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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Redbud, Cors #2, and the Exfuse crit

The Redbud is not a real race (although it thinks it is) so I'll keep it short. Rob , Jeremy and me participated, rode hard, broke up the field to bits, had fun, kept riding, and I for one was sore for 2 days afterwards. Good race simulation workout.

The CORS event #2 was time trial at Overholser. The same course as the OKC Velo TT series thats currently going on. I made a couple of major changes to the frankenbike. Aaron Smathers was gratious enough get my fit dialed in on the bike, and I must admit, it feels 10X better (thanks Aaron!). I've been working on a rear wheel disc cover modification, but after working on it for the 2 days prior to the event, all I had to show for it was some torn up hands. The weather conditions were much better than the last TT, so I basically used the same wheel configuration- Flashpoint 80mm front-Powertap with 32 hole open pro rear.

Once again the race went well for our team. Jeremy was able to borrow a bike and got 1st. Rob and I both took a minute off our last times to get 2nd and 3rd. We all set new personal best times. It was 1 of my goals this season to break into the 17's on this course and I got it with a 17:53. Hopefully I can get my wheel covers finished or borrow a disc for the next TT.

The Exfuse crit ended up being one of the strangest races I've ever done. The race course is on a housing addition loop out on 122nd and N.Eastern, but with no houses built yet. Around 8/10 of a mile loop with 2 good climbs. It pretty much rained the entire race. Park Place had 3 riders there: Cagle, Waddel, and Rempel. We had 4 with Jeremy, Rob, Parks and me. There were 3 or 4 Tulsa wheelmen plus some other strong local and regional riders. I think there were 16 starters altogether.

The race started off very well. Somehow Rob, Jeremy and I got in a 5 man break with Waddel and Rempel. At first the teams just kept attacking each other back and forth, which was working at first to distance ourselves from the rest of the field. Somewhere around 15 minutes in, we had a HUGH gap on the rest of the field. We let Jeremy roll away with Justin Rempel and I thought Waddel would not be ok with that and chase them down, but it ended up being Rob, Waddel and I in a second breakaway group. In hindsight, Rob and I should have kept the pressure on as waddel just sat on. We had such a large time gap that we assumed we had a top 5 in the bag. I knew Waddel was trying to slow our group down to allow Chad Cagle to leap frog up into our group. Sure enough, I see 2 guys chasing and closing fast.

Rob and I started to go hard again trading pulls each lap, but it wasn't enough as Cagle ended up catching us. The next several laps were rough as Rob and I took an old fashioned beating. The kind where they hit us a lot more than we hit them. Somehow we managed to survive all their attacks and even throw in a few of our own but, that type of riding is not efficient and even though we had lapped several riders, Jeremy and Justin managed to catch us with 2 laps to go.

I'm not sure if everyone knew exactly what was going on, but 3 riders left from the main field jumped on Jeremy and Justin and got a free ride back to our group. So with 2 laps to go, there's 2 riders a lap ahead of everyone and 7 guys left to fight it out over 3rd through 9th. To say I was furious at this point would be an understatement. How could we have blown a guaranteed 3 riders in the top 5? Instead of keeping cool and missing out on an opportunity to go heads up with 2 of the best sprinters around, I let emotion take over and punched it chasing an attack just as we were starting the last lap. All that accomplished was a nice lead out for the sprinters and the lucky tag along riders.

Still despite everything, we had a good race, we made money, we learned a lot, and had a good time in the process. For some strange reason, I really like racing in the rain. It's easy to place the blame on others but, the 3 of us were equally responsible for not finishing as well as we could have. Sometimes you have to make mistakes in order to learn how to do it a better way.

I guess its time to reset my FTP. I set a new 60 minute personal power record and my intensity factor for the 1 hour was 1.1 something. 2 more TTs this week and a crit on Sunday in Dallas.

CORS firehill crit #1 and a recovery week

I'm experimenting with a slightly different way of recovering this week. My average month is the typical 3 weeks on with 1 recovery week. The typical average TSS numbers for an "on" week for me this season have been in the 750-930 range, where as a typical "recovery" week has been in the 350-400 TSS range. I've noticed that in general I feel pretty bad through the recovery week. Kind of like going along full throttle and letting it off too abruptly and getting way out of a good rhythm.
Anyway, what I'm going to try thats different is shoot for my typical TSS number for a recovery week, but substitute some intensity for volume. So far I think it's working well. I'm feeling better than I usually do at this point in the week but, time will tell.

This week also had the first CORS (Central Oklahoma Race Series) event of the year. The race was a criterium at the Firehill venue. I guess winter decided to return for the afternoon because it got really cold and windy. Andy and I took off work at 5:30 and battled the traffic up to Edmond. I'm not sure if they were starting early or we were running late, but we registered as soon as we got there, pinned on our numbers, got on the bikes as we had "kitted up" at the shop,and what I thought to get was a 15-20 minute warm up. I started into my first warm up lap and as I was climbing the hill the first time, the officials started staging up the race start. I guess a 3-4 minute warm up is better than nothing.

Going into this race I have to admit I felt a little under pressure as a team. When we formed our cat2 group, our goal was to establish a strong team of cat 2's from the Oklahoma City area to compete with the other strong regional cat 1/2 teams from around here. The only problem is, it instantly puts a target on your back with the other up and coming teams to try to prove themselves. So far this year I think we've done a pretty good job getting ourselves established and having some respectable results.

Anyway, the race went well for us. The goal was for a win and as many of the top points spots as possible. So we accomplished that with getting the top 3 positions. In hindsight, I think we could have accomplished the same thing in a more efficient manner, probably even lapping the field, but I think over all we did an excellent job and got this series started on the right track.

The next race is a time trial on Wednesday at Overholser. The infamous Red Bud is also this weekend.