Thursday, September 27, 2012

Different Route Every Day September Progress...

It's not working out quite like I was hoping, but I'm pretty sure I can say I haven't taken a duplicate route either way all month. The problem is that really, there's only so many ways in any direction out of my neighborhood. Also there's only a few ways to get around some of the local highways. There are a ton of roads that I've gone down that I never have before, which is pretty cool. There are a lot more little neighborhood parks that I never really realized were there.

I have discovered a few new routes that I'll probably work into the daily commute rotation. I've definitely gotten lost a few times. Well, not lost, but caught in a circle of doubling back after running into a dead end. Not too big of a deal, but I'm usually running tight on time, so a couple of times the commute ended up being a time trial.

I've also found a few shortcuts on the cyclocross bike. I think I need to explore a few more of those.

Monday, September 17, 2012

2012 Oklahoma State Championship Road Race.

I guess the race couldn't have gone much better. I ended up making it into the winning break, and won the 3 man field sprint at the end. Right before we started the race, I figured our chances of doing well were going to be tough. There were a few more guys that didn't preregister that showed up. I would guess there were probably around 30 cat 1's and 2's altogether. Most of the in state heavy hitter cat 1's didn't show, but it was a pretty good quality field overall. DNA and the Bicycles of Tulsa team each had quite a few riders. Still, we were going to need a perfect storm scenario for things to go well.

The weather was pretty much perfect, and as we rolled out it took about 10 seconds for the race to get animated. Lots of attacks and counter attacks on the first lap, but nothing going anywhere. The wind wasn't blowing much and there wasn't anything like a big hill to cause any kind of separation. I kind of figured the race was going to end up in a field sprint. I was basically just trying to conserve and sit in, but keep an eye on what was going on. We were doing 5 laps around Draper lake. Around about the time we were hitting the marina area where we started for the second time, I noticed a dangerous combination of 3 riders had managed to slip away.

The 3 riders were Chad Hodges (DNA), Chris Zenthoefer (Tulsa Tough), and Ben Silk (Bicycles of Tulsa). All 3 guys were cat 2's and were on the 3 biggest teams represented. I had to make a split second decision and saw an opportunity as we were catching the cat 4 women group with their lead and follow cars. There was a very narrow alley to jump from the field, through all that, and up to the break. I figured maybe a couple of guys could possibly manage to get through, but not everybody. I jumped as hard as I could, and as luck would have it, nobody came with me. I was in do or die mode because with that combination, I knew it had an excellent chance to be the winning break. Even though the cat 1's and 2's were racing together, there would be a state champion in each category this year.

I managed to catch on, but I was pretty winded. I tried to sneak up on them as quietly as possible and even managed to sit on for a couple of rotations and recover before they knew I was there. It was still pretty early in the race as we still had 40ish miles to go, but even though it was hard, I think it's still easier than the hard surging that would be going on behind us, not to mention a lot less frustrating. There's not much racing that's worse than being in a race where you miss a break with lots of the escaped riders team mates left in the field. You're basically just rolling around and racing for 5th or 8th or whatever.

Anyway, it didn't take us too long for us to get a pretty good gap. The first time we hit the dam, it looked like we had a minute or so. Nobody really gave us any time gaps, so we never really knew. The second time we hit the dam, I estimated we had at least 3 minutes on the field because as we were at the end of the dam, I couldn't see anything as far back as I could see. Everybody worked really well in the break. Nice and smooth for the most part.  A little before we started our last lap, I was starting to run low on fuel. I still had plenty of water, a little cytomax, and a Gu packet. I took the gu and chugged my cytomax, and just as we were hitting the hilly section on the north end of the course, I started feeling better.On our last lap, I pretty much knew we were not going to get caught. I started to go into serious conservation mode and save as much energy as possible for when things would get hard again.

Chad, Ben and myself are more the small sprinter type guys, whereas Chris is a bigger powerhouse breakaway type guy. I knew it would be in his best interest to not sprint with us up the finishing hill, so sure enough with about 6 miles to go he started attacking the break. On his third attack we dropped Ben, so now it was down to 3. There was probably a mile and a half to go when we hit the hilly section the last time. Chris attacked again and I started chasing first with Chad behind me. I really wanted to try to be in the back at the 1 kilometer to go point, but as luck would have it, I was first.

Really, the last mile we overall rolled pretty slow. I kept one eye on Chris and Chad and the other on if we might be getting caught looking behind us. Chris attacked 1 last time at the 500 meter point. I hesitated so Chad would be forced to start first, and he did. This was right where I wanted to be, and at 200 meters I wanted to jump, but that's a long way to go when you're climbing. I guess somewhere around the 150-120 meter point I jumped and went to the right of Chad, and I saw Chad go left of Chris. I could see Chad out of the corner of my eye at first, but I just locked onto the finish line and went as hard as I could. I was pretty worried I would cramp when we started to sprint because every time we would react to Chris's attacks, I could feel it creeping on. I guess the other guys were hurting pretty good also, so it all worked out well. That was by far probably the most painful sprint I've done in a long long time, but it was worth it!

Super Sweet Photo by Biff Stephens

Chris, myself and Chad

Not a bad weekend for the 2 man wrecking crew of Brian Parks and myself!  The last road race of the year is in 2 weeks, then we jump right into some action packed cyclocross racing!

Saturday, September 15, 2012

Rough pre state road race week

As of right now, I'm pretty much ready to go for the state championship road race tomorrow. Somewhere around 90% I guess. Monday I didn't think I would be doing any racing. It felt like I had the flu or something as the day went on at work. I rode in, but actually had to get a lift home cause I was feeling so bad. By Wednesday morning I was feeling better. At least good enough to make it to the Wednesday night cyclocross practice.

I thought I had learned my lesson a few years ago about jumping right into hard cross riding without doing some kind of preparation a few weeks before (like running). It's pretty easy to pull a muscle, get injured, or best case be extremely  sore for several days after the cyclocross practice sessions without toughening yourself up first. I figured this year I would just kind of ease into it a few laps at a time in the practice sessions. Anyway, I started the last practice pretty fast and was getting racy with Chris Drummond and B$ and ended up pulling my groin muscle or something. There was a super high speed dismount section and a kind of weird dismount-turn and then run up a big hill section that were killing my fragile roadie legs.

Everything seems ok just riding, but I'm hoping I didn't screw up the first part of the cross season with a nagging injury before things have barely gotten started. It's a lot better today, so hopefully by next Tuesday, I'll be able to do a little light running and see how it feels. I got a couple new sets of tires for the cross bike, so I'm pretty pumped up to give those a try.

Anyway, the road race tomorrow should be interesting. Not sure how big the turnout is going to be, but the 1's and 2's will be racing together. The big difference this year is that the 1's and 2's will be scored separately, so there will be a cat 2 state champion this year. The only riders on the team in the race is Brian Parks and myself. That might make things a little more difficult, or it could be just about right, we'll see.

Monday, September 10, 2012

2012 State TT Etc.

So the state TT went ok. Not good result wise, but personal time wise, it was my fastest 38 kilometers. Normally the state TT is 40K, but this year they shortened the route by 2 kilometers. I'm not sure why. Maybe the parking area to start/finish proximity was bad and too many folks were getting in the way.
Anyway, the last time I did this race was two years ago. My goal then was to break an hour, which I barely did running around a 59:30 I think. This year I went a lot faster. The guy who started a minute ahead of me was my buddy Andy Chasteen, and Rob started a minute ahead of him.

Going out was mostly a gradual uphill into a light headwind. There were a few rollers, but nothing major. I kept timing different landmarks like shadows, signs, and trees, and I was definitely catching Andy. When we hit the turnaround, I would estimate it was down to somewhere around 30 seconds. In hindsight, I think I went a tad too hard on the way out, because I was hurting pretty bad. Mentally I thought since I had made up time, I could just put it in cruise control mode and just keep the same distance and everything would be fine result wise. It didn't work out that way as I lost all the time I had gained, and lost some also.

In the end, Jake Lasley pretty much smoked everybody. Not sure of his time, but I heard it was around  49:00. Will Gault got 2nd, and Rob got 3rd, running a 52:58. Andy got 4th with a 53:00. and I got 5th with a 53:28ish I think. If you add the 2:45 or so that it would take to do the extra 2K, that's still over 3 minutes faster than my last time. Oh well. It's like that line Ronnie Anderson used to say "I keep getting faster, but the competition just keeps getting better".

I decided to do a quick run through Medicine Park and hit the Big Rock climb, and do a Mt. Scott run while I was down there. I'm still not sure if the extra effort helped any or just made my legs sorer today. I did pick up a mild cold last week after the CX practice, and it seems to have gotten worse. I guess I'm gonna lay low and try to take it easy for the next few days. The big State road race is this coming weekend, so we'll see how that goes.

The different route to and from work thing seems to be going ok so far. It's getting tough remembering if I've ridden down a particular street or not yet. I've definitely found a couple new sections that are pretty cool.

I really want to hit the CX practice this Wednesday, but I'm not sure how that's gonna work out as of right now. Even though I went pretty easy last time, I'm still feeling it a little bit today.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

CX season starts today!

So I guess today was the official first practice night of the year at the Will Rogers park. The weather was a little hot, but it was still fun. It's amazing how rusty your CX skills get after you haven't done it in several months. I got a new bike to race and ride this year. I decided to sell my other 2 bikes, and get 1 really nice bike. It's a Cannondale Super X. It's pretty light and rides really sweet. Today was the first time I really got to ride it, and so far, I like it a lot.

I didn't go too hard in the practice race. I went hard for 2 or 3 laps, then took it easy, then finished hard with another 2 or 3 fast laps. I did a few little repeats through the 180 switchbacks and dismount section, but I tried not to do the run up and hill climb sections too many times. The first time of the season I run a lot has a tendency to give me some pretty good muscle soreness for several days, and I'm trying to stay somewhat fresh or maybe "not all beat up" would be a better way to put it, for the state TT race this weekend.

There's state championship races for the next 3 weekends actually. The individual TT is first, then the category based road race, and finally the age based road race. There's a weekend off and then it's pretty much cyclocross season after that.

I've been thinking about the route I usually take on my commute to work every day, and I think I'm going to try something a little different this month.I'm going to take a different route to work every day, both ways, to and from work, through the month of September. There's something kind of cool in going down a road that you've never been on in a town that you've lived your whole life in. I like taking different ways  now and again, and it's always some kind of adventure, but I never do it enough.

Anyway, if you're interested in seeing the routes, click on the Strava link on the right side of this page and you can enlarge it to see my route for the day. I may ride extra before my commute starts, but the points between work and home will hopefully be at least 75% roads I've never taken before, and never the same as any other day this month.