San Pedro, States, Haircuts

Crazy busy week at work, so not a lot of extracurricular activity goin' on!

I never found a home for the $80 haircut, so if you are in the LA area and can find a home for this thing, drop me a note:

kdubenteprise at roadrunner.com

and I'll send it out to you.

Anyway, last weekend had lots of LA traffic fun involved. Saturday we threw down in San Pedro. When I first saw the course I was a wee bit sketched out - the last two turns (basically a sweeper 180) were downhill and off-camber. Not so bad when you actually rode it, though.

Pretty rough pavement, as there were plenty of bottles flyin' out of cages - first couple of laps I took a direct blast of orange sticky mess on the ol' sunglasses - ah, hell, who needs to see anyway, right! :-)


Wow, the first few laps of the M35+ race was pretty quick - drilled it good for the first 10 minutes and then it let up. I made sure I was near the front, as I didn't really want anything to do with those dual 180's while hanging out at the back.

Well, the race didn't exactly come back together as I had anticipated - couple of guys got away midway through it, and since the Cynergy boyz and the Central Coast Magazine boyz missed it, I figured it'd eventually be brought back (mark scott of Cynergy was in the field). Anyway, it didn't come back and 60 minutes later we drag raced down the slightly uphill 500m finishing stretch.

I missed gettin' a wheel out of the last corner (or, maybe I just got too impatient and left the one I was on...) and basically just drilled it to the line. 15th on the day according to the official results:


http://www.scnca.org/schedule2007.asp?category=Masters+35%2B&event=San+Pedro+Grand+Prix&rank=1


Sunday saw another trip to the LA area and the M35+ SCNCA district crit champs. Full field! Well over a hundred guys out there and they were turning people away at the registration table. Good thing I pre-registered!

I raced on this course a few years ago, and remembered that it was probably one of the easier courses I've pedaled on. I think I averaged like 150W or something in the three's race... This time around, I kept my nose up front and made sure I didn't miss anything. Huge group got away on this sucker but was eventually brought back with a lap or so remaining due to a huge effort by a single Cynergy rider (don't know his name). I saw this effort first hand, as I was sitting third wheel for the two laps that this guy sat on the front and reeled in a 10 man break.


Well, I should have been paying more attention, cuz, I got totally swamped as the break got absorbed and those dudes in the break "dropped anchor". Went from third wheel to twentieth wheel with one lap to go...


Sat up on the last corner.

Lots of doodz out there! Biggest masters field I've done thus far here in socal! I reckon it'll be a similar size field this weekend when I toe the line at the manhattan beach grand prix - giddy-up.


Here's a couple SRM screenshots for you data freaks:


the last 9 minutes of the San Pedro GP:







and the entire M35+ SCNCA crit champs effort:

Eighty-dollar haircut

Did the Bicycle John's M35+ crit in Glendale, today. Really frustrating race for me - watched what seemed like 20 dudes go up the road. I tried to bridge up to the group while the gap was at 20-ish seconds, and came up a tantalizingly 50 meters short.



Pretty stupid on my part, though, really...


I jumped across to a group that was between the break and the field, and, in a lapse of clear thought, waited for someone else to seal the deal and close that last little bit just after I took what I felt was a freakin' hard pull to get us into striking distance... One more really hard pull is all we needed - and it didn't happen. By the time I recovered a bit, the field was on us, and the race was over.

S0, then, what did I do (besides takin' the piss out of myself)? Well, I hung out a bit, went hard a couple times to get my money and driving time's worth in - then went for a prime.


Hit it hard for a $75 "value" prime and a D.A.R.E. rider was on my wheel (if I remember correctly, this was the same guy who couldn't come through when we were tantalizingly close to the break earlier) - I gave that dude a sweet 700W leadout! He sat up after taking the prime and I just kept going - simply because I wanted to get some goin' hard time in!


Next time through the S/F line, it was me by my lonesome and they rang the bell for, crap, I don't know what (all I knew was that the initial 700W+ surge was creating some pain that apparently effected my cognitive/auditory abilities!) - so I kept after it.



Well, I wound up holding off the field for a couple laps and took the prime. I soft pedaled for a lap, then the officials pulled me...


I didn't know exactly what I had won - my wife was watching, and she didn't know either - pretty busy chihuahua herdin':





that's Lucho (named after Cafe de Columbia rider Luis Herrera - you USA 1980's CBS Tour de France watchers will know this name!) on the left, Selene in the middle, and Lea (OK, we're mild Star Wars freaks - though, "princess Lea" is a spanish-english hybrid! :-) )

Anyway, two laps of goin' pretty frickin' hard:

and what did it net me? Yeah, an $80 haircut courtesy of Dave Alva at the studio city locaton of the Allen Edwards Salon! Thanks Dave!

For what it's worth (as a total aside), the last time I actually paid for a haircut was 1997 in Blacksburg, Virginia at the barber shop on N. Main St - just off Alumni mall. Ahhhhh, those were the days before I became familiar with the #2 guard and/or the "suckcut" - well, actually I own/have owned lots of clippers over the years - but never a "flowbee"...

Selene is going to try to give away the salon haircut at work tomorrow, but if there are no takers where she works, hey, I'll spread the love to someone who lives in the L.A./Studio City area and wants to give Dave Alva at Allen Edwards Salon a call. I'll keep you all informed - heck, that would be a sweet "surprise gift" to someone - regifting isn't such a bad thing, eh?

Well, not such a super bike racing result weekend for me, but, hey - an $80 haircut makes for a great story, eh?!

Tanning Tips

Cruisin' around socalcycling.com and ran across a blog from the the p 1,2 race:


http://marcofanelli.blogspot.com/2007/06/visiting-purgatory-then-wisdom-from-zen.html


I know I've already done this one before, but here's what 4 hours a week of bike pedalin' will do for your tan:


http://bp1.blogger.com/_N24zeMflUFQ/Rm5GT1NWKsI/AAAAAAAAAbE/qvT-JcUgozM/s1600-h/liebert-pulls.JPG


Geeez, that is some serious white-ness.

These guys are good.

Well, that's another bike race in the books - did the socal/nevada district road race yesterday. Found out that despite my setting all time personal best power records for the 2-3 minute duration period (I've been using a power meter since 2003-ish), that's just not quite enough (rather, it's not even close!!) to stand on the top step of the podium in the M35+ class down here in SoCal. Here's the SRM screenshot of the finale:






A wee-bit frustrated with the way things went/turned out (finished 21st out of about 25 guys that made the final bunch - I think around 50 or so started the day...), but hey, that's bike racin', eh?





Things that I am happy with:





1) preparation - I had estimated that the major climb on the course was going to take anywhere in the 3-4 minute range and I'd need to make 5.0-5.5W/kg each of the 5 times up the sucker to make the main group. There were a couple other small hills on the course that, when combined I figured I'd need to be able to do 30 ish minutes at 5.0 + W/kg over a two hour period. So, I did some chunk rides during my lunch hour that focused on making over 5.0 W/kg in significant chunks of time. Guess what, it turns out I can do about 20 minutes of 5.0+ W/kg during an hour's workout - might have been able to do more total time, but you know, I've got "meetings at the office " I needed to get back to! :-)





Anyway, those chunk rides were really key for me - they gave me confidence and really raised the left a bit. The efforts in the actual race seemed way easier than those chunk ride efforts (that might be because I basically crammed the entire race's "goin' hard" efforts into half the time.





I also made sure that I had some "fill" needs taken care of - about 8 days out I did a 2500 KJ day just to make sure the right side of the ol' power duration curve was taken care of - ya know, just in case I was riding hard tempo in a break for two hours or so... Race day KJ's were only 1400KJ, for what it's worth - that's a lot of coasting and soft pedaling, eh?





2) I felt like I rode as smart a race as possible. Honestly, I don't know what I could have done differently to have changed the outcome significantly - I mean, there is just a lot of horsepower in these fields. There was a break of two that was off for most of the day, and they dangled at 30 seconds to a minute for 4 laps or so. Maybe I could have been more aggressive, but some guys were trying stuff, and basically just wound up impaling themselves on the sword of Cynergy/Mark Noble's squad (Central Coast Magazing, I think it is??). Basically, I kept waiting for the split to happen on the climb, and when it didn't happen after the fourth of five times up the hill, well, it was basically destined to coming down to "how hard can you go for 2-3 minutes". I went as hard as I could...





These guys are good!

Which one...

...left more of a "mark", this lunch hour ride I did a week ago:

or the actual district RR (the last 125 minutes of this chunk plot):

Headin' home...

...from the scnca district road race champs. The race didn't quite play out like I imagined - finished in the main group.

Wish us luck with the LA traffic!

More later!