Thursday, October 18, 2012

Rivercross at Wheeler Park

 The 2nd race of the season was not a good one for me. The course was awesome, but I had a few issues with my bike set up and never felt like I could get going in any kind of rhythm. I ended up 6th out of 8th, and even went a lap down on a really long course. Definitely not the result I was looking for. It seems like every time I have a really bad race, I start to question my fitness and or race skills. I usually have to drill it for a few days afterwards to make sure everything is ok and I can still put out some watts.
Anyway, the big Ruts and Guts 3 day race is this weekend, so hopefully things will go better this time around. It looks like there's some pretty good competition signed up so far.

My buddy Andy Chasteen was at the races taking pictures. Awesome as always!













Tuesday, October 9, 2012

OC Criss Cross 2012

Well, the first race of the CX season is a done deal. My race team (Team Undiscovered) put the race on. The course was pretty good. Actually, I thought it was really good. It had a little bit of everything I guess you could say, plus minimal dismounting.  Anyway the weather was cold. I decided to do the Pro 1/2 race instead of the masters race. I guess this year I want to focus primarily on the harder races. I think that gives you the most opportunity for improvement. I might double dip the next few local races and do both races if they're separated a little, but for the most part I think I'm gonna do the 1/2 races.

We got our new black CX skinsuits. I think they look  pretty tough.
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There were only 9 riders in the 1/2 field and I ended up 5th. My bike set-up felt pretty good. I think my pacing needs work. I started too fast, well, at least a little too fast for me. It robs a lot of overall time if you ride too much outside of yourself. I eventually settled in and had a nice epic last lap battle and had to sprint for the 5th spot.

Rob made a video of our race. It really got pretty strung out. That's me sprinting it out at the end.


Here's a video from Rob's bike of the cat 3 race. Gives you a nice feel of the course.


The next race is this weekend near downtown OKC, then the infamous Ruts n' Guts in Tulsa.

Monday, October 1, 2012

Race Report: Bison Classic Road Race

Well, I guess the road race season is officially over. It's kind of ironic that the road season started out the same way it finished. Racing in the rain. Shortly after we hit the road towards Shawnee on Saturday morning, it started raining and didn't really stop the rest of the day. I debated on either doing the masters 40+ race and possibly getting another state championship, or doing the cat 1/2/3 race. The 1/2/3 race was not a state race as this was the age based state race. I decided to do the 1/2/3 race because I thought it would be nice to finish off the season doing a race with a bunch of my team mates.

Before we started, I knew the race was going to be a little weird. There were only 14 riders total. 6 were Bicycles of Tulsa, 2 were Tulsa Tough, and the last 6 were our Team Undiscovered guys. It would have been a totally different race is there would have been some other teams in the mix, but it was what it was. We still rolled pretty fast the whole way, so that was good.

We were basically doing a neutral roll out for a couple of miles then 3-20 mile loops, followed by about a 10 mile return segment. It seemed kind of cold and wet when we started. I was hoping we would go hard from the go just to try to warm up. We did, and the race pretty much started off like I thought it would. There were several attacks early on, and pretty soon the guy I thought would take off did (Justin Remple- Bicycles of Tulsa). He managed to get further and further up the road. I would guess he had a minute and a half before we started to bring him back. It was a little after our first lap when we started a little rotation going into the headwind.

We were bringing Justin in pretty quick, and we kind of made a little plan to let Rob roll away once we got within 5-10 seconds. That didn't work out because as just before we got into position, one of the BOT (Bicycles of Tulsa) riders attacked. The next lap was pretty rough. It seemed like we were always behind the 8 ball. It seemed like every move we were in was bad number wise. There was always 2 BOT guy to 1 of us. Brian got into a move midway through the second lap that was basically like that. I bridged up to his group, but another BOT rider came with me. I think one of the Tulsa Tough riders came up also to join the other Tulsa Tough rider that was in the group.

I guess once both of the Tulsa Tough riders made it into the group, it pretty much neutralized the move because they were the only guys interested in driving the break. Sure enough it all came back together again around the time we were starting on the long road heading west to finish our 2nd lap. It started raining harder at this point in the race, and it was starting to get hard to see. I was trying to peek over the top of my  glasses, which sort of worked. A couple of miles later, one of the Tulsa Tough riders rolled away with a BOT rider. After they got a few seconds up, Rob took off and joined them. They weren't putting much time on us, but the main group seemed content to just roll along really slow. I decided to try to bridge up and 1 other BOT rider came with me.

I liked the mix of the break and tried to encourage everyone to work. Rob, the Tulsa Tough rider (Davis? Hale) and myself seemed like the ones diving the break. John Moore and Ben Silk (both BOT riders) would one or the other take a pull maybe every 4 or 5 rotations, but it seemed like we were putting time on the rest of the group. I couldn't see every time I looked back, and I asked Rob how much time we were up. He told me about 20 seconds. I couldn't believe it, and as we turned north to start our last lap, I saw that it was only 2 riders more riders trying to bridge. It was Little Ryan from our team and another BOT rider, Ryan Fiddler.

It seemed like the break started to stall out a little after they caught on. Somewhere around the 20 miles to go point, Rob was on the front, and had been for a little while. I was almost at the back, and my intention was to roll through and pick things back up. The next thing I knew, Davis, Ben and myself had established a nice little time gap. That was pretty much the race. The 3 of us got organized and took off the rest of the way. I didn't know if Ben was getting tired or he was trying to set himself up at the end as his pulls started getting shorter. The last couple miles I pretty much quit working. I couldn't find anybody as far back as I could see, so it was all cat and mouse the rest of the way.

Davis took off at the 500 meter point and I came around him at the 150 meter point and got the win. We caught a few masters guys in between then and kind of had to thread the needle, but it all worked out.
It was a good day overall for the team. Rob and Little Ryan got 4th and 5th, and Judson and Brian got 8th and 10th. Sarah and Carol also got 1st and 3rd in the women's cat 4 race, so we're all pretty stoked to end the season on a positive note. I've already semi stripped down my caad 10, and I'll probably be riding my cross bike until January or so. We're jumping straight into CX season with the first race this weekend.