KOM points to be awarded this time up, so the group pushed it pretty hard. A group of 5 other riders and myself formed a little chase group, and at first it didn't seem like it would be a huge effort to get back on to the main field, but we didn't quite get connected before we turned into the headwind section. We started to chase REALLY hard as we were getting into panic/survival mode, but the field just kept putting more time on us. Then 2 of the guys in our chase group blew up. It seemed like sometimes we would make up 10 or 15 seconds, but then quickly lose 20 seconds. It pretty much stayed this way for the next 7 or 8 miles. Another guy and myself were trying to keep the other 2 guys in the group motivated to keep going, as they were getting to the point of being done.

Then the main field caught the 4 man break that had been off the front and basically sat up. We almost got back to the main field, but then guys started attacking. however, we were close enough to know we could do it at this point. About a mile and a half before the start/finish line, we finally managed to get back on. I instantly felt 20 times better at this point. Once I caught my breath, we were 1K from finishing our 2nd lap. I figured I might as well try to get some prime points since all I had to work for now was GC points. We started sprinting and I barely pipped a guy to get 3rd in the sprint which was good for 1 point.

I wanted to make it to the right hander into the cross wind section at the front of the group to get a sweet spot so that hopefully the gutter racing would be minimal. What happened next is one of the weirdest things I've ever encountered. I made it to the turn 1st. I didn't go hard to the corner, I just kept pedaling...actually soft pedaling. Heading west down the rough road with the cross wind, I would say I was riding about as fast as your average 40 year old woman rides around Lake Hefner on a hybrid. I get a couple minutes in at this pace expecting to jump onto the group as they pass and starting to get a little annoyed that no one is coming around. I glanced back and somehow I've got about a 100 yard gap on the field.

I increased the pace to about what Brandon and I ride on our way home from work...not too hard, maybe lower tempo range. A couple minutes later, a Park Place rider bridges up solo to me and we take off. Again not very hard, I was going about 70% of my FTP I would guess. About 10 minutes later, the official on a motorcycle rides up and tells us we have 1:15 on the field....about another 10 minutes its up to 2 minutes with 1 guy chasing 30 seconds ahead of the peleton. At this point I'm thinking we're probably going to get caught, but if we can make it over the hill before then, I'll be good cause I won't get dropped again.

We got through the cross wind section and made it to the tail wind section leading up to the hill. The official informs us that we now have a 3 minute gap with 3 guys chasing a minute back. Now I figured with the help of these other 3 guys, we could possibly make this break stick to the end. Long story short, that's what we did. I made a slight error at the end. I debated taking my last pull at the 1K to go sign, and sure enough, no one pulled through after that, so I was up front when the sprint started. Its a lot easier to jump when you're right on the strongest guys wheel as he's jumping. I felt like I could have won, but I was super stoked to get 3rd. I've never really been in that situation until then, so I learned something at least.

In the end there were a couple of guys a minute and a half back, but we put 4 minutes on the main field! The 3rd place finish in addition to my prime points got me a 6th in the overall GC. If only I could have done better in the time trial.......

I got the low down on Brian after the race was over. He had broken his femur and had to be air lifted to Ft.Worth. We drove out on our way home to check on him. He was in good spirits and hopefully everything works out well and he heals quickly.

Other than the crashes, it was a fun weekend overall. The DNA guys killed it in the cat 3 class. Andy missed winning the GC by 1 point. It was also Tony's first race...A Texas stage race at that! He rode really smart getting 6th in the GC in the cat 5's