The Bike Transplant

Ok, once again I’m slacking but the last 4 weeks of training/racing have been pretty hectic, throw in work and there ya go…not alot of time or motivation to post.

So here’s the skinny. Platte River was not that great. 16th overall out of 30 some in my age category. My legs felt fresh, but I had a bad start from second row behind a guy who was slow out of the gate. I wasted alot of energy on the opening double track climb trying to pass guys. My legs freshed up and I had more than enough power to push the pace on the climbs and caught slower traffic. However, the second half of the course is pretty technical and I haven’t ridden it enough lately to be fast. 2 laps though both under 35 minutes is pretty good for me out there considering the marathon I did a couple years ago I managed a 41 minute as my best lap. I did real in a couple guys on the second lap but again gave some back on the finishing technical sections.

Now after that I had a couple weeks break and some hard training in between. Yay hill intervals.

I did a series of road races as training the last couple of weekends. First was the Capital City Criterium in Lincoln Nebraska. Fun but rough course. Crits are hard races, no I mean painful races. In the case of the cat 5’s 30 minutes of time trialing/sprinting. I got a good position on the starting line for this race. The pace was immediatley fast with our first few laps over 25mph. After that I set into a pace to see who the competition was going to be. For some reason we never got a solid peloton to form and instead it turned into utter chaos with attack after attack  on the first few laps. A 2-man break went and I missed the chance to jump the gap. After that a second 2 man chase group formed again missed that jump. Nate Wigdahl and myself teamed up and went to work realing in the chase. Got them with 9 laps to go and we all teamed up to work on realing in the 2 leaders which had a minute on us. The four of us brought it to under 45 seconds but needed more time. In the process we lapped the entire field but found ourselves competing for 3rd place. On the final lap I readying myself for the long straightaway sprint into the headwind. Nate jumped first, I finally went hard and managed to sprint into 4th overall with Nate taking it by about 6 inches. The result, 4th overall and 2nd in my age category in the cat 5 race.

Then this past weekend Becky and I went to Norfolk Nebraska for the Norfolk cycling weekend. Saturday was a road race, boo only 32 miles for cat 5’s and then sunday was another crit. The road race was fun with rain expected at the start and cold and windy. 21 of us rolled out of stanton at 10:15 for the cat 5 race. A couple of small breaks on the flat section of golf course road. Kevin and myself helped control those.  Once south bound on hwy 15 one guy kept riding of the front on the rollers/hills. I worked to real him in the first time. Afterwards (my bit of work done for a while or so I thought) I settled into the peloton for a little R&R. Dude went again and then people started talking whos going to real him in this time. When the group went it seemed indecisive with too many waiting too long to make the jump. I waited for some air to open so I could go (thanks guy in front of me for waiting so long) but at that point the distance was too large for my legs to want to gap. I got caught in the middle and rode solo for the next 5 miles with the gap to the leaders continually growing an my gap to the chasers also expanding (yikes no man’s land). Finally a guy bridged up to me from the chase group and we set about working to close the gap. Now with less then 12 miles to go. We bridged up to some other riders that got shed from the leaders as we turned onto hwy 57 north into the headwind. We sat on their wheel for about a mile and decided to push since we could see the leaders just up the road. I asked guys to go with us as we moved to the front but after a quick kick I looked back and we had already gapped them. 1 guy bridged up (Sam from Team Type 1) The 3 of us worked for the next few miles with a hard pace but couldn’t quite get there, we finished less than a minute behind the leaders. Maybe a few more miles and we would have been there. The result 9th on the day. Garmin data showed an average pace of 22 mph (not bad with 15 miles of rollers and a good stiff headwind for 10) and an average HR of 169 (again higher because of the chase efforts I laid down). Our pace during the chase though was a higher average close to 25.

After some good recovery that night (ice bath, hot tub, foam roller) my legs felt good for Sundays crit. during the crit, all hell would break loose, literally. Rain started right as our race did. It continually got worse and worse. Kevin, Nate and I moved to the front immediately to set a hard pace to control the race and try and drop whomever we could early. I moved into 4th wheel a couple times early but everytime could feel the uneasiness of riders around me who were not comfortable in the rain. After that I commmitted to staying at the front. I led most of the race and with 5 laps to go they shortened the race when hail starting comign down. I led out the final lap but got passed on the final straight. Final position 4th again but was good enough for 2nd and a silver medal in the state championships.  I have video from the race (thanks Becky) which I’ll post later.

Thanks everyone for the support. Overall I’m satisfied with the results early in the season. These have been training races so far and my A races are quickly approaching now in July and August. Time to kick it into high gear.

So after a good ride on sunday and then low key night last night…my legs are feeling good. Though the body is a little tired b/c the house was warm last night and Army insisted on providing additional warmth through cuddling..thanks cat.

As I mentioned Platte River is this weekend…hopefully no mechanicals..x’ing fingers. Should be about 2 laps with lots of climbing..woohoo…*legs grunt*

Mike F. and I are heading down to check it out tonight, and then probably have some hill intervals on thursday to open the legs and prepare for the flogging they will recieve this weekend.

Stay frosty…J

Alright…wow what a race. Swanson is always a good time. Mike had a great race his first time out and looks like he’s gonna go Platte River now too next weekend. He finished 6th in the masters 45+ race out of 12…way to go for a first mountain bike race ever.

Now, as for me, I got 8th in the sport open category. Here’s how it went down. Warm-up legs felt good, HR was in the target area i was looking for. On the opening sprint I pushed hard and settled into 7th wheel and for the first time ever didn’t feel like I over did it. Normally my legs blow about 5 minutes in, the point I nervously awaited in the race. Approaching the nasty rivine that gets everyone, I settled in and gave the guy in front of me some space incase someone botched the exit and there was a backup. It was a good call as sure enough the guy in 4th screwed up. I dismounted and ran past, remounted and got going again, now in 6th. Again, legs have not blown yet…amazing. I chased up to the lead 5 guys who had opened a good gap due to the chaos behind. As I approached there wheel…feeling great. I hit a small piece of debre in a turn which threw my rear wheel out, and causing my right bar end and shoulder to make contact with a small tree, I was down. Remounted quick but as I got going, my chain was off. Quick dismount and chain fix back on. But now caught in traffic, like 20 guys traffic. I got onto the back of a group and spent the rest of lap 1 trying to get around as many as a I could with the limited passing there was.

Once in the start/finish area open field at the end of lap 1, I passed about 5 more guys and reentered the singletrack. On lap 2 I caught up to a couple more and chased as hard as I could. Lap 3 was the same. My legs never blew, in fact, although the efforts hurt particularly b/c I had to do short sprints to pass, I had the most fun ever.

All in all this was my fastest race ever at swanson, 1hr 15min. Probably had the legs to win the day considering I went from 6th back to 20th back to 8th and only finished a couple minutes behind the winners.

Here’s the data from the Garmin upload. Which might I also say is awesome…Its awesome to review the data and say yep…that was a pass, that was hard or to see where i can make up time and push harder. The low HR (under 180) areas are traffic LOL.

Here’s some shots that Becky took, as you can see she brought trey out which was cool to have him around enjoying the nice spring day.

putting in an effort…and ready for another lap

Last night I tested out the new Garmin 305 on my training ride at Swanson Park in Bellevue. For the technophile bike geek these kinda things represent the ultimate in user satisfaction. So I uploaded the data to my mapmyride and training peaks accounts. Here’s what it looks like in mapmyride.

 

You can view the data stored on training peaks here.

Alright, looks like those who had registered with the subscription to my blog more than 3 days ago weren’t recieving blog updates. Not sure why. Problem fixed. I have posted a couple of updates in the last couple days, in particular please read yesterdays blog “Wear Purple” which can be found below or at this link.

I’ll be posting a fresh blog probably this afternoon or tonight as it looks like I won’t be racing this weekend if the weather continues like this. Le Sigh