What I learned racing in 2010

2010 was a fun year. As a team, it was our first year to compete together, and as always, I learned a few new things here and there. I've been trying to write down all year what I thought was something worthwhile, and here is my list:

1- Racing a category 1-2 road race or crit is cut throat. It reminds me of racing A-pro in BMX. Even guys with a ton of fitness have to learn a lot in order to compete. The thing is, everybody is fast, but it's like jumping in to play chess with a bunch of master chess players. If you can survive a race, and observe how the best guys do it, you learn a lot every time. It's a fine line between being in the mix and getting spit off the back.

2- If you're used to riding/racing with alloy clincher wheels, running carbon Zipp tubulars with Vittoria tubular tires is like cheating. Being lighter and more aero is one thing. The best thing is how hard you can corner with them. There's a couple demo sets at the shop I work at( Schlegel bikes) that I've been fortunate to borrow at several races last year.

3- This is something that I should have already known, but I guess I had to find out the hard way. An 11-25 or 26 cog set is a good gear for hilly road races. An 11-26 however, is not a good gear ratio for a fast, flat pro 1-2 crit in Texas. You get gapped to easy coming out of corners and having to change your cadence from too big of a jump. An 11-21 or 11-23 is a much better choice.

4- Save energy to "power through" slow sections during cyclocross races. This can be sand, mud, or a short steep hill. This also somewhat applies to road racing. You can put a huge amount of space on someone in a short amount of time if you do it right.

5-Bunny hopping is an essential skill in cyclocross. It's also good for avoiding crashes if you have to jump up on a curb.

6- Time management is very important for training time if you have a full time job and a family. Thats good in that my wife and I had our 2nd baby last November. I haven't had much spare time to keep this blog updated, but I got a new phone that will allow me to do post race reports on the way home from races as well as maybe some more how to stuff at the shop.

The 2011 race season is right around the corner. We've added a couple more riders to our team and have got several rides in together. Should be a fun year.

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.

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!

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.

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!

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

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.