Rage Against the Punchbowl

Well, this was an interesting weekend for me. Did the bike racing thing on Saturday up at Devil's Punchbowl - that was an interesting $80 training ride. Yeah, it was a hard effort on the day, basically a 2.5 hour, 48 mile solo TT for me. The big dogs dropped my weak ass in the 35+ race in the first 12 minutes or so. A quick review of the SRM file showed a 6 ish minute effort at 5 W/kg that cracked me - not such a good day for me, it looks like.

I rode hard tempo for the remainder of the day, seein' as how I drove 100 miles for the pleasure of gettin' my ass handed to me - I had to get some bike ridin' in! I didn't seem to slow down too much from lap to lap, maybe a minute or two fade per lap.

lap 1 was 48:30 ish
lap 2 was 49:30 ish
lap 3 was 51:00 ish

That punchbowl course is pretty darn hard - though, I think the Tour de Malaga race in Wenatchee, WA is more of a pure climbers race. I sucked on that course, too, though! LOL!


caught a few guys on the last lap, and one of them started attacking me in the last couple k... couldn't quite figure that one out!?!

anyway, good hard day in the saddle, and glad I made the trip. Maybe next year I'll do it again.

Sunday was something I'd been looking forward to for quite some time - the Coachella music festival in Indio.

I'm a huge Rage Against the Machine fan and when it was announced they were reuniting at the Coachella music festival, me and a few guys from work committed to venturing out to the desert.

Funny thing, as we were just leaving my house, we rolled up on Floyd Landis at a stop light - he was texting someone on his phone. We said hi, and he was into it when my buddy's wife asked to snap a cameraphone pic. He put on a big smile.

Anyway, at Coachella, I "posted up" about 60 ft just to the left of center stage two acts before Rage was set to come on. Crowded House played and that was comfortable - no "real" invasion of my personal space so to speak... then the crush began as Manu Chao hit the stage:

http://www.myspace.com/officialmanuchao

Holy crap - I've gone to a few big arena concerts in my day and done the stand in front of the stage thing, but this was pretty unbelievable. I kind of just relaxed as the crush began, glad I'm a six footer, as I could get fresh air... I felt really sorry for the shorter folk, who #1 couldn't see crap, and had to essentially, "breath off of someones neck".

Really bad stankage wafting in that sea of humanity for 1 hour as Manu Chao did their set. Then the REAL CRUSH began - holy crap - I found the best thing for me to do was to stand on my tippy toes and elevate a bit in the human sardine bin up their. I was literally levitating in the crowd, it was that tight...

I kept telling myself to relax - usually I don't do so well in tight spaces - but the relaxing thing worked real good. I just kept telling myself that it would ease up a bit when Rage came on as the crowd would inevitably push forward...

Remember when I said I was 60 ft from the stage awhile back? Well, the ten minutes before Rage came on were some pretty long minutes, never really feared for my life, but perhaps I should have! People were getting lifted out of the steel railed enclosure in front of the stage behind me at a pretty constant rate - and as they were being pulled out from behind, I quickly found myself pinned up against the rear of the enclosure 100ft or so from the stage. That was a bit of work there, pinned up against that SOB - kept havin' to squirm a bit to get enough space to breath - today, my pointy hip bones are kinda hurtin' as I found the best way to keep position and still be able to breath was to turn sideways and let my hip rest up against the railing/fence. Ahhh, that was a comfortable spot.

So, 7 years of waiting, and 2.5 hours of work led to this memorable moment I won't forget:



I've never experienced anything quite like it - pretty crazy to have 60,000 people in unison jumping up and down. I didn't even really have to do anything, it was kind of like floating... Pretty crazy.

But that damn rail - I had to "tap out". Gettin' out of that sardine can wasn't an easy feat - had to time it just right as the crowd surged forward and spin around and fall over the railing.

I was pretty sure I was going to read about someone dying at that show in this morning's newspaper, but it turned out to be a safe affair. Rage put on an awesome show - super tight - as if they never stopped playing together - really good sound. A night to remember for the show and the work involved to see "Testify" up close and personal.

So, which was the harder effort?? "Posting up" in Rage Against the Machine sea of humanity, or the Devil's Punchbowl?

The supercomputer says that the Punchbowl effort was more taxing - my hips disagree though!

Motivation...

Nothing like trying to "not get dropped" to provide the necessary motivation to go pretty damn hard - that was the case this past saturday!

So, I toe'd the line at the San Diego Cycl-vets omnium this weekend.

Friday was a two loop affair (8.2 mile, 13.4k) TT on fiesta island. Went pretty fast for me for this time of year - just under 19 minutes on 286 watts. Felt like I underperformed 10-15W or so. Guess I need to ride the TT bike more than the night before for 20 minutes!? :-)

Seriously, I probably would have only needed one or two good rides on the TT bike to feel more normal - just wasn't used to sitting down for 20 minutes straight... D'oh!

RR on Saturday was an eye-opener - pretty crazy for me actually. Got dropped on the very first hill - while I was making 5.7 W/kg for 3.5 minutes and 5.1 W/kg for 6 minutes.

Hey, this master's racing is supposed to be easier than the Pro 1,2 stuff! :-)

Oh well, guess I just need to lose another 5kg's! It's possible, I reckon. But damnit, cheeseburgers taste good. And porkchops taste good, too!!!

Here's the file screenshot when I popped:



you'll see that I surged a bit to cross a gap (just prior to 3 min into the effort) to get to a little group of about six guys that were shreddin' the field. I got on and recovered a bit, but the next little surge put me at my limit. I never looked at the PM, mind you, when I'm racin' you either make the group, or you don't - it don't matter what the gizmo's are tellin' ya!

Guess, what, I didn't make the group - hell, that's bike racin'. Next year, maybe there'll be a headwind up those climbs! :-)

Sunday (today) was a crit - rain shower moved through during the 45 minutes prior to the race, soaking everyone and the course down. Real tentative on the wet roads for me - dude, I like my skin!.

I had surprisingly heavy legs, no real top end so to speak. No moves got more than 10 seconds or so on the field, so I just stayed put and rode what felt like hard tempo pace to stay in the field. Moved to the front with 5 to go and tried to stay in the top 10-15. Slotted my way onto Brett and Mark's wheel just prior to the last corner, probably 10th wheel or so - but that was just about all I could muster. Maybe wound up in the top 15. Just don't have the snappity-snap like the big dogz!

Well - that was a pretty good spring campaign for me - the most bike racin' I've done in a really long time. Probably more racing in the last couple months than I've done in the last 9 years combined. Good to be back, I'll say!

I'll be taking next week off from racing, it'll be a nice little break.

Crap, better get my taxes done here pretty soon too - those are due next month, right! ;-)

If you don't try...

...you win nothing!

I don't know for sure when I heard that - probably during some CBS tour de france coverage, or maybe it was ESPN... but it was pretty memorable for me, those words of phil ligget (or was it paul sherwin?). This weekend of racing was a bit odd in that respect - In the earlier race of this year, I've pretty much just been taking what was given - you know, if it is pretty clear that things are going to stay together, well, don't bother trying anything - it's just futility!

Well, bike races aren't WON with that kind of mentality, are they!?

Saturday was an interesting day down at the Del Mar Crit here in SoCal - rode down to the race with my teammates, Kevin and Fran. Had a good chat with Fran who comes from Connecticut - we got to talkin' about some of the terrain around Wilton (which is where I worked for Brand S back in the day). Speaking of which, Wilton, back in 1998 or so, was the first experience I had with a power meter. My boss back then gave me an SRM to train with and/or play around with - I can remember religiously setting that thing up -> spinning the cranks backwards and everything to get the zero offset right... Course, I don't ever remember pushing any buttons on the controller after that (i.e, I don't know if I ever zero'd it out before a ride...) ah, crap, those files from back in the day all died at the same time that IBM thinkpad hard drive that I downloaded everything to kicked the can...

Anyway, I digress..

I felt like a bit of an oddball on the ride down to the Del Mar race, everyone had their new bikes all set up and dialed in. We are riding Cannondale system six frames, and are left on our own to get the rest dialed in to our liking. Well, I've got a bit of a power meter affliction, so I've been delaying building my new frame up until I'd gotten the whole power meter thing worked out. The cannondale uses an SI bottom bracket, so that meant I'd need a new SRM powermeter - Jason Yanota over at www.thebikeage.com hooked me up with a deal on the PM portion, and I figured that all I needed was an SI crankarm and lockring (www.wiredbike.com) to complete the assembly...

Well, as it turns out, the systemsix cdale shipped with their carbon crank and BB - not your standard SI hollowgram BB assembly... Not sure what my options are now - I'll be giving the folks at Cdale a call tomorrow to see what needs to happen to make this thing work!

Anyway, I might be racing that beast (the frame looks pretty cool, though, the aerodynamics freak in me is kinda wigged out about the shear size of that head tube!), without power. Oh, the shock and horror! :-)

So, the Del Mar race was pretty cool - it was a parking lot crit in the main area of the Del Mar fairgrounds - you started out near the main entrance to the horse race stadium and worked your way out to where the big ferris wheel is during the fair. Had a bunch of teammates in there, Dave, Kevin, Fran, Mike - it was neat to have familiar faces in there! It was pretty darn cold, and I seemed to have a bit of an issue with that, as a couple times when I tried to go hard, my left pinkie toe (then later, my whole left leg...) seized up in a weird cramp.

Hung out during the race and gave it a go a time or two - the course had a long finish stretch where I wound up officially taking 12th on the day - a few guys came around me at the line, my left leg was a screamin' - couldn't really put any pressure on the pedals with that side. Oh well, that's bike racin'!

Sat around and watched my teammate, Kevin, ride a real strong race in the subsequent 45+ race - he wound up taking fourth overall in the series - if only I was 10 years older, I might have been able to help him in those last few laps! Give me a few more years, buddy, I'll be old enough sooner or later! :-)

Here's the screenshot of the days 35+ race:



Today (Sunday) I took a solo trip up to Ontario and did the 3's race immediately followed by the 30+ race.

My observation about the few 3's races I've done lately, is that the crits don't really get hard consistently - by that, I mean it goes hard for a bit, but then everyone sits up and recovers. A good example of this is after I drilled it hard first big hump in the 3's race screenshot below:



and then when I eased up a bit, everyone sat up - so I gave it a go again for a wee bit. My thinking was, surely, someone would sense that it was a great time to counter and give it a go - instead, all I got was a curt "why'd you stop pedaling" from the Ranchos guy on my wheel. Sounds like someone had some reserves to give it a go...

Anyway, after that bit of futility, I wound up just sitting at the back and waiting for the 30+ race. Well, I did move up a bit with two laps to go and try to sprint, yeah, I'm all fast twitch baby! ;-)

Got housed pretty good in the finale - oh well...

30+ race started easy - tailgunned it for 10 minutes or so - well, almost tailgunned it - Thurlow Rogers was behind me tailgunnin' it even better than me! Things hotted up after 15 minutes or so and I snuck my way into a move or two...

With 3 to go or so, I followed a move by Frank Schroeder (THE MAN behind Schroeder Iron) and once he and I were covered by the Cynergy boyz, I kept on going - ya know, if you don't try, you win nothing!!!

I got small gap and before you know it, Thurlow (Synance), Bradley (Schroeder Iron), and a Cynergy guy came up to me - had to give it everything I had to stick with them as they flew past me. Sat on for a bit and then rolled through (mistake...) near the S/F line with two to go.

Wound up gettin' dropped by these guys with a lap and a half to go - totally tapped at that point! Sat up as the field went by and that was that. Hey, that's bike racin'!

Felt pretty good on the day - no leg issues or whatnot, and feel satisfied with trying to do something on the day.

Next week!

Peace,

-kraig

Indio/Fill

Well, had a bit of a bummer race over in Indio this past weekend - but I did give it a go! Sometimes you roll the dice a bit, or talk yourself out of something when it comes to the finale. I'm still kickin' myself a bit for how things went down during the Indio trip.

First things first, though, before I get to the finish... Pretty easy first half of the race (small field out in Indio - maybe 40 guys?), a small group of ~6 got away around midway with good representation from the big squads... I was thinkin' about going across the gap, but Eddie Monnier (yeah, he was pedalin' this weekend out in the desert) and a couple other guys had a similar idea, so I pretty much followed their wheels and basically just rolled through to help bring it back together.

It got kind of hard a bit later on with some attacks, and that's when the socal points leader (richard c) from the Amgen/Giant squad punched it pretty good - I followed him, and one and a half laps of futility later, we were re-absorbed with just over three laps to go.

I recovered quickly, and knew I needed to slot myself into the top 3 coming out of the last corner (head crosswind for the last 300m or so) - well, the group totally slowed down in the last few turns, and I talked myself out of just drillin' it with 500m to go... Instead, I rolled the dice and came up snake eyes in the finale. Way too far back and going' way to slow for this type I slow twitch guy to have a chance at a placing.

Learned something on that deal - again! I'm a caveman, remember...

Sunday, I flogged myself doing a "fill" ride through deluz - nary a flat spot on that ride - so it starts to hurt a wee bit near the end. Been awhile since I've done one of those - I keep tellin' myself that I needed to do one of those "fill" rides in order to have the sensations fresh in my memory before I chipped away at this series of articles a bit more:

http://www.biketechreview.com/op_ed/stripped_down_2.htm

no more excuses now! Stay tuned!